Our bus to Phnom Penh ended up being a car which was great as we must have been the only ones travelling that day. That's the good thing about travelling in low season. We did end up having to pay a bit extra as they tried to drop us off on the outskirts of town instead of the agreed place. Typical.
We spent the afternoon at the Cambodia National Museum then arranged a tuk-tuk driver for the next day. Phnom Penh is not a terribly exciting city which we were expecting so we were only going to stay a day.
The morning was spent at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum which was heart breaking. We had psychologically prepared ourselves as we knew this would be a rough day but it still makes you cry.
The site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979.
Formerly the Chao Ponhea Yat High School, named after a royal ancestor of King Norodom Sihanouk, the five buildings of the complex were converted in August 1975, four months after the Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War, into a prison and interrogation center. The Khmer Rouge renamed the complex "Security Prison 21" (S-21) and construction began to adapt the prison to the inmates: the buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes.
From 1975 to 1979, an estimated 17,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng (some estimates suggest a number as high as 20,000, although the real number is unknown). At any one time, the prison held between 1,000–1,500 prisoners. They were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured and killed. In the early months of S-21's existence, most of the victims were from the previous Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc. Later, the party leadership's paranoia turned on its own ranks and purges throughout the country saw thousands of party activists and their families brought to Tuol Sleng and murdered. Prisoners' families were often brought en masse to be interrogated and later executed at the Choeung Ek extermination center.
In 1979, the prison was uncovered by the invading Vietnamese army. In 1980, the prison was reopened by the government of the People's Republic of Kampuchea as a historical museum memorializing the actions of the Khmer Rouge regime.
When the Khmer Rouge entered the capital Phnom Penh in 1975 they overthrew the incumbent government. The people were happy as they thought the Khmer Rouge would bring peace and a better life with the communists. But Pol Pot the leader of the Khmer Rouge was a complete mad man. He emptied the city completely within three days of its 2 million people. They were either killed, sent to "re-education centres" or to S-21. This happened around the country. He destroyed all of the elements of modern society from the new Democratic Republic of Kampuchea and Year Zero was declared – the start of a new era in human history.
Apartment blocks were emptied, cars were melted down into buckets, and millions of people were forced out and onto collective farms where they were worked to death. Workdays of 12 or 14 hours typically began and ended with mandatory indoctrination sessions, in which the peasantry was instructed in the ruling philosophy of Angka, the Party’s name for itself. In this ideology, all foreign influence was bad, all modern affectations weakened the nation, and Kampuchea’s only way forward was through isolation and heavy labour.
He split up families and brain washed teenagers who then turned against family and friends and who then had ran the work camps and prisons.
In Pol Pot's paranoia everyone was a spy and when things turned sour with Vietnam in 1980, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and forced the Khmer Rouge into the jungle. Thousands of starving people fled their communes and walked to refugee camps in Thailand. The Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror was over.
Unbelievably, though Angka was no more, the Khmer forces weren’t completely broken. Retreating to bases in the west, where travel is difficult and even a large force can hide indefinitely, Pol Pot kept his grip on the defeated remnants of his party for another 15 years.
In the mid-90s, the new government began aggressively recruiting Khmer Rouge defectors and subverting the organization. Gradually the Khmer Rouge began to change complexion, and many of Pol Pot’s old cronies either died or came in from the bush to take advantage of various amnesties.
In 1996, Pol Pot lost control of the movement and was confined by his own troops. After that, he was condemned to death in absentia by a Cambodian court, and then given a show trial by the Khmer Rouge itself and sentenced to a lifetime under house arrest.
Just before the 23rd anniversary of his triumphant seizure of power, the Khmer Rouge agreed to hand Pol Pot over to Cambodian authorities to answer for his crimes, presumably triggering his suicide. He was 72 years old.
Most prisoners at S-21 were held there for two to three months. However, several high-ranking Khmer Rouge cadres were held longer. Within two or three days after they were brought to S-21, all prisoners were taken for interrogation.The torture system at Tuol Sleng was designed to make prisoners confess to whatever crimes they were charged with by their captors. For the first year of S-21’s existence, corpses were buried near the prison. However, by the end of 1976, cadres ran out of burial spaces, the prisoner and their family were taken to the Choeung Ek extermination centre, fifteen kilometers from Phnom Penh.
We saw the cells where photos of the dead high ranking Khmer Rouge soldiers were killed complete with graphic photos of their death and blood stains on the floor and ceilings. When prisoners were admitted they had their photo taken and sometimes after they had been tortured and killed they had another photo taken. We saw photo after photo of both prisoners and also the indoctrinated teenagers, some as young as 12. It was very disturbing and terribly sad. Only 7 men survived the prison and two of them are still alive and were touting their books when we came outside. Who could blame them.
Our guide who showed us around the museum was 14 at the time and fled the city with her parents. She saw her parents killed and she was separated from her siblings for years. She managed to survive just, and was frequently beaten and was ill and starving. It was very humbling to meet and talk with her. The horror of those times is still so recent and raw which you can feel everywhere.
We then went to Choeung Ek one of the many killing fields in Cambodia which is now a memorial. Many of the other killing fields cannot even be visited because they have too many UXOs (unexplored ordinance bombs) or are too remote in the jungle.
We persuaded our driver to join us for lunch though we weren't very hungry.
After coerced "confessions" at S21 prisoners were then taken by truck to the Killing Field and killed either right away or the next day.
The Audio Guide was excellent as it led us around the chilling site. We passed by many mass graves where from time to time bones and clothing still continue to surface. One particular disturbing sight was a tree that was next to a grave of over 100 women and children. The tree was used by the indoctrinated teenage soldiers to hold the legs of babies while their Mother looked on and then the soldier hit the head of the baby against the tree before tossing the baby and then the killed naked Mother into the pit. I felt so sick.
At the end of the site is a memorial stupa incorporating both Buddhist and Hindu elements (religion was outlawed during the war). Inside the stupa is four walls containing 17 stories of skulls and bones of the victims exhumed from the mass graves. They have been classified into gender, age and cause of death. Horrific.
In the west you really don't learn much about this genocide so it was very powerful for us to hear about it. I still continue to be amazed at the extreme good and bad people do in this world.
The next day it was a six hour or so drive to Siem Reap.