I knew today was not going to be a happy day but quite the opposite, it was a very sad and depressing day but it was something that I had to do as I wanted to learn about the horrible genocide that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge inflicted on Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 and learn some more about the history and the wars of this country. Peace was finally found in 1991 when both sides met in Paris and signed a peace accord and the Khmer Rouge were finally demised in 1998 with the first parliament in Cambodia.

My first stop today was the 129 mass graves in the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek located 14km southwest of central Phnom Penh. The Guest House ran me over in their Tuk-Tuk for a small fee which meant that he would wait for me there until I was ready to move on.

1st history lesson for today.....

Choeung Ek, the site of a former orchard and Chinese graveyard about 17 km south of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, is the best-known of the sites known as The Killing Fields, where the Khmer Rouge regime executed about 17,000 people between 1975 and 1979. Mass graves containing 8,895 bodies were discovered at Choeung Ek after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. Many of the dead were former inmates in the Tuol Sleng prison.

Today, Choeung Ek is a memorial, marked by a Buddhist stupa. The stupa has acrylic glass sides and is filled with more than 5,000 human skulls. Some of the lower levels are opened during the day so that the skulls can be seen directly. Many have been shattered or smashed in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choeung_Ek

Walking around the site, you could still see bones, teeth and clothing working its way up through the footpaths as the mud is worn away by people walking around and also when it rains and the water washes away the mud, more appear. It was very depressing knowing that you are walking around a site where so many men, women and children had been brutally murdered.

I apologise first for this, but you have to know what really went on. People who were murdered here were not shot in the head as the bullets where too expensive. They were all beaten and had their heads smashed in with anything that was around, spades, iron bars, farming equipment, etc. There was even a tree called the 'Killing Tree' where the executioners would hold babies by their feet and swing them against the tree smashing their heads against the tree trunk and killing them that way. It was an absolutely appalling way to kill people and even babies.

The Khmer Rouge were killing not just political prisoners, but anyone who had an education, teachers, doctors, etc and even killed people just because they wore glasses. Not only would they kill that person but their whole family were killed too.

If you want to learn more, there is a 1984 film called ‘The Killing fields’.....

The Killing Fields is a 1984 British drama film about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which is based on the experiences of three journalists: Cambodian Dith Pran, American Sydney Schanberg and British Jon Swain. The film, which won three Academy Awards, was directed by Roland Joffé and stars Sam Waterston as Schanberg, Haing S. Ngor as Dith Pran,Julian Sands as Jon Swain, and John Malkovich as Al Rockoff. The adaptation for the screen was written by Bruce Robinson and the soundtrack by Mike Oldfield, orchestrated by David Bedford.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields_(film)

After watching the video presentation on the history of the Killing Fields, Khmer Rouge and the Pol Pot era, I left and went over to the next depressing place. This was the detention centre where Pol Pot’s security forces turned a school (Tuol Svay Prey High School) into Security Prison 21 (S-21) which was now Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This was the largest centre of detention and torture in the country. Almost everyone held here was later executed at the killing fields. Detainees who died during torture were buried in mass graves inside the prison grounds. During the first part of 1977, S-21 claimed a terrifying average of 100 victims per day.

Tuol Sleng demonstrates the darkest side of the human spirit that lurks within us all. It is not for the squeamish, but a visit here is instrumental in understanding Cambodia’s past and present. The documentary film shown here is definitely worth waiting around to see to understand more of the history behind this terrible time.

2nd history lkesson for today.....

-The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The site is a former high school which was used as the notoriousSecurity Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge communist regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. Tuol Sleng means "Hill of the Poisonous Trees" or "Strychnine Hill".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng

Walking around the museum everyone is deadly silent and really in shock at some of the pictures that are shown around the place. There are classrooms which were just filled with people shackled to beds and just given an ammo tin for use when then they need to answer the call of nature. There were classrooms in the other buildings which had been ‘converted’ in to prison cells some made out of bricks and others made of wood. They had even just knocked wholes through the walls to give access to the adjoining rooms for the guards.

There was a display of some of the tools and machines that they used to torture the detainees. They even used the children’s climbing apparatus as torture equipment. They would hang people upside down from the high bars and dunk their heads in to pots filled with water.

There were rooms and rooms, filled with photographs of all the inmates that ever stayed here. Almost all of them were tortured and then taken to the killing fields. There were only ever about a dozen people who ever walked out of here alive.

After such a depressing day, I got back to the hostel and got changed and headed out for dinner alone. After dinner I went over to a bar for a drink which was really empty and sat there thinking about the days events.

Later on in the evening I got talking with some of the bar staff and a Tuk-Tuk driver who was hanging around the bar trying to get some customers. Up the street a fight kicked off between two Cambodian girls and most of the staff and the Tuk-Tuk driver ran up there to see what was going on. When they came back I talked more with the Tuk-Tuk driver who’s name was Boral Yen just to find out why they had all gone running up the street. I asked him if he wanted a drink and we sat and talked about his plans to start up a school in Phnom Penh.

After a while we (Boral and I) decided to go off to another bar for a drink and then we headed off to a club for a couple of hours. It was really nice to see some of the less touristy places in town with one of the locals. After the club Boral (yes he had been drinking) dropped me off at my hostel in his Tuk-Tuk. He said that if I had a free night, he would love to take me back to see his home village and have his wife cook me a traditional dinner. It was really nice of him but I was leaving Phnom Penh the next day. It would have been a great experience :-(

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