My head is blown after today! Too much information to take in and process. It was a very interesting day, but also very sad.
We set off at 9am from our guesthouse and one of the workers brought us two and another older couple in his car, starting at the Choeung Ek Genocial Centre- The Killing Fields. We had an hour and a half there and were given audio guides to tell us about the different areas at the memorial grounds and there was also audio of real people's stories, both victims and killers who were a part of the Khmer Rouge.
There were the biggest mass graves there of all the graves from the Khmer Rouge. They had killed whole families of people. If they arrested one person, they would then arrest and kill the whole family so that nobody else was alive to get revenge. One quote of the Khmer Rouge was 'Pull a weed by the roots'. They killed women and children too at Choeung Ek, where there were mass graves for them there. They brutally killed children by grabbing them by their feet and hitting their heads off a tree which killed them. The tree was still at the memorial ground. The Khmer Rouge also thought that it 'was better to make a wrong arrest and kill an innocent person than let a guilty person be free'. They would bring people here from numerous prisons across the country, mainly S-21 where they had already been brutally tourtered, they would be blindfolded, knelt over the already pre-dug mass grave, and then they would be killed by being hit over the head with whatever instrument was available, such as axe, hoe, bamboo stick. Their throats would then be slit and they would be pushed into the grave. Some of the people did not die straight away so fertiliser was poured into the grave to mask the smell of rotting bodies and to kill anybody who was still alive. How could they actually do that?!
There were memorial boxes and the main Memorial Stupa which was the massive glass building of cases that held 5,000 human skulls and numerous other bones from bodies that had been discovered at the Killing Field. During the rainy season, and also throughout the year, more and more are discovered and surface from under the ground. Whilst we were there we saw real human bones in the ground under the path that had begun to surface and also victims clothes that were also surfacing.
It was a little too much to take in and very overwhelming. I did break down on a couple of occasions as I couldn't comprehend the brutality. It was unbelievable how anybody could do these things and how it was not that many years ago. It was a real shock and eye opener but it was very good to learn about the Khmer Rouge Movement, which we didn't know anything about prior to coming to Cambodia. It was very emotional and horrific.
After the Killing Fields, we were dropped off at Toul Sleng Genocidal Museum (S-21), which was the prison that many many people were brought to, tourtered and some died, or some were sent on the Choeung Ek to be murdered. They tourtered people there until they confessed to treason crimes that they more often than not they did not commit, then once they confessed, they were 'destroyed'- as the Khmer Rouge would brutally say.
There were four buildings at the prison, that used to be a high school before the Khmer Rouge shut down all schools. Each building had different prison areas and cells- either big cells for a lot of people, or small individual cells. The buildings had been left how the Khmer Rouge had left it after they fled and it was then turned into the museum. You could still see the shackles that were used, the tools that were used for torture, photos of the prisoners and the cells as they were then. There was even still blood stains on some of the floors of the cells, which was hard hitting to see. We saw a video that had been made by one of the survivors, who has now died, where he confronted and asked the prison guards about their involvement and feelings about what they had done and tried to get some answers and closure. The video was hard to watch as some of the guards, who had done horrific things, didn't seem to be remorseful for what they had done. One was remorseful and ashamed and said that it was either he did what he did or he would be killed. Many of the guards went on to be killed after Pol Pot became more paranoid.
There were two of the 12 survivors there at the museum selling their books about what had happened to them and about the Khmer Rouge. It must have been so difficult for them to be at the place where they were tourtered and where their families may have been tortured and went on to be killed. You couldn't even begin to imagine what they had been through. It was a nice thing to see them there, but also quite a shock, to put an actual face and person to the suffering of so many, and so little that survived.
We spent the rest of the day at the museum until it was close to shutting. We told the driver not to wait for us as we didn't want to be rushed. Good job as well as we stayed 3 hours longer than we would have if we got the car back. We got a tuk tuk from the museum to the supermarket that we had been to the day before and then walked back from there. We found a much quicker way back today and it took us about half the time! The day before we had literally walked around a whole unnecessary part of the city and gone back on ourselves to get back!
Once we got back we were pretty exhausted and drained from the day and everything we had found out. It really had an effect on our moods and was still so much to think about and process. We decided that we would just eat downstairs tonight but when we went downstairs about 8 it was shutting up, so we went a couple of doors to a nice restaurant. I tried something new, a traditional Khmer meal called Lo Lak, which was really nice!
We then retired for the night after a very interesting and overwhelming day! I waited up until after midnight to FaceTime grandma ryan which was lovely! It was so nice to see and hear from her!