Just visited the killing fields at Choeung Ek, 15km southeast of Phnom Penh. It was a very sobering experience, but definitely worthwhile, and I'm glad we decided to do it. We saw and heard some very unpleasant things, but there is no hiding from what happened here. I am writing this on the tuk-tuk ride back so it is fresh in my memory.
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| Memorial stupa containing remains of those found here |
These killing fields have now been officially renamed 'The Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre', and it lives up to this name as a place of great and tragic historical importance. As you walk in, the first thing you see is the large memorial stupa which houses the majority of the remains of the tens of thousands of innocent Cambodian people brutally executed there. You are given an audio tour and as much time as you like to explore.
As you can see from the photos, the place is aesthetically very beautiful and peaceful. Birdsong is heard everywhere, butterflies flit around, and chickens cluck from within bushes. Walking through it, while hearing about the terrible tragedies and mass murder that occurred in the very same spot only 35 years ago, was an incredibly moving and thought-provoking experience. The mother of all juxtapositions.
We slowly made our way round the self-guided tour, listening to survivors accounts and descriptions of what the area we stood in previously contained. All of these were of course very sad, but none more so for me than 'The Killing Tree'. This is the name of a very large, thick-trunked tree next to a pit where over 100 remains of women and children were found and exhumed. The Khmer Rouge executioners had taken babies, infants and children from their mother's arms, held them by their feet and smashed their heads into the tree before tossing the corpse into the pit, to be shortly followed by the child's poor mother. The man who first found it after the KR was driven out found fragments of bone, brain matter and hair embedded in the tree trunk. The 'justification' for this was a KR saying which went something like 'to cut the grass, you must also destroy the root', meaning they believed it was necessary to eradicate whole families at a time to reduce the chance of someone seeking revenge against them. It's the most ruthlessly insane, brutally logical, and cowardly thing I have ever heard. I couldn't bring myself to take a photo of it.
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| Formerly a mass grave |
Before we left we took a look in the stupa, and the small museum which has a 15 minute video summarising the events which occurred during Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge reign of terror. It also had some artwork, the most moving one for me depicting a young man about to execute a small boy. There was definite sorrow in his eyes, and you have to wonder about the mental state of the pure, naive and innocent then-teenagers the KR coerced into becoming ruthless, brutal murderers.
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| Read that writing |
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| Inside the stupa. This is a mere fraction of the remains found. |
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| View from the stupa |
On the way back we hit Section 21 (S-21), the school which Pol Pot turned into a torture prison for keeping people before they were taken out to the killing fields to die. All of the tortures were obviously terrible, but some were just.. Beyond belief. Here are some photos:
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| Rules |
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| Graves |
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| Relic from the school it once was |
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| Torture weapons |
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| Unflinching artwork |
The traffic getting back was ludicrous.
In our first evening in Phnom Penh, we mainly just chilled out, caught up with people online and enjoyed the delicious 'Fatman Pizza' that is offered at our guesthouse, 'The Laughing Fatman'. Fatman himself is a very cool guy, we got on with him really well.
We went out and played some pool down the road (there's pool tables everywhere here), and walked the streets taking in the night before hitting the hay.
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