Killing Fields

Me and Chelsea went and saw the Cheung Ek killing fields and S21 – the main detention/torture facility for the Phnom Phenn region.

It was really upsetting, if you are unfamiliar with Cambodia’s bloody recent history you can read about the Khmer Rouge online.  I also have heard a lot of people recommending a book entitled, “First They Killed My Father” by Loung Ung.

The killing fields themselves are located in what was once an old Chinese graveyard.  It was a beautiful sunny day out and all sorts of birds were singing.  Quite the contradiction to the 9,000 of 20,000 unearthed skulls, teeth, jawbones, femurs and other old body parts we were literally walking on at the killing fields.  After every rain, dozens of bones and pieces of clothes from the victims wash up to the surface.

The twenty thousand that were murdered at the killing fields were all detained before hand at S21- an old high school turned prison.  Here the prisoners were tortured until they confessed to crimes they did not do, then they were sent to the killing fields for liquidation.  Dutch – the commander in charge of running S21 was in the headlines TODAY.  For directly ordering the mass murder of twenty thousand people he has received……… wait for it…… wait for it…..   35 years in prison – 17 which have been knocked off because of time already served.  Oh, not to mention that prison for him is basically house arrest.  After the accused was sent to the killing fields they would take three hundred people at a time to the edge of a trench and kill them with knives, spades, shovels and clubs.  They were not to waste ammunition.  Babies and children were all murdered to prevent revenge, often killed by bashing their heads against a tree. 

The most disturbing thing I saw was the magic tree – a tree which they would hang a big speaker from and blast music to cover up the sounds of the dying.  Also the fact that they had to sprinkle chemicals on the bodies before they covered them up to finish off anyone who was being buried alive and destroy diseases made my stomach churn.  The murderers were often between the age of fourteen and twenty.

Over the course of the Khmer Rouge reign (five years), they estimate that three million people were murdered.  They killed all students, teachers, monks, people who wore glasses, politicians, musicians and anyone that could be considered an intellectual.  This was because the KR wanted Kampuchea to be an agriculturalist society – they only wanted people they could boss around to live there.  They even killed thousands of their own men, women and children as punishment, as well as all the foreigners and travellers that were in the country at the time of the take-over.

It really put a damper on the few days after for us.  We almost were sick at the memorial.  Something about the situation in Cambodia strikes me as more evil than what was happening in Nazi Germany because the Khmer Rouge were just killing EVERYONE…  Think if this did not happen, there would be 9-12 MILLION more people living in Cambodia today!  AND, those 9-12 million people would be the “intelligent” ones!   How different would it be here?  Would it still be one of the poorest countries in the world? 

If you go to Cambodia you MUST go to the Killing Fields and S21.  It is necessary for all people to see things like this to keep it from happening ever again, and to learn about it since it is left out of school curriculum’s and media in the United States.

 

 

On a happy note, we ate bugs today – lots of them, all sorts!  They were great, and hands down if you can make a plate of beetles, ants, flies, termites and wasps taste good, you are the best damned cook on the planet.

Look at all those birds! I just liked that picture.  On the right is me wearing official Cambodian relics.  I tried to tell the girl that I should not touch priceless swords and gold crowns but she really wanted to make some tips by letting me wear the treasures for a photo – if anything ever goes missing from the Cambodian relic storehouses, that is probably the reason!