Day 8: The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields is the name given to the mass graves created by the Khmer Rouge during their rule of Cambodia 1975 - 1979 when they killed over a million people, or two million if you count those that died of starvation and disease.  There are many, many Killing Fields across Cambodia but Choeng Ek, 10 miles out of Phnom Penh, is probably the most famous.  I tussled with my conscience about this visit.  On the one hand, I do not want to be any part of making this sad and serious place into a distraction on the tourist circuit or to be disrespectful to the victims or their families.  On the other hand, I understand that friends and families do not want the atrocious things that happened to be forgotten or ever allowed to happen again.  I decided to take a look, and I am relieved to report that the site has been sympathetically restored to its former serenity as a cemetery.

These things are best decided on a personal basis.   Our guide apologised (unnecessarily) for having to leave us to wander around alone as he has family who lost their lives in Killing Fields and finds it difficult to remain detached.  Louise waited patiently on the boundary as she didn't want to see any of it. I kept my viewing of the central glass tower, or stupa, at a distance.  Richard and Ian went inside to see the skulls, bones and clothes that have been exhumed from the site and are now reverently displayed within the tower.  In the heavy rains clothes and bones are still surfacing and you are invited to place these onto a collection pile so they can be transported to their final resting place in the stupa.  It's a difficult place to describe in words.  Who wouldn't be moved by the tree labelled as the one used by Khmer soldiers to kill the babies by smashing their heads against it? If you have not seen the film of The Killing Fields I would recommend it as a true story and accessible account of these terrible times.

We travelled back into the centre of town for the second part of this tour at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.  This has been set up in the former Office S.21, used as a detention centre for interrogation, torture and killing of detainees considered to be enemies of the Pol Pot regime.  On show within the tiny rooms used to cage the prisoners were shocking torture tools, photographs of all the victims (methodically taken and archived by the Khmer Rouge) and other reminders of the evil that took place, such as blood stains and barbed wire fencing stretched from the balconies to stop the prisoners committing suicide.

'Keeping the memory of the atrocities committed on Cambodian soil alive is the key to build a strong and just state'
 (quoted from the official pamphlet accompanying the visit to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum)