|
Choeung Ek Killing Fields and S21 Prison
|
19th May 2004.
We took a motorbike ride to the Killing Fields and S21 prison. A motorbike ride in Cambodia may involve up to 7 people with whole families performing what looks like motorbike stunt riding during the school run... they are mop-heads and not big motorbikes.
The killing fields are about an hours drive from Phnom Phen, with Claire and Jason and our driver perched on a single motorbike for arse-breaking pot-holed-hell.
17,000 people were taken from S21 prison and massacred here during the Khmer rouge heydays of the late 70s... while you were disco dancing they were beating kids with sticks! These largely innocent victims were killed and left to die in massive open graves. It was a moving day not without the odd tear or the worry that nobody has ever been bought to justice for this carry-on.
|
 |
On arriving at the Killing Fields it is difficult to miss the huge glass stupa that contains thousands of skulls. People from all ages are classified in row upon row of skulls.
There is shelf after shelf of piles of skulls with labels like "skulls under the age of 12", " Males over 60" etc
|
|
If you can ignore the constant begging children asking you for money for a photo, it is a very sad and distressing place. You can't help wonder what the people were thinking as they came to their death. Sometimes a grave only a few metres wide would contain nearly 1,000 people. Some were only for woman and children and some were missing heads. It was hard to wander around without a lump in your throat.
The whole area is around 70 metres by 30 metres and some 8,000 bodies have been exhumed here.
|
 |
|
 |
It was the clothes and bones that were scattered around the graves that really hit home. Some how the half-buried clothes added personalisation to it all.
|
|
The place is blunt... It's worth noting that people only came here to die, and bullets were expensive.
|
 |
|
 |
As the rain started to show, we made our way to S21. Here the Khmer Rouge tortured thousands of people during "the disco years" before loading the bus to the killing fields.
|
|
The victims were chained up and kept in tiny cells with lots of other people. There would be a tin for them to use to relieve themselves and their legs were shackled.
|
 |
|
 |
Each person entering S21 was given a number and a photo was taken of them as they entered the jail. The look of terror on each person is chilling. They were tortured before death.
Torture was in the many forms from water being dripped on their heads, being strapped upside down and kicked, to being chained and beaten to death on a bed if you were important. All ages of individuals were kept here. Lots of woman and children.
|
|
In a stroke of pure genius the Khmer Rouge were taking advice from China. Chairman Mao published a document years before the take over. It clearly stated that the way forward for Cambodia was a self-sufficient agrian society based on a reduced population. Unfortunately there weren't too many volunteers for the population reduction program and they weren't self-sufficient enough due to the import of ridiculous ideas from China. Take one more look at the picture above and then picture that prick Mao prancing around with his little red book.
|
