21 April 2008 - tuol sleng and the killing fields

18th April

Sorry this is a long one!!

I don't know how much you all know about Cambodia and its recent history. Before Dan and i arrived here we had little knowledge of the Khmer rouge so i thought I'd give a brief run down so you can appreciate whats happened here.

In 1975 pol pot the leader of the communist party know as the Khmer rouge seized power in Cambodia. They named it year zero as they were to begin from scratch.

Also at the time the US had been bombing Cambodia as they had allowed north Vietnam to use their land during the Vietnam war, Pol Pot used this to his advantage.

By telling the people that the US were going to bomb the capital there was a mass evacuation from the city. In doing this pol pot could get all these people to work in the field loosing their homes and possessions therefore making them all of equal status.

They also created prisons in old schools and temples. The most famous of these is called S-21 or tuol sleng. Hundreds of thousand of Cambodians who were well educated or who had been accused of treason were sent here. Once here they were tortured and then executed, no one left alive even the babies were slaughtered. Those who did not die on site were taken 14km outside the city to be executed in mass graves now know as the killing fields.

By the time the Khmer rouge were defeated by the Vietnamese in 1979 they estimated that half the population of Cambodia had died as a result of their new policies. Some of those murdered and others died from malnutrition and starvation.

Anna, lee, dan and i took a tuk tuk and spent a few hrs at tuel sleng, this place had been left in a hurry when the Vietnamese took phnom phen so all the evidence was left there in situ. Still to this day there are blood stains on the floor and a shoe on one of the stair wells.

The prisoners were all photographed on entry to the prison and many of them were photographed when they had died, all of these pictures are displayed in the prison.

Also displayed are paintings created by one of the prisoner. They depict several different people being tortured and even babies being killed. We all felt pretty sick walking around this place.

Afterward we went to the killing fields, i think there are 129 mass graves. Some of these have been excavated although others were left. As we walked round we could see clothing and bones protruding through the ground where the graves were so shallow.

We left feeling pretty glum and to think this only happen 30yrs ago and that many of the Cambodians we had met had been directly affected by these atrocities.