The Killing Fields are 30 minutes outside the city which doesn't seem like much but they are worlds apart. Once I reached it there was an incredibly somber and sad feeling washing over me, as soon as I was inside I started to imagine what it must have felt like to be herded into those big military trucks one by one and in the pitch black be driven to this place, moved into a shed and then one by one being taken out and slaughtered as silently as possible. That sad and somber feeling changed to a heavy feeling, everything I saw just weighed on my thoughts more and more.
I can't really explain how I felt when I started to see bone and cloth protruding from the earth beneath my feet, they had already exhumed as much as they could years earlier but as the yearly rains erode more soil more remains appear.
A child's skull
This is a memorium with 9000 skulls inside, 17 level of them on four sides up the very highest possible points, all with descriptions from age to cause of death.
These poor souls suffered immensely even in death..bullets were too expensive so the people were left to suffer the most horrific deaths which included being clubbed with an ox cart axle, axed in the head with a garden hoe and having their throats slit with the serrated edge of a palm frond. Mothers were stripped naked and killed but not before watching their children swung by their feet into a tree known as 'the killing tree'.
The Killing Tree
In memory of over approximately 100 infants and children killed on this very spot.
You can never prepare yourself for the way you will feel in a place like this, it saddens the soul to know 9000 or more people were senselessly murdered and for what reasons? Things like wearing glasses, being educated, having a trade and believing in pretty much anything other than Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. But why did the infant children have to die? Pol Pot said "to be rid of the grass you must pull it up from the roots..." otherwise it would simply grow back or in his case, there may have been an uprising or rebellion from the next generation.
They had a little museum there with some information and some original weapons used...the dents all of the axle was more than a little unnerving, it just left me with a very sick feeling however there was more to come.
I must say the now Genocide Museum looks very out of place where it is currently though it wouldn't it if had remained a simple high school, now it's a memorium to cruel torture and suffering.
One prisoner to a room shackled to their bed attached to a pivoting steel rod to secure them with a rice bowl for when they were actually fed. I cannot put myself in their shoes...I have nothing to compare it to, just reading about their torture methods is harrowing. One in particular was stringing a prisoner up with their arms behind their backs on a rope, the guards pulled the rope hoisting the person into the air by their arms and then when they passed out from the pain their head was dunked into a vat of sewage water to wake them up again to continue the torture. This I imagine wasn't the worst they did, things like pulling out fingernails one by one, whipping till the skin was opened and pouring salt water on the wounds or simply beating someone until they either told you the information or died from the torture.
The hardest thing for me to comprehend was the faces in the photographs of the people. Some even smirking or smiling in their portrait taken by the guards on entry, no doubt having no clue what they would soon be put through...some were so very young, the thought that they would have most likely died of starvation before anything else is just heartbreaking. There was not a trace of mercy, none.
There were photos of people who had died from torture, foaming at the mouth, eyes wide open and incredibly haunting..I won't soon be forgetting those images, though they are nothing compared to the reality. One of the 7 surviving prisoners of S21 was there signing his book about his experiences, he is 74 years old and such a small smiling man you would never even think he had suffered these atrocities. Bou Meng's wife was slain at the killing fields while he was at S21 and while he was tortured for information he also offered a valuable skill of painting which may well have saved his life! He was asked to paint Pol Pot realistically and if he didn't like it Bou would be killed. His paintings meant he would recieve food regularly unlike many other prisoners and this kept him gong him while his skills were required.
Such an honour to meet this man, so smiley and pleased with his life now, I'm glad he has found a means to profit in some way from his previous life and that which was stolen from him. He can now live freely and comfortably.
