The way from Siem Reap to Kampot took us back to the capital city of Phnom Penh. As we had unfinished business here, never having made it out to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, we thought it was best to stop in the capital before continuing our journey down south.
About 17km south of Phnom Penh sits the Genocidal centre, better known as the Choeung Ek killing fields. It is just one of one hundred and twenty eight known "killing fields" used by the Khmer Rouge. Across Cambodia it is suspected that some killing fields still sit undiscovered, out in the jungles, some are just inaccessible due to landmines left by the Khmer Rouge to hide the extent of their crimes.
The whole reason behind the mass graves and executions can be summed up in one awful Khmer Rouge Belief. "It's better to kill an innocent than leave an enemy alive." This one thought led to over 10,000 skeletons being excavated from this one site alone, although the true number of recorded executions at this site number over 20,000. They just got better at "processing" the bodies, as the mass graves started to fill, with D.D.T traces found alongside remains, a chemical that would degrade the bodies quicker. When Choeung Ek was first used as an extermination center, 70 victims a week would be murdered at this site, towards the end is was 300 day.
For most, their final hours would begin at Toul Sleng (S-21), where after confessing they would be blindfolded and put on the bus to Choeung Ek, told they were just moving locations. Instead, in a former orchard which had blaring music playing (to disguise the sounds of what was really happening), they would be led, still blindfolded, to the edge of a pit, where they would be swiftly beaten to death with farming equipment. All the guns were needed on the eastern border.
As depressing as it is to hear of grown men and women beaten to death, for reasons as insipid of having "soft hands" or having too many rations. Nothing can prepare you to hear stories of infants being mercilessly murdered, swung violently into a specific tree before being thrown into a mass grave. It's worse than sickening and I don't understand how even the most ardent Khmer Rouge followers could balance their thoughts in such a way that it made sense that a baby could possibly be an enemy of their ideals.
Once again, the audioguide provided was extremely informative and evocative. Interspersed with the history of the site was stories from the victims of the Khmer Rouge, alongside stories from former Khmer Rouge Guards.
Now days, the first thing you see when entering the site is the memorial Stupa, which is filled with the bones of Victims excavated from the site. Behind this sits the mass graves, all left open and some now slowly being reclaimed by nature. The cordoned path weaves between the graves, where if we looked closely, fragments of cloth and bone can be seen working their way out of the earth. The Cambodians say that the dead don't rest easy at Choeung Ek.
I'm glad we didn't try and visit the S-21 museum and Choeung Ek in the same day. Both sites are overwhelmingly emotive and I really do feel that we might have become numb to the horror by the end of the day. While walking around this site, we again had to take time, pausing the audioguide and finding somewhere to sit for a short mental break, to try and compute what we had just heard. It was even harder to relate, what seemed to be a quiet peaceful field, where people spoke in hushed whispers to a place that people were horrifically murdered day after day for years.
As depressing as it is, I still feel both the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung EK killing fields are both equally important places to visit while in Cambodia.
If you haven't yet read up on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, I have a blog giving a brief overview on what really happened in Cambodia.
It’s a harrowing place. There are some very good books worth reading by survivors of the genocide . Are you going onto Vietnam?