Disclaimer: upsetting images of torture and imprisonment.
The most difficult thing we’ve ever seen and struggled to
make sense of was the focus of our next day, as we hired a motorbike to visit
the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. It is poorly signposted, meaning that we got
lost a few times before opting for the safe option of following a tuk-tuk full
of tourists and rightly guessing where they were heading. The heavens opened at
one point and we took shelter at a petrol station, but nothing can cleanse the
mind of the impending sight of so much incomprehensible carnage, so on we
pressed until we reached our destination.
The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek are one of many Killing
Fields from the time of Khmer Rouge rule from 1975 to 1979, before Vietnam
invaded and ended the deadly dominance of the Khmer Rouge. Cambodia had already
been suffering a period of civil war before the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot,
gained power, and took the country from a bad state to a far worse place.
Within days of entering Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge had emptied the capital and
were evacuating people to the countryside to work in the fields, young, old and
disabled – and any who couldn’t make the journey were executed or left to die.
The Khmer Rouge intended to return to a life of living off the land, without
any modern accoutrements, so they declared it to be Year Zero of this new
lifestyle, and denied access to anything that couldn’t be made by hand,
including modern medicines. The Khmer Rouge sought to eradicate anyone who had
supported the previous government or worked with foreign governments, as well
as intellectuals, and anyone working in a profession – even wearing glasses was
seen as proof of deviant sentiments, and could result in death. This led many
people to lie about their past and attempt to pass themselves off as peasants.
Material wealth rapidly became meaningless, though could occasionally be
bartered for extra food or supplies; but as a rule, money, fine clothing and
other items of value became useless and were discarded in order to both
preserve the ‘lies’ required to mask a civilian past, and to lighten the load
as many people had to travel on foot with everything they owned in order to
reach new village settlements and camps. If you did decide to ‘confess’ to a
life where you had worked in a profession or with the government, you would
receive the promise of ‘forgiveness’ – often followed by the reality of a spell
of torture in prison and/or a direct visit to one of the Killing Fields, where
you would be executed for your ‘crimes’.
Over the short rule of the Khmer Rouge, it is estimated that,
out of a population of only 8 million people, around 2 million people were
killed – and more than 3 million people may have perished in total as a result
of malnutrition or illness thanks to the impossible living conditions and
strenuous workload required. Nearly 1.4
million bodies have been accounted for in the Killing Field sites alone. Each
Killing Field is a mass grave, or the site of several mass graves, and Choeung
Ek is one of the most famous due to its proximity to Phnom Penh, and its
relationship with the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, where many thousands were
tortured before being sent to Choeung Ek for execution and burial.
When you enter the site, you have the opportunity to use an
audio guide for your visit – and it is one of the best audio guides we’ve ever
used at a historical site. The history is kept simple and clear, with facts
about the findings in each grave interspersed with anecdotes from survivors. The
first thing you see is the memorial stupa, which also brings the tour full
circle – this is a Buddhist memorial dedicated to the victims, and contains the
skulls and bones of excavated skeletons from across the site.
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Memorial Stupa |
The memorial
contains over 5,000 skulls, and many of these show signs (holes and/or cracks
in the skull) to suggest that the victims were bludgeoned to death rather than
shot. In fact, a blunt tool was one of the principal murder weapons, since
bullets were hard to come by, so an instant death may have been a rarity. So
many people met their end here; trucks were regularly arriving from S-21 with
new victims, and prisoners were dispatched quickly and carelessly, so many people
may have been buried alive and died of a combination of both their wounds and
suffocation. It is impossible to imagine the misery these people experienced in
their final hours.
The Killing Field is situated on the site of an old orchard
and a Chinese cemetery, and is a remarkably peaceful place – several km out of
the city, and off a minor road. Since the horrors lie below ground, or have
already been excavated, the audio guide is required to give an indication of
what the site may have been like when in action, and it effectively and
matter-of-factly conveys the sense of dread that must have permeated the place.
People would have arrived already tortured to near death, almost certainly
malnourished, and in fear of new horrors. Loud revolutionary music was played
across the site to block out the sound of their screams as they faced death. In
addition to the blunted iron bars, pick axes and stones used to bludgeon people
to death, sharp leaves from sugar palm trees were even used to slit throats in
the absence of other weapons. Over 9,000 bodies have been found at Choeung Ek
alone.
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Sugar Palm Tree |
As you walk around the Killing Field, you can see several shallow
pits, some marked with barriers, other demarcated by topography alone. One pit
lies next to a ‘Killing Tree’ where the bodies of children were buried: Khmer
Rouge soldiers would swing the children against the tree, smashing their skulls
in, before tossing them into the burial pit, where often their mothers were also buried.
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'Killing Tree' |
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Base of the 'Killing Tree' |
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Mass Grave of Babies, Young Children (and their Mothers) Killed by the 'Killing Tree' |
Such callous disregard for human
life is so difficult to imagine, and would have been cultivated by the Khmer
Rouge as they sought young and impressionable peasant children and teenagers to
train as guards and executioners. The Pol Pot regime dehumanised so many people
either because of their suffering, or because of what they became during this
period, and the things they were required to do.
The walk around the site is sobering; as well as the many
burial pits, there are several small collections of bones that have surfaced in
recent years, and are now held in Perspex display cases around the site.
However, none of this brings the reality of what happened here home as much as
seeing bones, teeth and clothes surface day by day. As you walk around, small
shards of white that may otherwise have been mistaken as eroded plastic are
revealed as teeth, or bone, and you may notice these underfoot as you walk
around. Heavy rain, or just the natural shift of the earth in these shallow
graves, causes these to sift to the surface regularly – so regularly that it is
hard to stay on top of collecting these. Despite all the excavation work that
has taken place, these fragmented remains will continue to linger in the soil
for many years, a frequent reminder of the horrors that took place in this
peaceful orchard.
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Pit of 450 Bodies |
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We left the Killing Field and made our way back into town to
visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
This also had a peaceful history before
the horrors of war, as it used to be a high school, but when the Khmer Rouge
took over they turned this into a prison, knocking crude doors into walls
between classrooms, surrounding these classrooms with iron bars and barbed
wire, and minimising the risk of suicide from their prisoners by keeping them
shackled together.
Security Prison S-21 held thousands of people during Khmer
Rouge rule, and many of these were held for a period of 2-3 months before they
died or were sent to Choeung Ek for execution. Each new arrival would be
photographed and interviewed – the Khmer Rouge were looking for traitors and
sympathisers with the previous regime. It was an impossible situation for the
prisoner since they were almost always doomed to die, and the Khmer Rouge
interrogator would have a clear agenda for the interview. Torture was used to
not only extract confessions but to implicate others – often whole families
were captured and killed in this way, especially as time passed, because Pol
Pot became increasingly paranoid about being overthrown and sought to eradicate
any possible threat.
Again, as at the Killing Field of Choeung Ek, there were
young guards, but even the guards had to be careful as one false move could
lead to their own interrogation, torture and death. They had to abide by a strict
set of rules, for example not being allowed to engage in conversation with the
prisoners, so in many ways the guards were prisoners too, and breaking a rule
(or being reported by another guard for breaking a rule) could destroy their
fragile existence.
When Phnom Penh was liberated in 1979, only seven survivors
of S-21 were alive to tell of the horrors committed here. People who did
survive usually only did so because they had a valuable skill the Khmer Rouge
could use, for example they were photographers who could help catalogue the
arriving prisoners, or they had mechanical skills for repairing vehicles. The
Vietnamese who discovered the prison found that all remaining prisoners had
been slaughtered just hours before they arrived. They were killed in a hurry,
so were still shackled or tied to iron bedsteads in their cells (converted
classrooms). A combat photographer recorded everything he saw when he arrived
on the scene, and these photographs are in each cell to provide a stark
illustration of the horrific scenes he encountered. The cells have been left in
their original state, so the cell floors remain bloodstained and the bedsteads
and shackles are still in place.
As well as these smaller cells holding the remaining
prisoners, there were larger cells where 20-40 people were kept, shackled in
rows, with little food and in poor hygiene. They were held between
interrogations, or while waiting to be sent to the Killing Fields.
In other
parts of the prison, there were torture cells, where confessions were elicited
using barbaric techniques, and medical experiments are alleged to have taken
place, including removal of organs without anaesthetic, and exsanguination.
Several implements of torture are on display in one of the buildings.
There are
also room after room of photographs, taken from the extensive records kept by
the Khmer Rouge, showing the endless catalogue of prisoners, photographs taken
just after they were removed from their lives and just before their lives
became degraded beyond comprehension. It is hard to read the expressions here –
some people look terrified, some resigned, some uncomprehending. Whatever they
were feeling, they were all doomed to an unimaginable fate.
Another building contains an art exhibition depicting some
of the horrors witnessed here, with paintings by Vann Nath, one of the seven
survivors of S-21. He survived because the Khmer Rouge wished him to paint
portraits of Pol Pot, and some of his art showing torture scenes from his
experience at S-21 can be seen here: http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/asian/Vann-Nath.html
At one point, I had to stop walking around the buildings as
it was too overwhelming, but you can only sit outside on the quiet lawn in the
quadrangle for so long before you realise that in the corner, where students
would once have had PE lessons, there is now a gallows, re-engineered into a
torture device. And nearby, there are the graves and memorials of the dead
prisoners found by the Vietnamese. There is no escape while you gather your
thoughts – there is just death and torture everywhere.
We were quite horrified to learn of what happened in
Cambodia during this terrible time – and that fragment of prior historical
knowledge that we did have did not prepare us for what we saw and learned here.
It’s quite overwhelming to think that we don’t learn about this in school alongside
other horrors of the last century – even alongside what happened during the
Holocaust, which is far more widely understood back home.
If you're interested in learning more about the Killing Fields and the
period of Khmer Rouge rule, I did read a very good personal account, though be
warned it is also very harrowing: http://www.amazon.co.uk/First-They-Killed-Father-Remembers/dp/1840185198
There are also several books available that reflect on what happened
and why, trying to explain how within days the Khmer Rouge had fully taken over.
I’ve heard that one of the best is this, and I’ll be buying this as soon as I
have a home address: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pol-Pot-Regime-Genocide-Cambodia/dp/0300144342/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355899660&sr=1-1
It’s quite incredible really, but the Cambodian people are
extremely positive, happy and optimistic about the future. I suppose that it is
a sign of incredible resilience, as for many people this period remains within
living memory. Of course, so many people died during this time that the
population is notably young, so maybe they are seeking to define the qualities
of their time while honouring the past. However this has come to be, it makes
stepping outside of the museum, back into the world, a bit less difficult, as
present-day Cambodians are infectiously joyful.
That night, we consoled ourselves with a red curry and
several beers at Taboo, before a day of work and a bus to Battambang the
following day. Phnom Penh is an incredible, beautiful city – it is worth a
visit to see its successful resurgence as much as to understand its haunting
past. A charming city indeed.
‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ –
Martin Luther King
(thanks for that one, Sarah).
(thanks for that one, Sarah).
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