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Cambodia's Dark History

An account of my visit to the Killing Fields near Phnom Penh

By Edwin FairbrotherPublished 4 years ago 6 min read
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Modern Day Phnom Penh

This is Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, as captured in the sky bar of a fairly decent hotel. This was my second time in Cambodia, but my first visit to the capital Phnom Penh. This city is a bustling, dirty, smelly metropolis full of rubbish, colonial French buildings (and food), and most visibly DEVELOPMENT. I'm sure the skyline looked very different not so long as 5-10 years ago. This is what I'm told by friends who have visited this country often or live here. It's developing rapidly like many East Asian cities, this rapid development can also be seen in the southern coastal town of Sihanoukville, to some criticism. Wealthy Chinese investors have almost bought out the small city, buying land and then developing huge casinos and hotels catering almost exclusively to Chinese tourists. I was told by a friend this is called $0 tourism (or something along those lines), in which Chinese property owners make profit from much of the establishments in the city, meaning Chinese tourists are coming on holiday and spending their Chinese money in Chinese owned establishments, with a limited amount of tourist money going into the local economy.

This is an interesting country, which is ever changing and developing, but it's hard to believe that only a little over 40 years ago in this country there was one of the worst examples of communist dictatorships ever known. The terrible and unimaginable genocide which plagued the country from 1975 till around the end of the decade, conducted by the Khmer Rouge communist regime and largely unknown to the rest of the world. The following paragraphs are a brief recount of my visit to The Killing Fields, officially known as The Choeung Ek Genocidal Center. This is a very harrowing and sobering account, so be prepared to read about arguably one of the worst examples of human suffering on a mass scale in recent history.

Me and two other friends of mine got out of our tuk tuk and entered the site. After paying for our tickets we were given headphones and an audiotape to give us a tour as we walked around. The first part of the audio track was an introduction and a brief history of the Khmer Rouge and the main leader Pol Pot, and how they gained their power and initial control over the country. They didn't want too many educated people in their new dystopian society, so how they secured their initial control was by recruiting uneducated farmers and countrymen from the poor rural areas and brainwashing them into thinking that the educated and wealthier people in cities were out to get them. Doing this gave them an infantry of soldiers to support and uphold their regime, while beginning to conduct the sickening atrocities that were carried out all over the country. This genocidal center (nicknamed The Killing Fields) was one of the main hubs in which thousands of innocent people were sent to be killed and tortured.

As me and my friends walked though the first parts of the tour it described who the Khmer Rouge had bound to their deaths and how they were transported and kept at the site. Most of the people executed were educated city dwellers or poor rural countrymen that had no use to them. As we walked on, the tour became more and more gruesome and upsetting, personal recounts were given of victims and even soldiers as this genocide was in its peak. Mass graves were dotted all over the site, some of which contained hundreds of dead bodies all piled together. One mass grave was said to have contained well over 100 bodies all missing their heads!! Unbelievably this was not quite the most gut-wrenching and shocking one. Probably the most horrifying mass grave we encountered was situated next to a tree. The grave itself contained hundreds of bodies of only women and very young children (some babies) which when discovered were all naked. It was believed that the women were raped before they were murdered and the very young children were killed by soldiers picking them up by their feet and smashing their heads against the tree, before then throwing their bodies into the grave. This was probably the worst part for me and standing their in front of that very tree and grave made it even more real; that 40 years ago those acts of barbarity were carried out in this very spot I was standing on. I felt deeply saddened and upset as I imagined these actions being played out in my head, it made me feel uneasy and if I wanted to I probably could have made myself cry at that point. The rest of the tour guided us through the archaeological sites where more bones and ragged clothes from victims had been found, as well as descriptions of the methods and weapons the Khmer Rouge used to kill their victims and how they somehow managed to keep this a secret from the rest of the world for decades to follow. Apparently the UN still recognised the Khmer Rouge as the governing political party of Cambodia into 1990s, until these acts of brutality were discovered!

Commemorative Stupa - Skulls of thousands of victims

As the Khmer Rouge fell and the regime was dismantled in the 1990s, the main leaders were put before international courts. All of them were found guilty for crimes against humanity and some are still alive serving their sentences in prisons today. The last part of the tour was a large commemorative stupa containing thousands of skulls from the victims found at The Killing Fields (pictured above & below). Each skull had a colour coded dot on it identifying how the victim was killed, and there were more than several ways. The last message on the audio tape was a closing statement, giving examples of other instances of genocide that were committed in recent history. It really brought home actually how many unbelievable acts like this have happened across the world, by different political regimes and societies not just limited to communism. The obvious one is the holocaust in Nazi Germany, but genocides have also occurred in Russia, China, all over Africa, and not to be forgotten, by the white western colonisers of America toward the indigenous native people of America. It's interesting that this last example of genocide is the one that is held in least regard and prominence by western society, even though the abominations still lead to the same outcomes. I suppose the purpose of this last closing message is to make you realise that genocide can happen anywhere, by anyone and to anyone. When we go on holiday we usually want to enjoy ourselves and have a pleasurable time. Even though visiting this site in no way came under those activities, I think it's very important for people to be aware of. Maybe the more people that are aware of the detail, scope and most importantly effects of genocide the more we can prevent this from happening in the future.

Aftermath of a genocide

The people of this planet should always question authority and never allow themselves to be brainwashed by poisonous ideologies. We are all human beings. My condolences go out to the victims of these sickening actions and their families decades later.

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