The Killing Fields

A shelter built to protect a mass grave

One of the most striking elements of travelling around Cambodia is seeing the disproportionate amount of young people that make up the country’s 15 million population.  Nearly 65% of Cambodians are under the age of 35 as the Killing Fields claimed the lives of nearly 1 in 4 Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.  The devastation caused by the Khmer Rouge is still very raw across the country and it took until 2007 for the first leader of the regime to be imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.  Only 5 people who committed genocide have ever faced trial for the atrocities committed.  The leader, Pol Pot, died under house arrest surrounded by his family in 1998 having been denounced by the remaining members of the Khmer Rouge a year before for crimes against humanity.  Even now the Prime Minister Hun Sen is a former Khmer Rouge member who initially came to power after a bloody coup in 1998 and reinforced his position by dubious elections that took place in 2013.  Visiting the Killing Fields just outside of Phenom Pen and S-21, a high school converted into a torture chamber was one of the most harrowing places I have experienced and somewhere that I will never forget.

After a military coup overthrew Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970 his support for the previously marginalised communists in the countryside of Cambodia gave the group legitimacy.   The Khmer Rouge swept to power in April 1975 following a long civil war, helped by the increasing poverty and misery brought by American bombing of the country during the Vietnam War and the military government of Cambodia permitting the Khmers historical enemy, the Vietnamese, to hide in rural Cambodia.  Pol Pot and his supporters were French educated ‘Marxists’ and gained support with their commitment to maintaining Khmer independence that they felt was threatened by the Paris Peace Accords that ended the war in Vietnam.  Wanting to remove all foreign influence in the country from economic support to the perceived cultural degradation of the Khmer they tried to take the country back to the dark ages, forcibly evacuating the cities to create a new agrarian utopia with no banks, religion of modern technology and restarting Cambodia in ‘’Year Zero’’.  He believed that only then could the Khmer people be purified and their people strong enough to fight for their sovereignty.

The memorial housing 8000 skulls at
the Killing Fields

The ‘new people’ from the cities were moved to live with the ‘old people’ of the countryside to increase agricultural production and to be monitored for any signs of opposition to the new regime.  Influenced by the ‘success’ of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution they hoped to be the first truly communist nation without ‘’wasting time of the intermediate steps’’. Collectivised farming and dinning was introduced under conditions similar to those imposed by seventeenth century slavery with people working up to 15 hour days with little food and those not working hard enough sent for ‘re-education’.  They were never seen again.  After nearly 4 years of the regimes purges and cold blooded murder of their citizens the constant skirmishes along the Vietnamese border finally provoked a full Vietnamese invasion which liberated the nation from the Cambodian genocide.  Due to the Cold War and the hatred of Communist Vietnam the U.N continued to acknowledge a former lieutenant to Pol Pot as the representative of Cambodia and failed to recognise the new government until 1993!  With American and British support a civil war ensued against the Vietnamese supported government until the UN finally stepped in during the 1990s.  Vietnam untangled itself from the Cambodian government and peaceful elections were held which has led to the start of an economic and demographic recovery.

 'The Killing Tree'

Walking around the Genocide Museum at Cheung Ek, the killing field 15 km south of Phenom Pen where some 20,000 people were brutally murdered was a numbing experience.  A memorial stupa houses some 8000 skulls in the centre of the site although many of the mass graves have not been excavated.  Clothes and bones still rise to the surface as the bodies decay and are collected every month by workers.  All traces of the wooden buildings that were on the site have long since been removed.  The people were murdered not with bullets but with traditional tools such as hoes and palm oil knives and the last thing the victims heard would have been songs promoting the revolution that blared across the area to drown out the screams.  The most chilling part of the visit was seeing 'The Killing Tree’, used by the soldiers to hit young children and baby’s heads off of before they were unceremoniously flung in the graves. Quite how anybody does this is unfathomable and shows the brutality and cruelty of the Khmer Rouge to the full.  Khmer Rouges sayings such as ‘To destroy you is no loss, to preserve you is no gain’ and ‘Better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake’ highlight the madness of Pol Pot.

Block C in S-21

On the way back to Phenom Pen we stopped at Tol Sleng prison, known as Security Prison 21 (S-21) where nearly 17,000 inmates were tortured before being sent to Cheung Ek.  Similar to the Nazis, detailed records were kept of each prisoner and their ‘confession’ and photos of the victims are displayed around some of the cells.  Bloody handprints streaked down the walls have been left and the barbwire to stop people committing suicide from the top levels is in front of block C.   As during the walk around the Killing Fields an audio guide describes the atrocities that took place.  One of the most moving moments on the guide is by the brother of Kerry Hamill, a New Zealander who whilst sailing with two friends strayed into Cambodian waters to shelter from a storm.  One of the party was killed on the boat whilst Kerry and Englishmen John Dewhurst were taken to S-21 where they were tortured and killed.  Kerry’s brother was at the trial of the prison leader known as Brother Duch and described how even under torture Kerry had got a message home to his family by naming fellow CIA conspirators as Mr Magoo, Colonel Sanders and E.Tar in reference to his mother Ester.  The ridiculous of the ‘confession’ only adds to the illogical murder of those taken to S-21.

The rules on the wall of S-21

Having not known a great deal about the Cambodian Genocide before I came the scale of the crimes are comparable to the events in Rwanda and Nazi Germany.   It feels that the country is still finding it hard to close the door on the barbaric chapter of its history.  As beautiful as the landscape is around the sadness in the cities is overwhelming.  In the space of 100 metres walking through Phnom Pen a man high on opium was crying in the street, children were making glass crack pipes and prostitutes loitered outside of bars.  Despite the plight of so many people however there are clearly green shoots of recovery emerging from Phonon Pen.  On our final evening we took a stroll around the central area and along the river where a new path is being built and was used by locals to enjoy their evenings. Groups of young people of all ages were out  dancing to various types of music and new investment was evident with a few modern high rise buildings and a few offices for big business.  Only time, help and education will allow the country to move forward and it seems to be painstakingly slow for the people of Cambodia.