Cambodia sad past

My day in Phnom Penh focused on learning more about Khmer Rouge and the history of Cambodia.

My first stop was Choeung Ek, or the killing fields!

So, the killing fields is one of many sites in Cambodia where people were killed and buried during the regime of Khmer Rouge. Khmer Rouge pretty much killed anybody that they suspected had connections with the former government, foreign government as well as professionals or intellectuals. The tour included a great audio guide that summed up the story of the killing field and Pol Pot's regime. Pol Pot demanded everybody with an education to be killed, if you used glasses you were killed because that meant that you were smart or educated! Schools were closed and everybody was moved to the country site to work on the fields.

All the buildings are now gone but they have built around the mass graves and have put signs of where different buildings were to give us an idea of how  Choeung Ek worked.

Also, at the entrance they recently constructed a commemorative stupa (Buddhist place to keep one's remains) filled with the skulls of the victims. The stupa has 17 tiers of bones in it, separated by different types: skulls, legs, arms, etc. It is said that up to 350 people were killed in any given day. 

People were not only killed, they were tortured! And because bullets were expensive  they used axes, machetes, bamboo poles, and hammers among many other tools to kill people!

I got really sad when on the tape the guy said "Cambodians killing Cambodians"... I just don't understand how a group of man in power can be so cruel and selfish as to make their own people kill one another. After listening to much of the guide I don't only believe that Pol Pot was a narcissist, but also paranoid (at the end he was killing people who worked for him because he thought they were traitors) and probably a psychopath! Jaja

During the tour some of Pol Pot's quotes gave me chills:

"To keep you is not gain, to lose you is no loss"

"Better to kill an innocent by mistake than to spare an enemy by mistake"

And the one that really got to me was his excuse of why he was killing children: "To dig up the grass, one must remove even the roots!" He believed that all family members needed to be killed so nobody would seek revenge!!!!!!!!!!

The most horrifying part of all these is that people would smash babies against a tree until dead and then dumped them in a massive pit with other bodies... Horrible horrible horrible! It really makes you cry and it makes me mad that there are these kind of people out there... He was no different than Hitler or than any other man who believes he is better than another human being and that somehow believes that they have the power to put an end to somebody's life just because they are a threat to them or to their race! This is stupid... And I'm angry!

I can't believe that more than 20,000 Cambodians were killed here! And  Choeung Ek is only one out of more than 300 killing fields throughout Cambodia!

I finished the tour with a horrible stomachache, feeling nauseous, and wanting to throw up! I think it was just too anxiety provoking for me!

Oh... The bracelets that you see in the picture are friendship bracelets that visitors leave; it is to pay respect to the people who died in the fields.

Next Stop... Tull Sleng Genocide Museum or Security Prison 21 or S-21

So this is a school turned into a prison! The classrooms converted into torture chambers or prison cells. The whole place was covered in barbed wire and all windows were covered with iron bars to prevent escape. 

Since Pol Pot did not believe in education he closed all the schools in Cambodia and evacuated the city for people to go work on the fields! 

S-21 was one of the many places were people were tortured before they were sent to be killed in one of the many killing field (that is if they survived their horrific torture)... Simply horrible!

Here they would hand people from their feet and question them, as part of their torture they would lower them down and stick their head into the pots below which contained chemical substances... Eek

More bones :-(