The Killing Fields of Cheung Ek & S21

Trip Start Mar 02, 2009
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Trip End Aug 23, 2010


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Flag of Cambodia  , Phnum Pénh,
Monday, August 9, 2010

The Khmer Rouge swept to power in 1975 and immediately instigated the most radical communist reform ever attempted. The thinking was that all modern influence is negative, and that Cambodia would be better off as an isolated, self-sufficient, agricultural society. To achieve this, they forced the entire urban population to work on rural communal farms. Within a week, the cities of Cambodia were emptied. To maintain power, and to prevent an uprising, all those not fitting with this strategy were systematically killed. This included; political opponents, those who worked for the previous government, anyone who was not ethnic Khmer, those who refused to abandon their religious views, and the educated. They even killed people who wore glasses, as this was seen as a sign of intelligence and therefore a threat to the regime. Ironically, the Khmer Rouge leadership were highly educated alumni from French Universities.

Although an exact figure is impossible to ascertain, directly or indirectly (through starvation and disease), the Khmer Rouge is thought to be responsible for up to 2 million deaths, about 20% of the Cambodian population
Front Gates of Tuol Sleng (S21) Genocide Museum
Front Gates of Tuol Sleng (S21) Genocide Museum
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I went to see the S21 genocide museum, an innocent-looking former school converted into a torture camp by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. Nearly all of the victims of S21 ended up in mass graves at the infamous Killing Fields.

It was really harrowing stuff. The only time I've experienced those emotions was at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. I'd watched Pilger's documentaries, and read "First They Killed My Father", but neither prepared me for visiting these places. As I wandered round the Killing Fields, an otherwise scenic former orchard, I felt sick as a ball of anxiety welled up in the pit of my stomach. Reading words on a page, and watching film on a screen didn't come close to the horror of it; seeing dips in the ground where mass graves have sunk in, seeing the clothes, bones fragments, and teeth protrude to the surface after successive rains, and seeing the thousands of skulls encased in the newly built Buddhist shrine.

Pol Pot died a peaceful death in 1998, without ever going on trial for his crimes.

Why?
A display at S21 reads; "Why has it taken over thirty years to bring the former leaders of the Khmer Rouge to justice? One of the initial reasons was geopolitics
Victims of the Khmer Rouge...
Victims of the Khmer Rouge...
. Because the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was supported by Vietnam, an unlikely scenario developed in which China (the main backer of the Khmer Rouge), Thailand (fearful of the Vietnamese troops massed near its borders), and the United States (embroiled in the Cold War and still strung by defeat in Vietnam) and its allies conspired not just to isolate the PRK regime, but to help the Khmer Rouge, who had been routed, regrouped, and rearmed (Etcheson, 2005; Fawthrop and Jarvis 2004). Remarkably, in 1979 the UN General Assembly voted to give this genocidal regime Cambodia's seat at the UN."

...A UN seat that the Khmer Rouge held until 1991, essentially meaning the murders represented their victims for 12 years.

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