The Killing Fields

I am ashamed to say that until we had a brutally enlightening conservation with a very friendly American back in February in his rental car in Christchurch, New Zealand, I had no idea that the people of Cambodia had such a horrific and devastating history, the worst events of which happened only in the decade before I was born. I’d heard vaguely of Pol Pot and knew that his name often appeared in sentences containing the likes of Mugabe, Amin and Hitler, but I couldn’t have told you where he came from or why his name was often included in such sinister company.

So I couldn’t have told you that between 1975 and 1979 Pol Pot was the head of a bitter and merciless regime known as the Khmer Rouge who ruled over Cambodia.

I couldn’t have told you that this “Khmer Rouge” enforced a strict Communist state in search of a Utopian ideal which included the eradication of anyone of intellect, with education, with Western ideals, city people who were affected by ‘Americanism’ or anyone remotely at risk of being against his regime, in exchange for a peasant workforce who he named the ‘Old People of Cambodia’ who work for the collective wealth of the people.

I couldn’t have told you that they were responsible for killing approximately 2 million innocent Cambodians (from a population of 8 million) in a period of only 4 years.

I couldn’t have told you that millions of Cambodians were forced out of the cities, separated from their families and made to work in horrific labour camps, often working over 12 hour days in the direct sun with only a few spoonfuls of rice as sustenance.

It baffles me that this seems to be such a little-known and little-understood smear on the history of human beings, and how the leaders and perpetrators of this regime have still to this day, not had to answer to their sins and stand trial, let alone pay for them.

Bro and I have just finished reading a book called ‘Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land’ which chronicles the history of the Cambodian (Khmer) people from 1970 – 1998 when the book was written. It sounds like the Cambodian people have been monumentally let down by each of their respective Governments, from the International Community, including drastic failings by the UN to rebuild a devastated people after the toppling of Pol Pot’s regime in 1979 and unfortunately by themselves. Due to the International Community and vested Nations’ inclination to prioritise their own objectives over the interests of Cambodian people, they seem to have been let down time and time again. The Khmer Rouge remained in power for a decade even after Pol Pot’s regime was toppled by Vietnam in 1979, and to this day only 1 of the leaders of the regime has successfully been convicted for his crimes and this only after a long-drawn out trial which concluded in 2011, and even then he only received 35 years imprisonment for crimes of genocide. Yes that’s 35 years. Thousands of Khmer Rouge members simply slid back into society never to be made to answer to their crimes. 

The current Prime Minister Hun Sen is even an ex-Khmer Rouge Guerrilla (who defected in 1977).

So it was with some feeling of trepidation that Brodie, Alycia, Jeremy and I took a trip to what are known as The Killing Fields, a few kilometres outside Phnom Penh, something that I think any visitor to this scarred city must do. Choeung Ek, as it is called, is the final resting place of 8,895 innocent Cambodians. Most were brought here after being forced to ‘confess’ to being an enemy of the state. Of course almost all of those killed here were perfectly innocent citizens, who simply for some reason posed a threat to the Khmer Rouge ideal. A famous Khmer Rouge maxim is "Better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake."  Which may go some way in explaining how they managed to wipe out a quarter of their population in less than 4 years.

Another Khmer Rouge saying is “If you want to remove the grass you have to kill the roots”…and it is because of this second statement that thousands of women, children and babies were amongst those victims of Choeung Ek. Prisoners weren’t detained there, they were simply driven in in busloads each evening, processed, and walked out one by one to the freshest mass graves, and one by one killed by which ever means possible (bullets were scarce and valuable so many different brutal methods were employed). Then their bodies were dragged into the grave. Over 50 mass graves were discovered here. The site is surreally peaceful and is very sensitively put together. You are given headphones as you walk in, and a softly-spoken Cambodian guides you gently around the site amid the dappled shade of trees. The same trees that watched the brutal massacre of those thousands of innocents a mere 40 years ago.

After Pol Pot’s regime was toppled, the site was discovered and Cambodians went about the gruelling business of retrieving the many remains of the bodies, and as such, the mass graves are now only evident by deep depressions in the ground. However, as you walk around, you begin to notice fabric peaking through the soil beneath your feet. Even though most of the bodies were recovered, many remain buried, and during the rainy season the water table rises, and clothes and even bones start to emerge at the surface. We didn’t feel it was appropriate to wonder around wielding cameras, so this is the only photo we took. You can see some fabric emerging through the soil.

Feeling rather emotionally drained, we then took the taxi to S21. This is a former school in the Capital which was taken over during the regime and used as a detainment camp and torture prison. 

Again thousands of innocent Cambodians were brought here and made to confess to all sorts of crimes under extreme torture and duress. 15,000 people are believed to have lost their lives here, and only 6 people are known to have survived. Visiting this prison is an extremely harrowing experience. The KR were extremely diligent at documenting their crimes, and the photographs of thousands of their victims can be seen on the wall. Many of them taken on arrival, many of them taken after death. 

I know this has been a very heavy post, but I make no apology for it as this an incredibly important event in recent history and is a harrowing story which I feel needs to be shared. The Cambodian people has suffered so very deeply, and the shadow from these events still lingers over this tattered country. It makes you marvel even more over this gentle people’s admiral resilience, and over that well known Khmer smile.