Genocide and the killing fields re-lived, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia 3/2023 (Stop 11)

12-15 March 2023 An estimated 2 million died in Cambodia in 1975-1979 under the Khmer Rouge, about a quarter of the Cambodian population. I was a young man then. It happened in my lifetime, in my neighborhood. A barbarity beyond words, the enormity unimaginable, by Cambodians on Cambodians. I watched the movie The Killing Fields back then; I still see fields of bodies and bones. The howling within earshot and the blood splattered on my clothes. This is not history, not to me.

I have arrived in Phnom Penh, its capital, from Siem Reap. I could not just sail past it.

First, I visited Choeung EK, about 17 km from Phnom Penh. This was a most unusual holiday visit with visitors. Nobody had any mood to greet anyone. The usual joy on their faces turned choked pale. We were greeted with a display of hundreds of skulls, each skull marked to differentiate death inflicted by axe, blade, etc. Our hearts weighed so heavy we were dragging our feet around the killing field. We were pained.

The Killing Field

I then went to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, previously a secondary school, used by the Khmer Rouge as a prison and interrogation center, as Security Prison 21. Barbed wire could be seen wrapping the front of all the floors of a building block to prevent prisoners from jumping to their deaths. Classrooms were partitioned into small cells for incarceration. Beds and instruments of torture were displayed. Hundreds of photos of both victims, men and women, were displayed. Only a handful of them made it out alive.