On one of our first days in Cambodia, we toured Phonom Penh (the capital city and also where I’ll be living for the next few weeks.) What we saw made me realize what a sad, terrifying past this country has had and why it’s in the condition it’s in now.
Our first stop on the tour was the Tuol Sleng Museum which was originally a high school until the 1970s when the Khmer Rouge converted it into a torture prison called S-21. Over 10,000 men, women and children were imprisioned and tortured in this place. The Khmer Rouge also imprisioned entire families, including new born infants. Only 7 of the original 10,000 prisioners survived! Black and white photographs that the Khmer Rouge took of victims were displayed, rusted chains and weapons of torture were scattered about and blood stained floors of torture rooms filled the buildings.
(The following photographs are pictures that the Khmer Rouge took to keep a record of who they killed.)
Prisioners from Tuol Sleng S-21 were killed and buried at Cheung Elk, the mass burial grounds. Over 9,000 men, women and children were found buried at this site. (This place was also referred to as the Killing Fields.)
As I walked through the Killing Fields it became disturbingly clear that this genocide happened only a few years ago. Human bones rose slightly above the surface of the dirt, teeth and dislodged bones were put in a glass container and as visitors discovered more, they simply put them on the top of the container to be added with the others. Clothes lined the ditches and trees where people were killed and human skulls (some with visible bullet holes) stacked one after another to fill the memorial building.
What I don’t understand is how something so horrific could happen so recently. It makes me sick to even think about the lack of humanity. And if a genocide could happen after WW2, what’s stopping it from happening again? How can educated people not even know that events like this are happening? I had no idea that this even happened here. No idea! How is something so terrifying kept a secret?
After seeing this, I now understand why Cambodia seems decades behind the times of even other undelevolped countries. The fighting in Cambodia last from 1970 until 1998 – less than 10 years ago!
