We visited this place on the same day as Toul Sleng. It was the last stop on our Day of Culture. The Killing Fields were numerous sites where people were killed & buried under the Khmer Rouge. Below is the stupa filled with the skulls of the victims in this field. They ask that you would take off your shoes & have a moment of silence in rememberance of the victims before you stepped into it.
There were a couple trees in the field that were so beautiful, yet used for the cruelest of intentions.
They did there best to conceal what they were doing to the people that were being dropped off at this field. At least 200,000 people were executed under the KR (not counting the vicitms of disease & starvation).
I’m sorry, some of these pictures are very detailed & hard to look at…
People were sent to Tuol Sleng & the fields if the government saw them as a threat. Sometimes after two warnings–or no warnings at all–they were sent for “re-education”. During “re-education” they were encouraged to confess any “pre-revolutionary lifestyles & crimes.” This usually meant some kind of free-market activity, having contact with a foreign source, such as a US missionary, or international relief or governement agency, or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all.
This is what a mass grave looks like. Typically a deep, not too wide, ditch.
Since they wanted to save on ammunition & cut-down on the noise, the executions were often carried out using hammers, axe handles, spades, or sharpened bamboo sticks. Some had to dig there own graves..their weakness often meant that they were not able to dig very deep.
Next year will mark 30 years since this all happend.
Below, is a picture of a sign from the ditch a couple pictures above this one.
The clothing of the victims was stored below the Stupa.
That is what I saw. It is not a place I would want to go back to, but a necessary site to see. I still have a hard time believing these things happend.
(If your are in Seattle, you can go to The Killing Fields Museum. A survivor of the genocide founded one there.)
