The main draw to Phnom Pehn was the infamous S21 prison used by the Kyhmer Rouge and the killing fields. We decided that we would do the both in one day as we knew the horrors that we would be shown would be heart breaking and gut wrenching.
It is hard to describe the feelings that we both felt from this day and still carry with us now when we speak about it or look a the pictures. In our first 30 mins at S21, we didnt say a word to each other, there was no way we could articulate what we saw. The following day it still hung with us, an ever present discomfort...
Between 1975 and 1979, 3 years eight months and twenty days the khymer rouge attempted to create a agrarian society. The purest form of communism. No ownership, no individuality, no education, remove all influences of foreigners from the land. Entire cities where uprooted and sent into the countryside to work 12 - 15 hours a day on rice plantation. imagine London, Manchester, Birmingham, completed cleared of everyone and moved into the country! Where the only food was rice porridge or rice soup (soup so thin that you could count the amount of rice grains on 2 hands)m to survive they had to eat insects, tree roots, leaves and anything they could find. The young, old, infirm it didnt matter all worked. Those from previous government, the educated (if you wore glasses you where considered educated), foreign ties, diplomats and as the regime continued and got more paranoid the families of these people, and in the end fellow Kyhmer Rouge soldiers for perceived acts of terrorism. Over this time more then 2 million people starved, tortured and executed. Thats the equivalent of 1/4 of the population. Can you imagine 1 in 4 people you know being killed... And all this happened maybe in your lifetime, or your parents... Anyone we saw over the age of 40 had lived through this...
Below the pictures give you a small measure of the horrors
The rooms used to torture the prisoners. The pictures on the wall where how the Vietnamese found the cells when the liberated it.
One small selection of the pictures of those who where executed here. Like the Nazi's before them they kept merticulas record of what they did
Barb wire was put up to stop prisoners from committing suicide
The cells the prisoners spent most of there time. The ammo box was used for there human waste.
These pictures where done by one of the only 7 survives of prison S21
Tools used to torture and execute as bullets where to expensive.
The killing fields.
As you walk around the site, along the footpaths fragments of bone and clothing get raised to the top after rains.
This is one of the most haunting sites at the killing fields. It was named the Killing tree, this is where Khymer Rouge soldiers swang babies onto...
This stunning tree, was used to hand speakers from that would drown the screams of the dieing out with loud nationalist music.
I would highly recommend if you would want to learn more about this horrific time the film "The Killing Fields" and the book written by a survivor "First they killed my Father"
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