A sobering day in Cambodia’s killing fields

Location:
Cambodia

Killing Fields Cambodia

By Naomi Hamersley

I woke up one morning knowing that it was time to pay a visit to two of the more popular tourist destinations in Phnom Penh: the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. I had spent the last week wandering the streets of Phnom Penh, trying to get myself into the right frame of mind. As someone who escaped Cambodia with my twin sister in 1975, I had to see for myself the evil of the Khmer Rouge. I knew it would be an ugly day, but I was unprepared by how emotional the experience would be.

Prior to 1975, Tuol Sleng was a high school. When the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh, they turned it into a prison (S21), where over three years, some 20,000 men, women and children were imprisoned and tortured at Tuol Sleng, before being transported to the Choeung Ek to be executed. When the prison was liberated by the Vietnamese in 1979, there were only seven survivors.

As I pulled up alongside the wall of Tuol Sleng and saw the top of the buildings, a lump formed in my throat and my stomach began to churn. I entered through the front gates and had to immediately sit down to compose myself. The small courtyard was eerily quiet and the three blocks of former classrooms looked like ordinary school buildings. But the air felt heavy with the memories of the 20,000 Cambodians who suffered within these walls.

I watched the Cambodians who worked at the museum and wondered how they could look so calm, almost blasé about what this place represented. Later in the day, as I chatted with my tuk-tuk driver about the Khmer Rouge, I realized that the atrocities of this evil regime are never really that far from the surface.

The exhibits within the museum were gutrenching. Interrogation rooms fill one floor of a building and have pretty much been left as they were found with metal beds and shackles still standing in the middle of the room. Photos on the wall depict in graphic detail the corpses that the Vietnamese found in each room.

The instruments of torture are still there -- knives, hoes, hammers, wooden beams that they used to pull people's arms out of their sockets, the dunking chamber where they half-drowned the prisoners -- as well as several graphic paintings illustrating how these instruments were used on the victims.

Another section of the museum houses hundreds of prisoner photos - the Khmer Rouge were meticulous in their record keeping and have names, numbers, biographies and "crimes" documented for each person they executed. Row after row, men, women and children stare back at you. Some are visibly frightened, others are defiant, while some just look numb, resigned to the horrific fate awaiting them. Especially heartbreaking were the photos of the children -- how twisted do you have to be to hate these innocent victims, to view them as enemies?

There were also exhibits that showed old photos and surviving family members recounting the stories of the victims in Tuol Sleng. Their stories were achingly similar to ours -- missing parents, dead brothers and sisters, pleas for news about loved ones. I had never thought of ourselves as victims of the Khmer Rouge because my twin sister and I left before they came into Phnom Penh and we had such an idyllic childhood in Canada. But it suddenly occurred to me that just like the families depicted in this exhibit, the Khmer Rouge was responsible for tearing our Cambodian family apart.

I left the museum with a heavy heart and headed to the Killing Fields, 16 km outside of Phnom Penh. This was an extermination camp where prisoners from Tuol Sleng prison were transported here to be executed. Throughout this former orchard, you can still see vivid reminders of the atrocities committed here; mass graves where the corpses were unearthed in the 1980s, bits of clothing and bone lay undisturbed on the grounds.

Right in the centre of the Killing Fields is a memorial stupa with 8,000 skulls set on rows of shelves. A sign on the stupa asks visitors, "Would you please kindly show your respect to many million people who were killed under the genocidal Pol Pot regime".... so I decided to light some incense. As I knelt to place the incense in the pot, I was overwhelmed with emotion -- I felt like I had finally come home to honour my Cambodian family.

Later, I sat down to have lunch with my tuk-tuk driver -- he was also born in 1975 in the countryside. "Pol Pot regime was very bad" he said, shaking his head, "Cambodians killing Cambodians." I felt from him a sense of national shame that Cambodians were capable of doing this to themselves. "You were very lucky you left when you did," he said, "You survived."

"You did too," I replied. We smiled at each other and by the end of the day, my tuk-tuk driver (Polo) and I became friends.

Further Information

Travel tips: If you are unfamiliar with Cambodian history or the Khmer Rouge, it may be worthwhile to hire a guide so they can give you some context for what you are seeing.

Must see/do at this place: Prepare yourself for an emotional day - it will not be an easy day but absolutely necessary to understanding the Cambodian culture.

You should avoid here: Be respectful and avoid being too loud -- Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields are popular tourist destinations but they are also memorials to the victims of the Khmer Rouge.