This is my day to visit the 'Killing Fields'. I meet up with my tuk tuk & driver for the 14 km drive south west out of Phnom Penh, through some very industrial areas jammed with metal fabrication and motor cycle repair shops operated out on the road, in front of the businesses. Just as the city begins to thin out and the landscape gradually becomes semi-rural, we arrive after a 45 minute journey at the Cambodian Nation Museum of the Genocide. I was reminded of visits to concentration camps in Europe where the atmosphere was hushed, shocked and respectful. One cannot visit Cambodia without visiting this shrine to mans' inhumanity. Very few of the flimsy tropical buildings that were the back-drop to the millions of mass murders exist today and have been replaced with explanatory reading boards explaining the happenings at a particular location in the "Fields". If interested, here is the Wikipedia link to the "Killing Fields"
Killing Fields. Immediately after the liberation of the camp in 1979 by the Vietnamese army, the surface remnants were cleaned up and human remains prepared for storage. Due to the unstable nature of the rain soaked tropical soil bones, teeth and especially clothing remnants continues to surface at the genocide location, visitors however, are specifically requested not to touch or remove any remains.
Almost as frightening as the mass murder dimension of the atrocities, was the actual implementation by Pol Pot and his Khymer Rouge government of their plans to drive society literally back to the stone age, so as to achieve a 'pure' communistic society within a Cambodia totally closed to the world. Money and the banking system were closed down, schools and hospitals bulldozed, educated people were declared to be traitors and killed, even wearing eyeglasses was an indication of improper thinking and the wearer marked for early execution. The killing of babies was explained by Pol Pot along the lines that to kill grass, one also has to tear out the roots!
The site of the 'Killing Fields' were part of a network of locations where upto 2 1/2 million people were brutally murdered, is curiously peaceful amongst the tall trees gently swaying in the tropical breeze.
Of interest is the fact that Pol Pot and his murderous regime were recognized by western countries, including the US, UK, France & Germany as the legitimate government of Cambodia, complete with a seat at the United Nations for nearly 20 years AFTER its de facto collapse!
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| The Killing Fields so--- peaceful now...... |
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| The lake was a burial pit for thousands..... |
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| No words needed..... |
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