The Killing Fields of Cambodia

It's gut-wrenching. It's horrific. It's called the killing fields of Cambodia and it happened just 40 years ago. You might not want to read this. It was during the reign of Pol Pot and his extermination of millions of his people starting in 1975. Just a week after the U.S. pulled out of neighbouring Vietnam, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian government and started his genocide:

                                  

It's incomprehensible because Pol Pot was an educated man. But his views on politics and controlling the population were fanatical. He wanted to establish the most advanced and purist form of communism in the world and for the next 4 years he killed over 25% of his people (some estimate 3.3 million people) to cleanse the population. He killed doctors, teachers, business people and their children. He killed anyone considered 'smart' because it was easier to control the nation that way. 

He started with creating over 160 'interrogation centres' where he imprisoned and tortured his people to find and eliminate the unwanted: 

This is the Tuol Sleng Interrogation Centre. It was initially a high school and he made the classrooms detention cells. Note the sign put outside the cells with instructions that the prisoners had to follow:

After the people were 'interrogated' (severely tortured), they would be moved by truck to genocidal centres (killing fields) and killed. There were 360 of these set up throughout Cambodia. They were killed manually with cart axles, hoes, axes, iron bars or just slitting throats. They were then dumped in fields and buried.

We visited one of the killing fields just outside Phnom Penh. Today, it is the site of a Buddhist memorial to the victims:

Inside this memorial are over 5,000 skulls of people that were eliminated:

A real gut-wrencher on this site is a tree they used to kill kids:

In what is the most barbaric practice I have ever heard, they would grab the children by the ankles and smash them to death against the tree. Words cannot describe the utter horror that the Khmer Rouge inflicted on their people.

There is one poignant picture that was taken the day after the fall of the Khmer Rouge at Tuol Sleng. When the liberation army came in, at the back of the detention centre amongst the clothes of people left before going to the killing fields were 4 kids:

The mothers apparently hid them before being taken away. Small miracles. The two boys, now in their 40s regularly come by and talk to visitors. There were also 9 adults alive and shackled- 2 are still living. We met one of them, Mr. Chum Mey, who was kept alive because he could fix things in the detention centre during those 4 years. Another small miracle.