The Killing Fields

The drive out to the fields of Choeung Ek is along dusty tarmac roads full of holes. On the way you pass both slums where the poorest in Cambodian society reside alongside the gleaming new Cambodia including the shiny Khmer Brewery that makes Cambodia Beer. In fact you can see the brewery in the distance from the fields of Choeung Ek. They are better known as the most infamous of the 300 or so "Killing Fields", and have yielded up the remains of  thousands of victims of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rogue. In just over 3 years, when civility took leave of its senses, he decimated the country leaving a quarter of the citizens dead. The sheer control over the country and the complete madness and evil he inspired is illustrated by his troops, who were able to clear Phnom Penh of its 2m inhabitants within a few days of victory in the civil war in 1975.


Most of those who were systematically killed at Choeung Ek, were political prisoners who had been incarcerated and tortured at S-21, a former school converted by the KR into a prison and torture centre in downtown Phnom Penh. That prison has hundreds of photos of the victims as well as still blood stained tiled floors. To walk around the former prison is still eerie and photos of some of the last 14 killed there at the time of liberation, still shackled to the beds, left nothing to our imagination.


The fields of Choeung Ek, about 15kms away, were used simply to exterminate. Prisoners arrived from S-21 at night and were immediately clubbed and knifed to death as bullets were too expensive. Apart from the intelligentsia, it included a number of KR themselves who had been accused by colleagues of spying or anti-KR thoughts or actions. Like Stalin, Pol Pot got rid of rivals too by declaring them anti-revolutionaries or CIA stooges.


Mass graves containing hundreds of bodies have been unveiled since the downfall of Pol Pot in 1979. There is little left, no original buildings, but rather graves as well as a tall Memorial Stupa which contains the remains of hundreds of the victims. As you walk around accompanied by an excellent audio guide, you can still see bits of bone, teeth and clothing emerging from the ground. This site of pure evilness has been preserved in a simple and powerful way.


Phnom Penh is a bustling large city with a growing skyline. When we arrived at our hotel yesterday, an oasis of calm from the traffic and heat outside, we were confronted with preparations for the Phnom Penh Designers' week (fashion shows are taking place this weekend around the front courtyard of our hotel). The young and the beautiful, both local and ex-pat were present last night, drinking and smoking and flirting. Cambodia, at least for some of its inhabitants, is moving on.....quickly.