Difficult to comprehend until you actually arrive and difficult to put into words the eerie feeling it gives you to visit this awful site. The Killing Fields is the place where thousands were killed before being buried in mass graves they’d dug themselves, most having previously been tortured or, at least imprisoned and starved in Tuol Sleng.
When Pol Pot came to power in 1975, everybody was ordered out of Phnom Pehn and into the countryside to work as labourers in the fields. There were to be no more doctors, dentists, teachers, monks….families were separated as the woman were taken off to work one set of fields and the men another. And then, in the middle of the night, soldiers would come and order whole families into trucks and drive them off into the night. They would be driven to a school, previously called Tuol Svay Prey High School, which had now become the main Khmer Rouge torture and interrogation centre. Upon arrival here, each person would have their photo taken and then, depending on their “crime”, they would be thrown into either a tiny cell where they were shackled to the floor or sent upstairs to one of the large rooms and shackled in a long line of people. Under intense interrogation or simply from starvation, many people would die here and their bodies would be thrown into a mass grave behind the school. Those that survived would be put into a truck and driven to Cheung Ek where death awaited them.
We visited these two places in the wrong order really, but either way, it’s not a pleasant day out. First stop, the Killing Fields. This is literally just a field which is full of mass graves, 89 of which have been dug up revealing the remains of almost 9,000 people. The skulls of these people have now been put into a monument at the entrance to the field as a reminder of the atrocities Pol Pot and his henchmen wreaked on this country. By the end of his four year reign of terror, 2,000,000 of the total 7,000,000 population of Cambodia were killed.
As you walk around the grounds, you see deep holes which were the graves, a tree which was used to throw babies at until they died, another tree where a radio was hung with loud music playing to drown out the screams of those being tortured, a glass case full of bones and another full of teeth, a site where the bodies of soldiers had been dug up, all minus their heads, which have never been found. And if you look down, you’ll notice bits of bone stuck in the soil beneath your feet. Bits of material poke through the ground – the clothing of another victim who has not yet been dug up. Look closely at the skulls in the memorial stupa and notice that some have axe wounds, some bullet wounds and some just have huge bits missing. After the former in-mates of Tuol Sleng have dug their own grave and then been killed and thrown into it, chemicals where poured over them lest some were still alive.
The location of the Killing Fields is actually really peaceful with a lake running by the side of it. Hard to imagine the atrocities which went on here.
There are 150 more of these killing fields scattered throughout the countryside which have not yet been exhumed and which will doubtless yield countless more bodies.
Although the children don’t seem too phased by their visit here, we figure they’ve seen and heard enough about death for a while, especially since Harley is asking when we will die and telling us that he’s scared he’s going to die and fall on the floor where no one will notice and will step on him. There’s also been much talk about wars and, for the first time, he’s starting to “shoot” Ruby, so we decide to take it in turns to visit the museum and Will’s off first, leaving me with them in the café opposite to order some lunch.
He’s soon back and I’m hoping my lunch won’t be coming back up as I step into the old school. It’s a very weird site because it’s still laid out like a school, with the classrooms in 3 blocks, facing onto the school yard. Except inside are all the signs of torture as they were previously used, alongside large photos of each victim as they arrived here. Then pictures of the torture that used to take place here, painted by a former inmate. Of the thousands of people who found themselves here, only 7 escaped with their lives as they were sculptors by profession and could turn out countless busts of Pol Pot. And just one person managed to escape, although there are no details anywhere of what happened to him or how he managed to do it. I’m not quite as upset by this sight as I was by the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh, but at least I’m not as blasé at the girl coming down the stairs, saying to her boyfriend “I just wanna see bullets and stuff”. Touching.
A few days later, we’re having lunch at Pacharan, with a great view of the boat racing on the river opposite and get chatting to a 50-year old Khmer (Cambodian) man who now lives in Melbourne. The youngest of 7 children, he was fortunate enough to have been sent to Australia by his father just a few months before Pol Pot came to power. His mother and father were separated and she used to come during the day to visit the kids and then go away again. He has no idea what has happened to his father or any of his brothers, although he heard that 2 of his brothers may have died of starvation. His mother survived only because she was “employed” to look after the children of the Khmer Rouge. It’s an all too familiar story.
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