Choeung Ek, the Killing Fields

During the last full day in Phnom Penh, another couchsurfer and I took a tuk tuk twenty minutes outside the city to learn about and visit the site of Choeung Ek, better known as the Killing Fields.

Through portable audio devices, the history of Khmer Rouge was explained as we walked past empty green spaces.  Without the history, you might wonder if this area differed from any other.  Most of the evidence of genocide has been erased from sight, but the audio narrator and voices of survivors allowed us to painfully recreate what happened just 35 short years ago.







There are several estimates of the number of victims, but during the Khmer Rouge rule 1975-1979, the tyrant
Pol Pot was responsible for the deaths of roughly 2,000,000 people, through execution, disease or starvation.  The population of Cambodia was 8,000,000, so if you can imagine one out of every four people in your country perishing, you can imagine the severity of this genocide.


From the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, people accused with ties to the former government, banks, religion, education or differing ethnicity were blindfolded and taken by truck to the Killing Fields.  Loud revolutionary music and the drumming hum of a generator were played to drown out the sounds of pain and screaming as new victims arrived at the fields.  Bullets were too expensive, so tools such as hammers, hoes, axes and even sugar palm branches were used to bludgeon people to death.  As the number of prisoners rose, rushed, unspeakable acts of violence were used.  Of the practices detailed on our audio, one of the most disturbing involved The Killing Tree, in which executioners would hold infants and children by their ankles and bash their heads against the tree, before tossing them into a mass grave for women and children.  The rationale for this was to prevent young sons and daughters of victims from growing up and seeking revenge.  It was heartbreaking to stare at this tree while listening to the retelling of this horrific act.

Rising through the ground

Through many years of rainy seasons, the bones and clothing of these victims has started to rise through the earth.  As my friend and I carefully walked on paths around the mass graves, we saw shreds of cloth and bone sticking out of the ground.

The skulls, housed for viewing in the stupa

At the end of the tour, our audio led us to the commemorative stupa, which held the skulls, bones and clothing of victims of Choeung Ek.  They separated them by gender and age.  I looked at the skulls individually, trying to imagine each life lost.  Today, people around the world visit this site and dedicate colorful bracelets to the mass grave fences to honor the memory of so many lives taken.  The end of the audio tour was a chilling warning to never underestimate the possibility of genocide happening again to your country.  "It could never happen to ________" is a dangerous and sadly, inaccurate statement.