The Killing Fields

So having known nothing about Cambodia except for the Angelina thing I didn't have the first idea about The Killing fields or anything that had gone on in this country up until the year I was born. But Eve said she wanted to go to the site of the Cambodian genocide and because it meant another ride through the city in a tuk tuk (love it, don't I?) , I was in.

So, there were these guys right who called themselves the Khmer Rouge. They decided, in a kind of Hitler-stylee way, that Cambodia needed to be full of equal, hard working, everyday people - and any sniff of intelligence was seen as a threat to the country. So, they went about detaining and mass murdering anyone who had been educated, anyone who could speak different languages, anyone who was intelligent (at this point in the story Duncan assured me I would have been fine) - they even captured anyone who wore glasses as they thought this was a sign of knowledge (the joke being, if it was a sign of intelligence, they would have just taken their glasses off.)

They detained thousands of people, and children, in hideous conditions. Tortured them. And then murdered them 15k away in a field, often by beating them to death to save money on bullets. So that was the story.

The actual fields were as you'd expect. A grassy area with loads of pits where they'd dump hundreds of bodies, without heads and stuff. And in the middle of the field is a cabinet full of thousands of skulls and shredded clothing. Yes it was grim, but didn't really move me. It's hard to relate to something that is so alien to everything my life has always been.







We then went to S21. The detention centre. An old brick school, where they kept the people and tortured them. For every captive that they murdered they took a mug shot - and pictures of them being tortured. It was hideous. Thousands and thousands of photos. It was sick.











The conditions - brick cells and shackles - were unbelievable (although the women got cells with doors so, although they were being tortured and murdered, they could wash in private - cheers then.) I crumbled. It was really very upsetting.











Needless to say, we got the tuk tuk back in silence and got drunk.