The Surprisingly Peaceful Killing Fields

I think one of the most surprising things about the Killing Fields is just how peaceful it seems despite the history of what occurred in this place. There are birds and roosters and ducks walking around making their respective avian noises and there is lush greenery surrounding a lake where there is a kind of dirt track where you can follow the entire circumference of the water. This is why the Khmer Rouge chose such a location for the atrocities carried out between 1975-1979...for the quiet and abandoned location...so no one would hear the screams of the tortured souls that lost their lives here. Close to 30% of the entire Cambodian population was desecrated during the Khmer Rouge regime in which they "arrested" and killed anyone suspected of having any connections with foreign governments and this included basically everyone. Many joined the Khmer Rouge to escape being arrested and killed themselves and their stories are told along side the victims who lost their lives during this time. Pol Pot has been called "the Hitler of Cambodia" just to give you an idea of what was happening during this time...the Killing Fields are basically a series of ditches that were once mass graves where bodies were found and excavated after the Vietnamese conquered the Khmer Rouge in 1979; however, in the time before their demise, the Khmer Rouge managed to torture and kill women, men and children in such horrific ways as ripping babies from their mother's arms smashing their heads against trees, chopping off people's heads or stabbing/shooting them and piling their bodies in mass graves. Some weren't dead at this point so they would sprinkle a kind of burning poison that would cover up any smell and kill those that may have been buried alive. To this day, after a hard rain, bone fragments and clothing from the victims still rise and wash up to the surface...we saw some of these bits with our own eyes while visiting this place. It is very quiet and there are signs up reminding you to not smile or laugh or be loud, which is kind of self explanatory and much like the Holocaust museums, one does not really want to smile or laugh during their visit. There is also a 17-story high memorial building on the site and each level is filled with bones from the victims that were found in these mass graves, separated according to which bone type...i.e. skulls on one level, femurs on the next etc...It is a site to behold, as one does not realize just how high 17 stories is, especially when it is filled with bones. you can even see children and baby bones as well and this is quite chilling. After this, the tuk tuk takes you to the Genocide Museum and this was just as if not more disturbing than the Killing Fields, as this was the secret prison created a few months after the Khmer Rouge won the Civil War that was created to house and torture over 20,000 prisoners and was a converted high school. It was surreal to walk the halls and enter the rooms and torture chambers where so many innocent people lost their lives through horrific events that were caused by the hands of other Cambodians...it wasn't even at the hands of an enemy. The S-21 prison consists of 5 buildings and many of the rooms are filled with rows and rows of black and white pictures of prisoners, all appear to have their hands bound behind their backs and some have terrible wounds and face injuries. There are babies, children, women and men pictured and they all have this look in their eyes, which is hard to explain. It is kind of vacant and in disbelief of what is happening and where they are. There is also this kind of fear of what is coming mixed with a realization of their own mortality...moving and creepy and evokes tears. It made me think about the Holocaust a lot while I was walking through the various buildings room by room, where so much happened and so many were tortured to death. We both could almost not believe that something like this actually happened and the 20,000 pictures that we saw were real people who were living at one time. There is a sign outside the first building with the security regulations listed for all prisoners to follow...look at number 6.

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.

2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.

9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

Wikapedia does a great job of describing the Life of a Prisoner and the Torture and Extermination of the prisoners as well...see below:

Life in the prison

Upon arrival at the prison, prisoners were photographed and required to give detailed autobiographies, beginning with their childhood and ending with their arrest. After that, they were forced to strip to their underwear, and their possessions were confiscated. The prisoners were then taken to their cells. Those taken to the smaller cells were shackled to the walls or the concrete floor. Those who were held in the large mass cells were collectively shackled to long pieces of iron bar. The shackles were fixed to alternating bars; the prisoners slept with their heads in opposite directions. They slept on the floor without mats, mosquito nets, or blankets. They were forbidden to talk to each other.

The day in the prison began at 4:30 a.m. when prisoners were ordered to strip for inspection. The guards checked to see if the shackles were loose or if the prisoners had hidden objects they could use to commit suicide. Over the years, several prisoners managed to kill themselves, so the guards were very careful in checking the shackles and cells. The prisoners received four small spoonfuls of rice porridge and watery soup of leaves twice a day. Drinking water without asking the guards for permission resulted in serious beatings. The inmates were hosed down every four days.

The prison had very strict regulations, and severe beatings were inflicted upon any prisoner who tried to disobey. Almost every action had to be approved by one of the prison's guards. They were sometimes forced to eat human feces and drink human urine. The unhygienic living conditions in the prison caused skin diseases, lice, rashes, ringworm and other ailments. The prison's medical staffs were untrained and offered treatment only to sustain prisoners’ lives after they had been injured during interrogation. When prisoners were taken from one place to another for interrogation, their faces were covered. Guards and prisoners were not allowed to converse. Moreover, within the prison, people who were in different groups were not allowed to have contact with one another.

Torture and extermination

Waterboard displayed at Tuol Sleng. Prisoners' legs were shackled to the bar on the right, their wrists were restrained to the brackets on the left and water was poured over their face using the blue watering can.

Photos of the victims of the Khmer Rouge line the walls

More photos

Cabinets filled with human skulls

Most prisoners at S-21 were held there for two to three months. However, several high-ranking Khmer Rouge cadres were held longer. Within two or three days after they were brought to S-21, all prisoners were taken for interrogation. The torture system at Tuol Sleng was designed to make prisoners confess to whatever crimes they were charged with by their captors. Prisoners were routinely beaten and tortured with electric shocks, searing hot metal instruments and hanging, as well as through the use of various other devices. Some prisoners were cut with knives or suffocated with plastic bags. Other methods for generating confessions included pulling out fingernails while pouring alcohol on the wounds, holding prisoners’ heads under water, and the use of the waterboarding technique (see picture). Females were sometimes raped by the interrogators, even though sexual abuse was against Democratic Kampuchea (DK) policy. The perpetrators who were found out were executed. Although many prisoners died from this kind of abuse, killing them outright was discouraged, since the Khmer Rouge needed their confessions. The "Medical Unit" at Tuol Sleng, however, did kill at least 100 prisoners by bleeding them to death.

In their confessions, the prisoners were asked to describe their personal background. If they were party members, they had to say when they joined the revolution and describe their work assignments in DK. Then the prisoners would relate their supposed treasonous activities in chronological order. The third section of the confession text described prisoners’ thwarted conspiracies and supposed treasonous conversations. At the end, the confessions would list a string of traitors who were the prisoners’ friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Some lists contained over a hundred names. People whose names were in the confession list were often called in for interrogation.

Typical confessions ran into thousands of words in which the prisoner would interweave true events in their lives with imaginary accounts of their espionage activities for the CIA, the KGB, or Vietnam. The confession of Hu Nim ended with the words "I am not a human being, I'm an animal". A young Englishman named John Dawson Dewhirst who was arrested in August 1978 claimed to have joined the CIA at age 12 upon his father receiving a substantial bribe from a work colleague, also an agent. Physical torture was combined with sleep deprivation and deliberate neglect of the prisoners. The torture implements are on display in the museum. It is believed that the vast majority of prisoners were innocent of the charges against them and that the torture produced false confessions.

For the first year of S-21’s existence, corpses were buried near the prison. However, by the end of 1979, cadres ran out of burial spaces, the prisoner and their family were taken to the Choeung Ek extermination centre, fifteen kilometers from Phnom Penh. There, they were killed by being battered with iron bars, pickaxes, machetes and many other makeshift weapons owing to the scarcity, and subsequent price of ammunition. After the prisoners were executed, the soldiers who had accompanied them from S-21 buried them in graves that held as few as 6 and as many as 100 bodies.

Despite how visceral our day at the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum were, it was so important to visit these places and never forget the atrocities that have occur throughout history. The Khmer Rouge happened just 30 or so years after the Holocaust and with so many other events of genocide happening, even today, it is hard to see a world in which everyone can live peacefully and in harmony with one another. I suppose it is yin and yang balance, as despite the fact that we have spent time exploring the darker side of human nature we have also met so many lovely people and seen so many beautiful places that leave a lasting impression of peace and beauty in our hearts.