#cambodiancivilwar

[cambodia-2018-blog]

The Killing Fields

This is from my last trip where we went on an audio tour of The Killing Fields.

There are a number of sites in Cambodia where collectively more than a million people were killed and buried by the communist Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970–1975). The mass killings are widely regarded as part of a broad state-sponsored genocide (the Cambodian genocide). Estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a 1975 population of roughly 8 million.

Between 1975 and 1978 about 17,000 men, women, children and infants who had been detained and tortured at S-21 (which we toured the following weekend) and were transported to the extermination camp of Choeung Ek (killing fields). They were often bludgeoned to death to avoid wasting precious bullets. The remains of 8985 people, many of whom were bound and blindfolded, were exhumed in 1980 from mass graves in this one-time longan orchard; 43 of the 129 communal graves here have been left untouched. Fragments of human bone and bits of cloth are scattered around the disinterred pits. More than 8000 skulls, arranged by sex and age, are visible behind the clear glass panels of the Memorial Stupa, which was erected in 1988. It is a peaceful place today, masking the horrors that unfolded here less than three decades ago. Admission to the Killing Fields includes an excellent audio tour, available in several languages, which includes stories by those who survived the Khmer Rouge, plus a chilling account by Choeung Ek guard and executioner Him Huy about some of the techniques they used to kill innocent prisoners and defenseless women and children.

[kumimonster]

2018 September 16 - Siem Reap

[kumimonster]

2018 September 16 - Siem Reap