From Siem Reap, we back-tracked South East again, down to Phnom Penh (pronounced “Pnom Pen”), the capital of Cambodia. This city has the main “attractions” concerning the whole Khmer Rouge genocide atrocities that took place during 1975-1979.
We don’t normally get into the history of countries in our blog but we felt that this country needed some awareness. For anyone not familiar with Cambodia’s tragic history (we weren’t either before we came here by the way), basically the Khmer Rouge were a communist party who forcefully took control of Phnom Penh (and later the whole country) back in 1975. Their crazy idea was to create a perfect “agrarian” society whereby everybody lives in the countryside and works in the fields so the country would be completely independent and self-sufficient and wouldn’t rely on any outside countries. To achieve this, they evacuated the cities (they told everyone that the US were planning a bomb attack) and moved everybody to villages and forced them to do hard labour on the rice-fields. Everything was communal/shared (the clothes, food, living conditions, etc were all the same). Money was abolished. TVs, radios, watches and anything mechanical was denied. The people were not allowed to own anything or grow their own food. The only food they got was from the community but even that was so little that many starved to death, and those that didn’t looked like the kids from Africa with the swollen bellies that you see on tv. They were actually producing enough rice for the population but the government was exporting most of it to China to buy more weapons.
To prevent any uprising, the Khmer Rouge (who became the government) decided to torture and kill any apparent intelligent people: All the doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, bankers, journalists, etc as well as all the people who worked for the previous government were detained, tortured and most were killed. Anyone who wore glasses or spoke another language was deemed intelligent (regardless of what they worked at) and so was captured. Not only that, but the government also decided to kill their families and children (including young babies) just to prevent them getting revenge in later life!
We don’t normally get into the history of countries in our blog but we felt that this country needed some awareness. For anyone not familiar with Cambodia’s tragic history (we weren’t either before we came here by the way), basically the Khmer Rouge were a communist party who forcefully took control of Phnom Penh (and later the whole country) back in 1975. Their crazy idea was to create a perfect “agrarian” society whereby everybody lives in the countryside and works in the fields so the country would be completely independent and self-sufficient and wouldn’t rely on any outside countries. To achieve this, they evacuated the cities (they told everyone that the US were planning a bomb attack) and moved everybody to villages and forced them to do hard labour on the rice-fields. Everything was communal/shared (the clothes, food, living conditions, etc were all the same). Money was abolished. TVs, radios, watches and anything mechanical was denied. The people were not allowed to own anything or grow their own food. The only food they got was from the community but even that was so little that many starved to death, and those that didn’t looked like the kids from Africa with the swollen bellies that you see on tv. They were actually producing enough rice for the population but the government was exporting most of it to China to buy more weapons.To prevent any uprising, the Khmer Rouge (who became the government) decided to torture and kill any apparent intelligent people: All the doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, bankers, journalists, etc as well as all the people who worked for the previous government were detained, tortured and most were killed. Anyone who wore glasses or spoke another language was deemed intelligent (regardless of what they worked at) and so was captured. Not only that, but the government also decided to kill their families and children (including young babies) just to prevent them getting revenge in later life!
In all, about 2 million people were killed within the 4 years - more than a quarter of the population! It’s amazing that all this happened in such recent history (Kadi can’t believe that Conor was born already.......”just barely!” Conor says). 40% of the population are under age 15. Everywhere we went, we would see older people and we couldn’t help but wonder what they went through during this time? What is most disturbing is that this was not Cambodia against another country, but Cambodians fighting amongst themselves. All the killers and torturers were the same people as the ones they tortured and killed. And now that the war is over, they are still living amongst everyone else. They could be tuktuk drivers or shopkeepers now.
The main Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 while in exile in Thailand, before he could be brought to justice. Some of the other leaders are currently being tried, but only one of them acknowledged the atrocities that took place and expresses any remorse. The others deny that they knew anything about the torture and killings.
So in Phnom Penh, we visited two main sites of this killing regime. The first was the S21 Museum, which used to be a high-school before the Khmer Rouge converted it to a prison/torture centre. We found the place very enlightening and disturbing. It had a lot of gruesome information about the people who were detained there and you could also see some of the cells that the prisoners were kept in. From there, everybody was eventually sent to the nearby “Killing Fields” which we also visited. There is not much to see here but it was the site of almost 200 separate mass graves, each containing around 100 bodies (but one contained 450 bodies, another contained 100 bodies of women and children). An average of 100 people were killed every day here, most were just beaten to death to save bullets. Chillingly, there is a monument in the centre of the place that contains a thousand human skulls. There were actually a few hundred of these killing fields throughout the country.
Despite the gruesome history, we found Phnom Penh to be a nice, lively city. It is a safe place and for the last 10 years, the borders have been open for tourists again. After a few days in Phnom Penh, our Vietnam Visa was processed and we left Cambodia for Vietnam.
The main Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 while in exile in Thailand, before he could be brought to justice. Some of the other leaders are currently being tried, but only one of them acknowledged the atrocities that took place and expresses any remorse. The others deny that they knew anything about the torture and killings.
So in Phnom Penh, we visited two main sites of this killing regime. The first was the S21 Museum, which used to be a high-school before the Khmer Rouge converted it to a prison/torture centre. We found the place very enlightening and disturbing. It had a lot of gruesome information about the people who were detained there and you could also see some of the cells that the prisoners were kept in. From there, everybody was eventually sent to the nearby “Killing Fields” which we also visited. There is not much to see here but it was the site of almost 200 separate mass graves, each containing around 100 bodies (but one contained 450 bodies, another contained 100 bodies of women and children). An average of 100 people were killed every day here, most were just beaten to death to save bullets. Chillingly, there is a monument in the centre of the place that contains a thousand human skulls. There were actually a few hundred of these killing fields throughout the country.Despite the gruesome history, we found Phnom Penh to be a nice, lively city. It is a safe place and for the last 10 years, the borders have been open for tourists again. After a few days in Phnom Penh, our Vietnam Visa was processed and we left Cambodia for Vietnam.
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