Having been in Cambodia for less than a week we have seen the beautiful proud side of the Khmer people and the dark side. It's difficult to imagine that collectively 7 and 9 years before our birth, while our parents were complaining about OAPEC and soaring gas prices, nearly 2 million people were killed during a 3.5 year period under Pol Pot to create a crazy marxist agrarian wet dream. Today we visited S-21 (a prison for torturing confessions out of people) and "the Killing Fields" where the condemned prisoners were taken and bludgeoned to death (bullets were too valuable to spare.)
S-21 is a chilling place, a few of the 4 buildings were kept exactly as they were found. In fact, you can even walk into the wooden cells where prisoners were shackled in between torture sessions. You can see their scratch marks in the wood, presumably counting the days they were there (highest I counted was 21), and there are still blood stains on the floor. The other buildings are monuments to the dead. Like the Nazis, the KR was meticulous in its documentation and systematic extermination of people - photographing all of the prisoners. The other buildings house picture after picture of faces of the dead. Taken when they were first admitted to the prison, some smiling, some scared, some angry, all confused, only 7 survived.
The prisoners were then taken to the "Killing Fields" to be executed immediately some 10-15 km away. There is a stupa now in the middle that houses almost 8,000 skulls and it takes quite an effect on you. There is also a tree where babies were thrown against to be killed "to kill the grass, you have to kill the roots as well."
Obviously, we were highly moved. Specifically by how everything was kept in place, no excuses made, and by how recently all of this occurred. Makes you think about the other genocides that weren't even less than 10 years before our birth: Rwanda, Darfur, Sri Lanka to name a few. Also makes you amazed by the spirit of the Cambodian people and the pride we see here.
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