In the late 1970s in Cambodia, 1.5+ million people (a quarter of the country’s population) were killed. Today, the prison in central Phnom Penh where thousands of people were tortured before being executed is a genocide museum, and the place where those prisoners were taken to be executed—now known as the killing fields—is open to visitors.
I’ll let the photos mostly speak for themselves, but I have to say that the killing fields were a difficult place to visit. Emotionally, they were the most difficult place I’ve ever visited. It was hard to reconcile the beautiful, peaceful fields I was looking at with the atrocities that took place there. And I felt guilt that bordered on shame when I saw middle-aged Cambodians—people who had witnessed and somehow made it through the slaughter that undoubtedly robbed them of loved ones—because I knew that the perceived difficulties of my life would never approach anything even remotely close to the actual horrors of theirs. The endearing friendliness and extraordinary optimism of the Cambodian people is made all the more astonishing when taken in this not-too-distant historical context.
In the tuk tuk back to the city from the killing fields, we passed by a little stand that sold neon-colored baseball hats to tourists. Two of them said FBI and CIA on them. It was tragically ironic that these hats were being sold just a stone’s throw from the place where eventually, after having been identified as an American spy and subsequently tortured, you would have been bludgeoned or hacked to death with a dull farm implement and shoved into a shallow mass grave.
The place where people were held and tortured before being killed was a school before it was a prison (and it is now the genocide museum). This is one of the rooms, with a bed frame that prisoners were shackled to.
Gallows that prisoners were hung from
Prisoners were photographed when they were taken to the prison. Nearly all of them were killed. According to Wikipedia: “Out of an estimated 17,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only twelve known survivors.”
Barbed wire was put around the upper levels of the prison to keep prisoners from jumping to their deaths.
Skulls of people killed in the prison
Bone fragments recently found at the killing fields. New pieces still rise to the surface of the ground whenever it rains.
The killing tree. Executioners would grab babies by the legs and swing their heads into the tree. When the first people visited the site after the Khmer Rouge (the group that was responsible for the genocide) was pushed out of the area, the tree was covered in blood, hair, and brain matter.
The depressions in the ground are graves that have been excavated.
More bones found at the site
Speakers were hung from this tree and loud music was played to drown out the moans and other sounds of people being executed.
Still more skulls