S-21 and the Cheung Ek Killing fields

Our next stop was Phnom Penh to visit the city but also to visit and pay our respects at the memorials to the dead from the time of the Khmer Rouge.  First was a short walk across the city to S-21, the school converted into a detention and interrogation centre.

 This place was used to house enemies of the Khmer Rouge often members of Angkar themselves. Held here until after truly inhumane torture they were inevitably found guilty and taken away to the killing fields to be systematically murdered.

 It's a devastating place to visit that is almost too much to take in as a whole. I instead started to concentrate on the small details of these stark buildings and wondered how much those who had been held here had focused on these things as they lay and contemplated their fate.

 The building was brutally re-designed to enable efficient and easy handling of large numbers of detainees.

 Hastily engineered cells dividing classrooms

Everything done to prevent even the thought of escape

 But with some of the original fixtures and fittings still remaining.

  We passed through the ground floor rooms with galleries of photos of the people who were moved through this place, all catalogued and officially documented with reasons for their detention and of course a reason for their execution. A way of making it official, making it justifiable, making it something a human being could do to another human being.
Amongst these photo's were people who were just so detached from the situation as to think it a dream.

 To those who I think were only too aware of what their fate at the hand of the Khmer Rouge would be.

 Finally we saw current photos of some of the survivors from both sides of these terrible times, this former guard particularly caught  my eye. I wondered if all the Buddhist prayers and blessings that he'd had tattooed on his body had silenced all the voices from his time at S-21

 The following day we made our way down the dusty road to the Cheung Ek killing fields, the same route as the one finally taken by all those found guilty at S-21. It's difficult even to describe what a visit to this place is like, the truly horrific things that occurred here have forever tainted the land and you wonder what happened to humanity in this place that it ended up with a sign like this having to be put up.

 The sense of loss and sorrow is palpable throughout the gardens, every burial is garlanded with bands and ribbons placed in respect by visitors

 The centre of the site is dominated by the memorial built to house 9000 of the so far recovered human remains.

 The material evidence of what truly happened here.

Visiting these two sites and learning about the time of the Khmer Rouge had a profound effect on the both of us. I have read about many similar episodes of genocide that have occurred throughout history but to have one where fellow countrymen were pitted against each other in such a way is almost incomprehensible. For it also to have happened in our lifetimes meant that we found ourselves having conversations with people who had lived through it on both sides. It almost doesn't seem possible that it could have happened in the Cambodia that we now find ourselves.