The Killing Fields of Cambodia

Skulls stored in the Stupa at the Killing Fields

After a day of visiting Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum the next step was to visit Choeung Ek….the Killing Fields. This was the final destination for the detainees of S-21 located about 15 miles outside of Phnom Penh

Stupa holding the bones of victims at the Killing Field

When I walked through the entrance gate and looked around I thought this is going to be a bust. A big field with a large Chinese Stupa in the middle…so what!  Where is the story? But once I started following the paths and listening to the audio guide the full story started to unfold and I was spellbound.

This field holds the graves of 17,000 victims and is one of 300 such fields scattered around Cambodia. At one stop on the path a group of mounds that have been excavated represents the 129 mass graves at this location where the prisoners were brought blind folded and bludgeoned to death.  Unlike the Nazi killing machine, this was not high tech genocide…there were no gas chambers or crematoriums. And because the borders had been closed by Pol Pot the country was totally isolated with no shipments of weapons or munitions coming through. There were not enough bullets to kill all the victims so the process was reduced to the most basic form of thuggery…..the victims were beaten and bludgeoned with garden tools…axes, pickaxes, shovels, and metal bars. The bodies were piled into graves and sprayed with DDT to kill the smell of decomposition.

Killing Tree uses to kill the children at the Killing Field

One stop along the trail is a mass grave that was filled with women and children. A large tree grows next to the grave where the guards would swing the bodies of the children…beating out their brains and throwing them into the open grave. Both the tree and the bamboo fence that encloses the grave site have thousands of prayer bracelets left by visitors. I too left one given to me by a monk in Chiang Mai.  I felt this offerings is both a prayer for the dead and a way of giving witness to the horrors committed in this place.

Prayer bracelets hung on the fence surrounding the mass grave of women & children

If one walks the paths slowly and scans the ground it is easy to see bone fragments and pieces of clothing working their way to the surface. I ask myself how this clothing can not have rotted by now…over 35 years…perhaps it is another way that the site continues to give witness to the atrocities.

People praying and visiting the bones of the victims at the Stupa

The stupa in the middle of the property contains the skulls and bones of 5,000 victims and is the spiritual center of the site. People light incense, say prayers, stare at the cases filled with skulls and try to make sense of the madness.

The mission of the center is to preserve the site and conserve the bones and clothing of the victims. As you walk around there are glass cases filled with bone fragments and items of clothing.  They ask that visitors who find bones not remove them from the site out of respect for the dead and often the visitors place them on top of the cases so they can be properly stored.

Case containing fragments of clothing with bones found by visitors laid on top

The audio tour of the site is a very good introduction to the events and along with the short documentary film shown in the visitor center one gets a glimpse of the horrors and some background on the people who were responsible. The most amazing personal accounts of the victims and their families are also on the audio tour and are worth the time to listen to

After day two so of confronting evil I needed a respite from the horrors and took myself to the Elephant Bar at the Raffles Hotel.  I needed to feel centered again! I could sit there feeling all Colonial, sipping Gin and Tonics…..saying to myself that the insanity has ended and the evil has been eliminated…and then I think…For now at least.