2016 Hong Kong/Vietnam/Cambodia: Cambodia

We visit one of the 389 killing fields of Cambodia from the murderous Pol Pot reign from 1975-79. This part of the blog is not an easy read, but all credit to the Cambodians for dealing openly with an ugly part of their past.

Up to 20,000 people perished at this location and our guide told the story of who these people were and how they got there. Pol Pot was influenced by Mao and decided to purge Cambodia of anyone who wasn’t a farmer or a peasant. This included Cambodians who had been university educated, had studied abroad or had any contact or complicity with Americans or Russians.

After being taken to a prison and tortured into a “confession”, people were taken by truck to the killing fields where they were clubbed on the back of the head and then stabbed, although we learn that some people were buried alive. Using bullets was deemed a waste. Infants and children were smashed against trees.

In various display areas at the killing field are clothing rags that have washed up during flooding, as well as bones and teeth. A pagoda has shelf after shelf of human skulls.

An innocent enough looking field where horrors took place

Clothing from murdered people

Bracelets from murdered children

A pagoda with shelves of skulls on display

We’ve lived our lives knowing of the atrocities of Stalin, Hitler and Mao and now we’re present to the Cambodian one of only 40 years ago. The world was slow to realize what was happening and it only ended when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and threw Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge back into the jungle.

We then visited an infamous prison from that era and met two survivors both in their 80’s. One was an artist, another a mechanic and their needed skills saved them from death. There were photo displays of the victims which included not only Cambodians, but Indians, Pakistanis, Australians and New Zealanders.