Killing Fields: Genocide in Phnom Penh
Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia suffered a genocide. An estimated 1.5 to 3 million people died in the Killing Fields, a good many of them in the capital of Phnom Penh.
The atrocity began after the Khmer Rouge – the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea – won the Cambodian civil war. Led by the politician, revolutionary and former novice Pol Pot, the resulting brutality nearly wiped out a whole generation. It scarred the whole country.
The totalitarian dictatorship moved urban dwellers to the countryside to work. There, they worked on collective farms and forced labour projects. Attempts to enforce agricultural reform, based on total self-sufficiency, saw thousands dying of disease and famine.
During the genocide, the regime targeted a vast cross-section of the population. These people they deemed ‘enemies’. Professionals, intellectuals (including anyone who wore glasses), former government officials, monks, ‘economic saboteurs’ and ethnic minorities all faced arrest, torture and execution.
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The most notorious of the execution centres was the former Chao Ponhea Yat High School. The Khmer Rouge took over this site and changed it into Security Prison 21 (S-21). Known as Tuol Sleng and surrounded by an electrified fence, S-21 housed up to 20,000 inmates between 1975 and 1979. All were kept in crude cells and tortured in converted classrooms.
Torture became the norm. Prisoners experienced regular beatings. But their tormentors did not stop there. The Khmer Rouge also used electric shocks, sleep deprivation and waterboarding to extract false confessions of treason. The culling even saw inmates skinned alive, while medical experiments, without the aid of anaesthetics, also took place.
No one was safe
As paranoia among the party members grew, so did the purge. And the purge did not see friend or foe. It saw only flesh. The party turned in on itself. Many loyal activists and their families eventually ended up at Tuol Sleng. And they received no grace. Many were charged with ‘espionage’ activities and suffered the same fates as the other prisoners.
S-21 remains an eerily quiet place, located down a nondescript road in Phnom Penh. Visitors will struggle to comprehend the sheer scale of the atrocities committed there. Visitors report the retreat of joy, hope and contentment as the cramped conditions and rudimentary torture devices reveal themselves. Silence becomes thick and heavy. It comes as a relief when a lone bird call breaks the spell of the wreckage of this most heinous of genocides.
After interrogation, the inmates were transported to Choeung Ek extermination centre. This former orchard, one of the most notorious Killing Fields, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, saw much bloodshed. The Khmer Rouge executed over one million victims in this place.
After the regime fell, the discovery of mass graves revealed the final resting place of many prisoners. Today, the site is a serene yet sombre place. Forty-three of the 129 graves remain untouched. Fragments of bones and clothes jut out of the disinterred pits, while the Memorial Stupa houses more than 8,000 skulls behind clear glass panels. Many bear the entry and exit wounds of bullet executions.
A tour around both areas is a sobering experience. For those far removed from what happened, seeing the results of such a traumatic period can prove too much to process. One cannot conceive the scale of human cost, nor the evil required to enact it. Both sites stand as a testament to man’s inhumanity to man, and they should never be ignored.
Things to know
Neither site is for the squeamish.
(2025 update: This story is from a trip to Cambodia in 2007. Prices and the like have probably changed a lot since then.)
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21 Prison): Located at Street 113, Boeng Keng Kang 3, Chamkar Morn. Admission costs $3. Call +855 23 300-698. Opening hours are daily from 7.00 am to 5.30 pm.
The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek: Located about 40 minutes south of Phnom Penh, a tuk-tuk should cost around $10, including a stop at Tuol Sleng. Admission costs $6, with an audio tour, $3 without. Opening hours are daily from 7.30 am to 5.30 pm.
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