The Sad Side of Phnom Penh

Cambodia is on the rise, picking itself up and with world interest in Angkor Wat, Siem Reap seems to be much seedier in this process then the capital. Phnom Penh has the gruesome sites to offer, the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and the notorious S-21 prison. Both of these moving monuments to the Cambodians slaughtered under the Khmer Rouge rule are worth seeing.

The Choeung Ek Killing Fields are located about 15km outside of the capital and were associated with the S-21 prison. In the center of the field stands a white temple dedicated to the 17,000 men, women and children who were executed on these grounds with over 8000 skulls on display. The skulls are stacked in age groups and by gender. Quite a few had obvious bullet wounds, machete marks or just signs of blunt trauma showing the brutal way these people were executed. All the people found in over 100 mass graves here were murdered between 1975 and 1978, not a very long time for so many atrocities. Not all he graves have been unearthed, I think the point has been made with what was found and the rest will be left in peace. The mass graves were somewhat organized in gruesome ways, decapitated bodies in one, children in another most with clothing stripped but as you walk around the grounds clothing is still coming to the surface along with other human remains. There are so many bones in this area and the country is still so poor that the remains are merely stacked on a little shrine, it is the best they can do. One of the larger trees was used to to beat woman with children because the loud speakers were placed int he tree and it muffled the crying of the children. It is just such a confusing place to walk around, there is no way to understand why these people would turn on their own in such a unforgivable way. The memorial is a somber place as we wander around and the mounds of dirt and the shallow graves surround you, everywhere you look.

We then headed back into town and the tuk tuk ride was helpful in digesting at least some of what we saw. This time we were heading off to the notorious S-21 prison, where prisoners were sent to wait to be taken out to Choeung Ek. The Tuol Sleng Museum started out as a high school and later had two additional buildings added for a primary school. But after the Khmer Rouge drove everyone out of the city the school was no longer of use and it was converted into Security Prison 21, known as S-21.

The museum today is set up to show the deplorable conditions the inmates suffered, small rooms held shackled prisoners with 20-30 people attached to the same 6 meter long bar. The guards at the prison were made up of children recruited by the KR. It was reported that the children were some of the cruelest and least forgiving in the KR army. The KR claimed to have a medical service but this too was run by children who had no medical knowledge. The people were kept for months in the prison before being sent off to the killing fields and most often whole families would be locked up, with the exception of small children and babies. The guards did not like the crying of small children and babies so most were ripped from their mother's arms and brutally smashed against the walls until dead.

Over the few years that the KR regime was in power and operating this prison it is thought that 17,000 people were incarcerated in S-21. Out of all of them, and most historians believe this number to be on the conservative side, there were only 12 survivors! The mug shots of so many people are on display of all social, economic and ethnic backgrounds. If you happened to be in Phnom Penh in 1975 regardless of who you were or where you were from you most likely ended up there. One of the saddest parts was the high security, there was no where for these people to go even if they did escape seen as the whole country was swarming with spies people couldn't help others. All the floors above the ground level had fine wire mesh so that people could not commit suicide and would have to wait for the KR to decide when they would die.

There are so many other things we saw and read in this place but it is just all too much to write about. The prison was horrible, beyond imagination, even the things we saw we couldn't understand. But it is an important step for the country and they are moving on, amazing as it might seem. In one of the guide books it stated that Cambodia has a booming birth rate and even factoring in the increase in birth 1 in 3 Cambodian people are still directly affected by Pol Pot's regime. Over 200,000 people were killed in a country that only had a population of 800,000 at the time. The people go about their jobs and every now and then you would hear something, as our waitress mentioned how hard it was to find food under Pol Pot one day when we were chatting after lunch and another time our waitress was chatting she said her Uncle had moved to the US but she thinks he is dead now because he doesn't write and neither do his kids. Such a weird comment for me to hear. If one of you don't write for a long while, or vice verse, death is not what I think of first. I think my friends/family are busy and we'll catch up later. Such a different way of thinking for someone who lives in a country where so many people just stopped hearing from people and they did end up being dead.

So this was the Sad Side of Phnom Penh. Please still visit Cambodia it was an amazing place! The markets, the fried bugs, the BBQ tarantulas, the other animals we couldn't even recognize the sights and smells were truly Cambodian and all together so beautiful.