Phnom Penh - Killing Fields

Suasdey,

after the pretty nice breakfast we went to one of Cambodias most terrifying and historical important areras. The „Killing Fields“!

Maybe I should tell you about the story of Cambodia first, because I think nearly nobody of you knows something about what had happened here in the past.

Around 1970 the political partie „Khmer rouge“ (die rote Khmer/ red Khmer) took over the country’s supervision. The leader Pol Pot had a fanatic vision of a new world (I know in germany we are pretty familiar with this kind of story). He wanted a clean country with hard working citizens. After getting his duties he evacuated all big cities within 48 hours. Every big city was empty and the people were forced to go to their home „villages“ but if they were born in the cities they had tob e pretty creative or were executed.

After „evacuating“ all the cities he started to rearrange the people. In the end he wanted to kill all smart and well educated people. He built an army of young (dumb) and strong guys from the countryside. His propaganda told them, that the people oft he city were arrogand liar and that they just gathered their money. Cambodia had some conflicts before, that’s why the country was poor / not stable and the people wanted to believe in his new system. Then they started to kill all educated people. It was enough to wear glasses, to speak a second language, to be a teacher, to go to university and so on.

That is why they built up kind of concentration camps like in germany. But because the country and so the army was poor they didn’t shoot the people or tried to kill them by using gas. They beat them with anything they could find. Like axts, roots, wood, metal, anything. Small children were thrown against trees till they were dead and sometimes they used palm trees to cut their throat.

In the end Pol Pot killed three million cambodians (out of 9 million). So he killed 1/3 of Cambodia’s population in just 3 years.

By visiting the biggest mass-grave and concentration camp I felt so sad. Even today bones and cloths of the victims are laying around, because they come up from the earth during the raining season. 

The most surprising thing for me personally was, that the leader just died in the age of 81 (in peace) after living a good life, even if all his crimes were dicovered and the killing fields were open for the whole world. Even after his regency european countries supported his partie in the 90’s (and at that time there was war in Cambodia) so even germany paid the Cambodian Nazi partie. I don’t get why this partie is allowed to be part oft he democracy in Cambodia even today.

Anyway, they build up a pavilion to remember all the victims who died in the „Killing fields“ near Phnom Penh. In there are about 9 thousand skulls. All in all 16.000 people dies in this killing field.

After killing them they were thrown into 5-7meter deep wholes. Their cloth had been treated with deodorant to covert he smell of death in the camp. All day and night the army played propanganda songs on full volume in the whole camp. So the peole who were waiting for their execution could not hear the moans and screamings from the other victims. 

When the killing field was discoivered first time in 1979 the people found this tree. The tree was covered with hair, blood, pieces of bone and brain. Here was the baby execution place. They were just beaten against the tree and thrown into the whole next to him. During the time in the field I could not believe that this happened just 10 years before I was born. I even did not know that there was something like another holocaust in Cambodia.

It was just terrifying!