Cambodia’s Darkest Days: Inside the Killing Fields
Some films stay in your mind long after watching them. The Killing Fields is one of them. The award-winning film depicts the atrocities of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. We see this through the eyes of two journalists, Cambodian Dith Pran and American Sydney Schanberg. Dith Pran said the film came nowhere near the true horrors his country experienced.
In 2013, I spent a day visiting Choeung Ek, the most well-known of over 300 ‘killing fields’ across Cambodia. It was an eerie and disturbing experience. Before sharing my experience, I want to set the historical backdrop that led to such an appalling chapter in human history.
Pol Pot and the Cultural Revolution
Pol Pot was a Cambodian socialist revolutionary who became the leader of Cambodia (then known as Kampuchea) on 17 April, 1975. He led a dictatorship that enforced a radical form of agrarian socialism. He believed his once great country had grown weak and needed to return to its agricultural roots. This belief translated into a brutal policy that saw all those who lived in the cities forced to move to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labour projects; a relocation that spelled death for many, including people like doctors, teachers, and office workers.
Mao Zedong’s recent Cultural Revolution in communist China had inspired Pol Pot who wanted to implement the same revolution in Cambodia. The results were devastating. Those not immediately killed on arrival lived in constant fear of execution, forced labour, malnutrition, and poor to non-existent medical care. Many of the Khmer Rouge soldiers were teenage peasants rounded up from remote villages by the regime and brainwashed.
‘Speak Quietly’ in the Killing Fields
Returning to the present-day, I visited Choeung Ek on a quiet November morning. The site was once a longan fruit orchard. Now, it was a mass graveyard. Around 17,000 men, women, children, and infants were executed here by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1978. They were often bludgeoned to death to avoid wasting precious bullets. Visitor signs read, ‘dress modestly’, ‘speak quietly’ and ‘do not smoke’. The atmosphere was silent most of the time, and I found it difficult taking photos because of the terrible crimes that took place here.
1980 saw the exhumation of the remains of 8,985 people from mass graves. Many of the dead were bound and blindfolded. Scattered around the site today are fragments of human bone and bits of clothing. More than 8,000 skulls await at the Memorial Stupa, visible behind clear glass panels. It’s not a place people spend a lot of time.
One in Four of all Cambodians Affected
As the country tries to move on from its past, most of Cambodia’s 300 killing fields no longer exist. It’s estimated more than 1.3 million people were executed in these killing fields between 1975 and 1979. The mass killings are regarded as state-sponsored genocide. British sociologist and academic Martin Shaw describes the genocide as “the purest genocide of the Cold War era.”
The total number of estimated deaths at the hands of the Khmer Rouge ranges from 1.7 to 2.5 million. This includes deaths from disease and starvation. In 1975, Cambodia had a population of roughly 8 million, meaning approximately one out of every four people were affected by this tragedy. Many died in barbaric ways. The Khmer Rouge soldiers used methods that are still too shocking to document.
Hunters Become the Hunted
The Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh was a former high school taken over by Pol Pot’s security forces in 1975. It became known as Security Prison 21 (S-21)—the largest centre of detention and torture in the country. Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge were meticulous in keeping records of their barbarism. Each prisoner had their photo taken as they entered S-21. A haunting gallery of the victims now lines the museum’s walls.
Doomed faces of men, women, and children dominate the museum today. Nearly all died here. As the insanity of the Khmer Rouge regime intensified, the hunters became the hunted. Many of the executioners and torturers died at the hands of those that took their places. At its peak, S-21 claimed an average of 100 victims a day. There were only seven prisoners alive at S-21 when the Vietnamese army liberated the city in 1979. The prisoners had stayed alive using their skills such as painting and photography.
Hidden from the Outside World
The rest of the world had little awareness of the genocide. The true horrors were only revealed towards the end of the Khmer Rouge regime when people like Dith Pran escaped and were able to tell their story.
Pol Pot fled to the jungles of southwest Cambodia in 1979. His Khmer Rouge government collapsed. From 1979 to 1997, he clung to power with another member of the old Khmer Rouge regime near the border of Cambodia and Thailand. Pol Pot committed suicide in 1998 while under house arrest. He was never brought to account for the appalling crimes he committed.
Today the killing fields of Cheoung Ek and the Genocide Museum of Tuol Sleng stand as reminders of the still-recent past. They are a testament to the resilience of a people who have endured the unthinkable. They are also an important lesson to the generations of today and the future, not only to remember but also to ensure vigilance and action so that such darkness does not find its place in our world again.
