2017-10 The Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek (Cambodia)

Former cow pasture used as killing field. Depressions are mass graves

Today was a very sobering day. We started by driving 13 km outside of Phnom Penh to visit an old cow pasture that is now a memorial set-up to honor all the people that the Khmer Rouge killed from 1975-1979. This is Choeung Ek. Now, it is an idyllic field, with depressions where mass graves have been exhumed. There are thatched roofs over various mass graves noting the types of people found at each one: political prisoners, rebellious Khmer soldiers (who were decapitated) and women and children.

Thatched area over mass grave

The Khmer Rouge was the communist party in Cambodia since the 1950s. Led by Pol Pot, it emerged victorious in its civil war in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh. The people in Phnom Penh were very excited to be liberated from the military government that had ousted their royal king. However, within three days, the Khmer Rouge forced exile the entire city of Phnom Penh to the countryside to work in the fields.

Choeung Ek wasn't part of the countryside where city people had been relocated. In fact, the farmers on this and surrounding land were forced to move away. This allowed the killings that went on here to be unknown by the general public.

The Khmer Rouge didn't want to waste bullets on killing the prisoners brought here. Instead, the prisoners were brutally killed in various ways, including being bludgeoned over the head and stabbed with bamboo. One of the saddest reminders is a tree where children that were beaten to death. A farmer found it with blood and brain on it after the Khmer had evacuated on what is called Liberation Day (or Invasion Day in Cambodia), January 7th, 1979. This is the day that the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia.

Walking on the raised wooden platform over the field, we see bones and bits of clothing sticking up from the field. Signs ask us not to touch these reminders of the men, women and children who died here. 9000 bodies have been found to date. Many of these human skulls have been categorized and placed in a stuppa on the site as a memorial to the victims of this killing site. If only this was the only killing site. Unfortunately, this is only one of several within Cambodia.

Memorial Stuppa full of human skulls of those killed at Cheoung Ek

Our guide told us that from 1975-1979, one third of the population of Cambodia died, from killing fields like this, from starvation and disease. He even mentioned his own personal remembrances, including that his uncle's entire family disappeared and no one knows what happened to them as well as about how he was so malnourished as a child that he had the spindly legs and big belly and that he almost died from measles.