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Hello from Phnom Penh. Yesterday we came face to face with the Khmere Rouge killing machine.
I find it difficult to display some photos I shot at these, once horrific locations, without also trying to give them a historical background. However, I trust that most of you are pretty well aware of what happened in Cambodia in the 1970s. For younger generations I recommend some research for a better understanding of Cambodia today. There are several sites on the web trying to document the Cambodian holocaust. One of them, as a random example, is called Cambodian Communities out of Crises. I haven’t had the opportunity to really check them out, but try and find out for your self.
In short, what happened was, that in 1975 a new Communist movement, called the Khmer Rouge, took over power in Cambodia. They were led by Pol Pot, a lunatic who instituted an extreme and cruel version of fundamentalist Communism that quickly forced the population into farm labor. The regime outlawed money, markets, schools, healtcare and religion. In four years, more than 2 million people (over 20% of the country’s population) died as result of execution, diseas and starvation.
Tuol Sleng prison, or “Security Office 21”, was established by Pol Pot and designed for “detention, interrogation, inhuman torture and killing after confession from the detainees were received and documented”. Today this facility operates as Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Almost everybody held at S-21 was later executed at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.
Detainees who died during torture were buried in mass graves inside the prison grounds, sometimes at an average of 100 victims per day. Tuong Sleng demonstrates the darkest side of the human spirit and stands as a testament to the unthinkable horrors that took place here.
We also visited the Killing Fields, today offcially called Choeung Ek Genocidal Center. A monument rises over the 129 mass graves, where 17,000 men women and children were executed by the Khmer Rouge security forces. Encased inside the monument are 9,000 human sculls found here during excavations. Many of these sculls bear witness that they were bludgeoned to death.
Visiting S-21 and the Killing Fields was a chilling experience and as antidote we spent the afternoon admiring the Royal Palace including the Silver Pagoda. The floor of the pagoda is covered by five tons of silver and there is a life-sized solid-gold Buddha, which weighs 90 kg and is adorned with 2086 diamonds, the largest weighin in at 25 carats.
The elephant is an important symbol in this part of the world, in the Royal Palace compound they can be found in many shapes.
Malla with a young street vendor, who sold us cold water in the heat outside the palace.
Cambodia is truly a country of contrasts.
