Day 29 - The Killing Fields

We knew today would be a difficult day but one we were still interested in experiencing. Pol Pot was the Cambodian dictator who killed 3 million of his own people in the 70s attempting to create a peasant society that would serve him. He forced everyone out of the city and into the fields. He separated families, sent them to different working areas throughout Cambodia. Then he started the killing. He would kill anyone he suspected of being a traitor or a threat to his control. He killed all educated people - doctors, lawyers, teachers. The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979. This is the Choeung Ek Killing Field near Phnom Penh...

We were given a headset for a self guided tour

You see this beautiful monument when you first enter

 

 

 

 

Char and Adam gave these boys tennis balls -
a nice break from the sadness

 

Braclets as a small tribute to the children and women

This was the most upsetting station. Soldiers would grab babies by their feet
and smash them against this tree before throwing their lifeless ;bodies in the open pit

Clothing and bone fragments pop up from the
ground as you walk around the fields

As you finish the tour back at the monument you get a closer look at what's inside

 

 

"On December 25, 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia seeking to end Khmer Rouge border attacks. On January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell and Pol Pot was deposed. The Vietnamese then installed a puppet government consisting of Khmer Rouge defectors.

Pol Pot retreated into Thailand with the remnants of his Khmer Rouge army and began a guerrilla war against a succession of Cambodian governments lasting over the next 17 years. After a series of internal power struggles in the 1990s, he finally lost control of the Khmer Rouge. In April 1998, 73-year-old Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest, before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal for the events of 1975-79."

For more details go to http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/pol-pot.htm