The Killing Fields
The killings took place everywhere in Cambodia, but predominantly took place in the countryside. The Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia into a killing field. Yale University's Cambodian Genocide program has so far located over two hundred killing sites with a total of 9,500 mass grave pits.
People were seized and killed immediately if they belonged to the upper class or the middle class. Civil servants, police, military officers were killed on the spot. They did not spare anyone who looked the least bit educated. Anyone who wore glasses was shot. Professors, schoolteachers, doctors and monks were shot as well. One would think that they would spare religious monks but they did not. Religion was abolished under the communist regime.
Between 1975-79, the Khmer Rouge executed about 2 million people. People who lived under the KR lived in pure terror. They lived every day of their life in fear of death through starvation, forced labor, disease and most of all execution. The Khmer Rouge killed for any reason they chose to. They exercised the power of terrorizing their prisoners. Many Cambodians died as a result of being struck in the head with a pickaxe or an ax handle and sometimes were suffocated by plastic bags. Many of the killing sites had dead bodies lying with plastic bags over rotting flesh. Many of the skulls had holes in the back and others have fractures or holes in through frontal lobe. The killing fields are filled with human bones, clothing and other items that might have belonged to the victims. Depending on the sites, some sites contain remains of people killed in the concentration camps, others were either from mass marches to the fields and others were just people being rounded up to be killed because of their status. One incident for example, took place in the Battambang Province, more than 300 former military officers were told to put on their dress uniforms in order to greet Prince Sihanouk, instead they were sent to the jungle and killed by machine guns or were beaten to death.
The Khmer Rouge were not sympathetic, they were barbaric in their actions. The lives of women and children were not spared. There are some cases where the KR would snatch the baby away from the mother and throw it in the air and shoot the baby or spear it with a bayonet. To save ammunition, they would smash one baby with another or smash them against a tree or a rock. They did not spare the sick or elderly as well because they were of no use to them. They would burn houses with the sick and the elderly inside them. Anyone who refused to listen to what the KR said was shot. They especially did not like foreigners and anyone who spoke another language was interrogated, tortured and later executed.
One place in particular where they interrogated and torture the victims was located in Phnom Penh, it was the Toul Sleng Interrogation center, it is also known as the site S-21 according to the Khmer Rouge. It was an interrogation center as well as a killing ground. This notorious place was the nerve center of the communist party. The Khmer Rouge declared that anyone who was not part of the Khmer Rouge Democratic Party was automatically an enemy of the state. Therefore they were subject to interrogation. After one was interrogated, whether or not they were guilty, they were killed immediately afterwards. Anyone whom the KR assumed to be withholding information about his or her involvement with the former government was interrogated. For those who had no involvement with the government, the KR forced them to make up a story and to confess to a crime they had never even committed.
The prison camp was not originally a prison. It used to be a high school. They used the school and turned it into torture chambers. Each classroom was converted into a prison cell or a torture chamber. Men and women were separated into different chambers or floors. Many of the women were raped and killed. Females as young as 8 or 9 were raped and killed. The courtyards of the school were used as pits for the dead bodies. The prisoners were subjected to electronic shocks, water torture, stretched bodies on racks, physical mutilation and other forms of torture. Before the prisoners were interrogated, the KR kept records. They took pictures of victims and kept written records of their confessions. Everyone was found to be guilty. Women, children, men, the elderly and teenagers were killed. There were no exceptions. People were interrogated and more than 10,000 were killed. Only seven escaped and survived.
These are a few ghosts of Toul Seng. The boy on the left was their first victim.
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In the memory of the people who were slain under the hands of the Khmer Rouge, a memorial site has been erected. In the honor of them the Cambodian people built a memorial tower at Cheung Ek, located 15 kilometers southwest of capital city Phnom Penh. The memorial tower located in the center of the field is a 17-story class stupa, which is filled with 8,000 skulls taken from the mass grave. Many of the bodies in the gravesite were transported from the Toul Sleng Prison after they have tortured and killed their victims. Cheung Ek was were one of the killing site is located. The mass grave is a site for the remembrance of the Khmer Rouge's atrocities.
The Memorial Stupa
The Gravesite
These are the bones exumed from the massgrave site.
