On our second day in Phnom Penh, we visited the Killing Fields of Cheung Ek by tuk-tuk. This part of the tour was quite a solemn one. As our hired guide unfolded the cruel deeds that the Khmer Rouge once commited here, I couldn’t help but felt for the poor victims that died here.

Killing Fields of Cheung Ek is situated 15 kilometres south-west of Phnom Penh, and it was a place where more than 17,000 civilians, adults and little children, were killed and buried in mass grave; many of them transported here after detention and torture in Toul Sleng (S-21 prison camp).

The above picture shows a Buddhist stupa. This stupa has acrylic glass sides and is filled with more than 5,000 human skulls (from the victims that were killed here). It was opened to tourists, so I had a chance to step in to see the skulls that are being displayed at various levels.

We could see some skulls being shattered or having cracks or holes. From observing the skulls, researchers were able to tell how the Khmer Rouge tortured the civilians to death. Blunt objects were used to hack repeatedly on the heads, holes were drilled into the skulls, or simply bullets were shot into the heads until the victims died. These were few of the many brutal methods in which the Khmer Rouge applied to silence the innocence.

As we left the stupa and moved on to other areas of the Killing Fields, we came across these bones and tattered clothes (above) on the ground. They were being dug out from the ground that Khmer Rouge used to exhume the bodies after the assinations. When we were walking on the soil, we could easily see traces of white coloured bones half-revealed on the surface of the ground.

The curvatures on the ground that you see in the above picture might be pleasant looking, but they are not. Buried skulls and bones were dug up from the ground, leaving these pits as they are. During the days of Pol Pot regime, bodies were just thrown into these mass graves. Till today, no one is able to give an accurate figure of how many people were being killed and buried here, although it was estimated that around 2 million Cambodians around the country died by starvation, torture or execution during their rule.

This shed was a mass grave of more than 100 children and women victims, whom majority were naked at the time of death. 

This shed which looks similar to the one above was a mass grave of 166 victims without heads. Presumably, their heads were chopped off and might have been thrown into the river beside this killing field.

Quoted from a signboard near the entrance of the Killing Fields:

The Most Tragic

Even in this 20th century, on Kampuchean soil the clique of Pol Pot criminals had committed a heinous genocidal act. They massacred the population with atrocity in a large scale. It was more cruel than the genocidal act committed by the Hitler Fascists, which the world has never met.

With the commemorative stupa in front of us, we imagine that we are hearing the grievous voice of the victims who were beaten by Pol Pot men with canes, bamboo stumps or heads of hoes. Who were stabbed with knives or swords we seem to be looking at the horrifying scenes and the panic. Stricken faces of the people who were dying of starvation, forced labour or torture without mercy upon the skinny body, they died without giving the last words to their kith and kin. How hurtful those victims were when they got beaten with canes, heads of hoes and stabbed with knives or swords before their last breath went out. How bitter they were when seeing their beloved children, wives, husbands, brothers or sisters were seized and tightly bound before being taken to the mass grave!

While they were waiting for their turn to come and share the same tragic lot.

The method of massacre which the clique of Pol Pot criminals was carried upon the innocent people of Kampuchea cannot be described fully and clearly in words because the invention of this killing method was strangely creul so it is difficult for us to determine who they are for: They have the human form but their hearts are demon’s hearts, they have got the Khmer face but their activities are purely reactionary. They wanted to transform Campuchean people into a group of persons without reason or a group who knew and understood nothing, who always bent their heads to carry out Ankar’s orders blindly. They had educated and transformed young people and the adolescent whose hearts are pure, gentle and modest into odious executioners who dared to kill the innocent and even their own parents, relatives or friends.

They had burnt the market place, abolished monetary system, eliminated books of rules and principles of national culture, destroyed schools, hospitals, pagodas and beautiful monuments such as Angkor Wat temple which is the source of pure national pride and bears the genius, knowledge and intelligence of our nation.

They were trying hard to get rid of Khmer character and transform the soil and wateres of Kampuchea into a sea of blood and tears which was deprived of cultural infra-structure, civilisation and national character, became a desert of great destruction that overturned the Kampuchean society and drove it back on the stone age. 

My heart goes out to the innocent victims who had suffered and died during the cruel years of Pol Pot regime.