During this period the entire population of Cambodia was ordered to report to the countryside and placed into slave labor of work camps and farming communities. Any civilian that was of middle or upper class society at the time were either killed or tortured to make sure they were not against the new government. The lowest class of people in Cambodia that mainly consisted of farmers were considered the "ideal" citizen of the new government and were thus put into important roles to look after all the enslaved other people. For 4 years the Pol Pot regime "AKA" the Khmer Rouge committed genocide on the people of Cambodia and uprooted everyone from normal life and robbed them of all there freedoms. This included taking all money and valuables from there people, placing them in horrible living conditions, sending away young children and teens to work camps to be placed into the army, permission to rape any women that flaunts her body, enslaving them to farm food for the government and only being allow a minimal amount of food for themselves, and separating men and women into different camps.
The first place we visited was in downtown Phenom Phen to an enslavement camp. This elementary school turn torture jail was used during the 4 years of the Khmer Rouge rise to power and is now the genocide history museum of Cambodia.
Occupants were enslaved and tortured only to be killed in the most inhuman ways. As a document to the jail, there is a local artist that is featured recalling all of his memories of the time. Here are a few of his works...
And below is a torture chamber used to beat inmates into submission.
Pretty depressing huh. I will say at this point to let you relax from the horrifying info i have given you thus far that I think it is very important to learn about the past history of our world (bad or good) in an effort to stop this from ever happening again. I do get very depressed especially having been there, but i just hope that at some point our society as a whole has moved past this horrific part of history. The people of Cambodia were promised alot as they first thought the Khmer Rouge soldiers were trying to help them escape from the "Youn's" of Vietnam. The overall thought was that Vietnamese were a very immoral people, and yet the government of Cambodia was just brainwashing their own people into believing it.
The 2nd part of our day, we drove out into the countryside of Cambodia to "the Killing Fields". Upon arrival you are greeted by a large mosque and dedication to those who lost there lives here during the genocide years. At first glance you think it is a very peaceful building.
It is a little more horrifying and surreal when you step into the building. Each level of the structure holds the remains of heads and bones of those that died here and were NOT even buried. Of the ones that were buried, they were simply shot and placed into mass graves sometimes with 300-500 bodies. The total amount of people that lost there lives in this 4 year bit of history was more than 300,000. Which was almost 1/4 of all Cambodians in 1980.
It didn't even hit me as to how depressing and horrible this was, until you walk around the grounds. Most of the land is unchanged from the original process of children getting dragged away from there parents, and being tortured and killed. For the most part you are just looking at empty holes in the ground and lots of clothes scattered around the ground.
This tree was used to beat people and hang them from it with nooses. The site of seeing so many clothes scattered just is evidence of how scared the men, women, and children were when they came here. Striped of all basic comforts and freedoms of the best this world has to offer and allowed to die because government power and paranoia got the best of the Khmer Rouge.
I have spent alot of long nights thinking about this tragic note in all of our history. And the reason it matters to those of us in the western world is because this could happen to any society no matter how well civilized we think we are.
I just got done reading a book called "First They Killed My Father" and i really think everyone should read this. When i was in college I took a Genocide course and that course doesn't even begin to explain the horror that you understand when you learn the true facts about this event.
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