Journeys by Jordan: Jan. 8 2012 - S21 Prison and The Killing Fields

Jan. 8, 2012 - S-21 Prison and The Killing Field

Alene and I met a girl in our hostel and together we hired a tuk-tuk to take us around town on a tour of the S-21 Prison and The Killing Fields.

Though, first thing first, we stopped for breakfast at a little restaurant near the prison. Here we ordered coffee. Now its been a trend so far that you can have sweet condensed milk or regular milk with you coffee around here. The condensed milk makes your almost like a dessert, so yum! We just wanted regular milk today. Seems that the Cambodian translation for regular milk is "breast milk". We he offered us "breast milk" with our coffee all 3 of us went silent and I know we had to of had confused looks on our faces. After a short silence I assumed this was a badly translated way of saying regular milk and accepted his offer of "breast milk". Then we laughed...a lot. This wasn't the only time we have been offered breast milk with our coffee. I'm really hoping its a bad translation and not really breast milk.

WARNING: THIS NEST PART IS A BIT GRAPHIC AND VERY UPSETTING

After our entertaining breakfast we entered the prison.

A little background on the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was a communist party that took over Cambodia in 1975. They ruled until the Vietnamese took over in 1979. In that time they conducted one of the most radical changes a society ever attempted. All citizens were forced out of the cities and into the countryside to work the fields. Things like education, teaching, money etc were outlawed. In the 4 year rule a mass genocide of almost 2 million people took place, close to half the population of Cambodia at that time. You could be killed simply because you spoke a different language or wore glasses (a sign of intelligence apparently). Thousands of people were imprisoned for the most frivolous of things and tortured until admitting to false charges against the Khmer Rouge.

The S-21 Prison was one of the most infamous of those prisons where people were wrongfully imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. The visit was surreal. The buildings themselves once housed school children. But since education was outlawed the grounds were turned into a dark place of horrors. Whole floors were sectioned off into tiny prison cells that barely house a human. Or there were larger rooms where rows of people were shackled together and left laying on the floors. There was evidence of torture all around. Some rooms were empty aside from a bed and a metal box for excrement and shackles to bind people to the bed. Glass was put into the windows to muffle the screams of the people inside. The Khmer Rouge kept a meticulous log of all the people going through the prison. Pictures, names, ages etc were kept along with all the false confessions due to torture. The day they took over the borders were closed and no one was allowed to enter or leave. This included foreigners. They too were imprisoned, tortured, forced to confess to crimes they did not commit, and then murdered. There were only 5 known survivors of the prison. And these people only managed to stay alive due to their skills as painters or mechanics. Things the Khmer Rouge found useful within the prison. They were not freed until the Vietnamese took over in 1979.

The people did a great job of turning the grounds into a museum. Pictures that the Khmer Rouge took lined the walls and partitions. Rows upon rows of people that died at the hands of these evil rulers. The survivor stories were on display. Examples of the torture and living conditions were shown. And even pictures of the 14 bodies left behind in various amount of decay were on display. When the Vietnamese soldiers took over the prison these people were buried in the the courtyard. Their graves and the memorial stand.

After the prison we headed out to an area known as The Killing Fields. It is what is sounds like it would be. They were told they were being sent to work assignments it was actually a place where people were sent to die. While playing national music over loud speakers blind folded people would be lead to pits. One by one they would be bludgeoned or beat against a tree and tossed into the pit. If the bludgeoning didn't kill you the chemicals to cover the smell did. Thousands of people died here. Men, women, children (they didn't want them coming back to seek revenge), and foreigners. Even defected soldiers were brought here to be murdered and buried.

The focal point and in the middle of the field is a huge tower with glass windows. The tower has 17 levels and houses thousands of the skulls that have been dug up from the mass graves. They are sorted by gender and approximate age and if you look closely you can see the gouges in the skulls.