The beginnings of the Khmer Rouge which led to the mass executions of Cambodians began in 1953. Cambodia declared independence from the French. King Sihanouk was the leader of Cambodia at the time. Cambodia became embroiled in the Vietnam War when bombing raids(secretly done by our good buddy Richard Nixon), by the United States sought to flush out the Viet Cong hiding just over the border in Cambodia. In March 1970 Sihanouk was overthrown. While in exile in Beijing, he set up government in exile that allied itself with a Cambodian revolutionary movement dubbed the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was led by a Cambodian educated in France who studied Marxism, Pol Pot.
According to some of the tour guides that guided us through the Killing Fields and Security Prison 21, the Khmer Rouge convinced the people of Phnom Penh to move to the countryside because the capital would be bombed by the Americans. In 3 days, Phnom Penh went from a bustling city to a ghost town. Once moved out to rural Cambodia most of the people were killed and buried in mass graves. It was the goal of the Khmer Rouge to turn Cambodia into a giant peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative, aka as long as you know nothing we can make you work 12-15 hours per day and keep all the money for ourselves!
Even after Cambodia was liberated in 1979, control of the government and internal civil war continued. The United Nations even gave the Khmer Rouge the Cambodian seat up until 1991. Only just this past year have some sentences been handed down to the worst perpetrators. Most have been in jail since the 80's but not much has been done. The Cambodian government seems to be good at protecting its own. As in the past the rest of us in the world are somehow kept out of the loop and the suffering and killing continues. Sue and I visited Dachau back in 1995. The biggest difference here is that we were alive when this was going on. Our tour guides who are slightly older than us, told us how their families were executed and how they escaped and were on the run as teenagers.
I guess the question we kept asking ourselves was: After the Holocaust how does this continue to happen around the world and people are not held accountable for their crimes?
A memorial stupa was built in the 1990's as a reminder to the many people killed and found in mass graves outside Phnom Penh. It has 17 levels of skulls, other bones and clothing found in mass graves around the Killing Fields.
Here are a few of the levels of remains taken from the mass graves.
Our guide's family was killed at the Killing Fields. He was 17 at the time and luckily escaped. We were in awe that he would come back to The Killing Fields and lead tours and tell his story day after day. Maybe that is his way to deal with the entire situation
Securtiy Prison 21 is located in Phnom Penh. Prisoners were interrogated here. A sign with the following instructions is found at the prison:
1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
Most of the prisoners knew anything that could help the revolution but were interrogated over and over anyways. Then they were sent to The Killing Fields where they were executed.
A typical prisoner's cell.
A few more pieces of information about the prison from Wikipeida.
Almost all non-Cambodians had left the country by early May 1975, following an overland evacuation of the French Embassy in trucks. The few who remained were seen as a security risk. Though most of the foreign victims were either Vietnamese or Thai,[5] a number of Western prisoners also passed through S-21 between April 1976 and December 1978. They were mostly picked up at sea by Khmer Rouge patrol boats. They included four Americans, three French, two Australians, a Briton and a New Zealander. Several dozen Vietnamese, Thais, Laotians, Indians, Pakistanis and Arabs were detained in the prison at various times. No foreign prisoners survived captivity in Tuol Sleng.
Most prisoners at S-21 were held there for two to three months. However, several high-ranking Khmer Rouge cadres were held longer. Within two or three days after they were brought to S-21, all prisoners were taken for interrogation.[1] The torture system at Tuol Sleng was designed to make prisoners confess to whatever crimes they were charged with by their captors. Prisoners were routinely beaten and tortured with electric shocks, searing hot metal instruments and hanging, as well as through the use of various other devices.
Formerly the Chao Ponhea Yat High School,[1] named after a Royal ancestor of King Norodom Sihanouk, the five buildings of the complex were converted in August 1975, four months after the Khmer Rouge won the civil war,[2] into a prison and interrogation center. The Khmer Rouge renamed the complex "Security Prison 21" (S-21) and construction began to adapt the prison to the inmates: the buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes.
From 1975 to 1979, an estimated 17,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng (some estimates suggest a number as high as 20,000, although the real number is unknown). At any one time, the prison held between 1,000–1,500 prisoners. They were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured and killed. In the early months of S-21's existence, most of the victims were from the previous Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc
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