The Killing Fields

When you arrive at this destination you first notice the austere Buddhist temple that towers over the site, its relative plainness isn't indicative of what might be inside.  But as you walk closer you realize that this is no ordinary temple when you glimpse the tower of skulls stacked to the ceiling inside, thousands in all.   That's when it sets in that you really have arrived at the Choeung Ek Genocide Center.

The temple commemorates the lives of the approximately 20,000 Cambodians who were executed and buried on this site--part of the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge government's genocidal program from 1975-1979 that killed well over 1 million people during that time.  The Yale University Cambodian Genocide Project, for example, estimates that 1.7 million were murdered by the Khmer Rouge government during the period, a number that represented a staggering 21% of the nation's population at the time.  

The Choeung Ek Center is probably the most famous and well-documented extermination center in Cambodia and it is located about 18 km from the capital, Phnom Penh. The Khmer Rouge were ultra-extreme Communists who took over the country in 1975 after a lengthy civil war and exterminated any person who wasn't completely in sync with their radical goals, particularly those who were educated or had any degree of influence, status, or power in previous Cambodian society--even if they had done nothing at all except live their lives. 

There are many places that document human evil or genocide, but the giant tower of skulls at Choeung Ek might be the most chilling display of horror that I have ever witnessed. I have been to German concentration camps, which, of course, are as evil as any place ever conceived, but the Khmer Rouge were not as coldly efficient as the Nazis and slaughtered their victims with axes and hatchets and steel rods and poles, then they were buried in shallow graves, sometimes still alive, not yet dead from their wounds. Today, because of this relatively chaotic slaughter and the remnants left behind, Choeung Ek still feels as though these horrors happened there recently.

Many of the skulls in the temple are affixed with small dots which indicate whether the person who had once belonged to the skull met their demise via ax or pole.  Other dots indicate female and male and the skulls are also arranged in tiers by age group.  When looking at the thousands of skulls staring back at you, there's not much one can do, except say a prayer and make a donation for one of the sticks of incense provided for one to light to commemorate these souls.

A walk around the forested grounds is equally distressing as one goes from one shallow grave to another. When a severe rain hits the forest, it causes old bones and scraps of clothing to emerge as the excavation done at the Choeung Ek Center wasn't ever quite complete.  In my trek around the Center, I spotted bones and pieces of clothing in a few of the graves.  Next to some of the burial sites, there are large, clear plastic boxes where the bones and teeth are placed that are exposed after a deluge.  However, the custodians of the site don't seem to be proactive and some of the boxes have bones stacked on top of them, where people who have found these remains have just simply placed them. These pieces of unknown corpses, still haven't found their final resting place all these years later.

Other atrocities remain in the world's memory, but the Cambodian Genocide seems to be fading from people's minds.  Only a couple fellow international visitors and one small local school group were at the site the same time as me and the entire Center seems to be lacking resources for basic maintenance--only the temple was being kept up, it seemed. 

That's why a person should spend a half a day, taking a bumpy ride in a tuk-tuk from Phnom Penh to go to the Choeung Ek Center: if we forget these atrocities and don't study why they occurred, history will continue its pattern of repeating itself as each human generation seems to sprout further genocide, as if genocide is a permanent human feature of civilization, when it should not be. We must all be aware of those who hold power who scapegoat and look for people to blame for the ills of the world.  Anyone who talks of building walls to keep others out, suggests creating laws against innocent groups of people just for who they are, describes entire populations in a horribly negative light, as being inhuman, burns books containing ideas they find distasteful or against their ideologies--these are the people who often end up perpetrating the kind of evil I saw the result of on this day.  These are the ones who must be stood up against in any society, because any society can disintegrate into creating genocide if singling out various groups isn't strenuously opposed.  

And if you are feeling superior, and say "my country could never do anything like this," well the Cambodians are as kind and peaceable a people as you would ever want to meet, and what happened to them, though a percentage of their society was responsible, this atrocity was brought about in part by the political interference of China, and Vietnam, and the good old U.S.A.  Yes, my government was heavily involved in the Cambodian Civil War that served as a catalyst for this horror, and at times the U.S. even supported the Khmer Rouge, even after these atrocities were committed and after the KR had been deposed, because we were worried about Vietnamese political and military influence in the region and we wanted to leverage the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese.  How horribly evil is that?  So, never forget that the skulls that are sitting piled up to the sky at Choeung Ek are there in part, because my country played a significant role in this horror as well.  

Yes, that's why I visited Choeung Ek.  To remember these souls and my nation's responsibility and to remind myself never to stop opposing those who perpetrate evil by taking the reprehensible actions, such as persecuting specific groups of people, that often lead to genocide and other horrors.

Bones and teeth on display from one of the mass graves.  Bones that people have stumbled across are piled up on top of the display.

Another view of the temple. From a distance, one could never imagine what's inside.

Even on this day, I noticed a bone, just sitting there, in one of the mass graves.

Each mass grave has a sign, telling how many bodies were found there.

More clothing and bones.  It is truly the Killing Fields. Let us never forget what happened there either.

I did not post a picture of all the skulls in the Temple, it just seemed too much.