Killing Fields

Another early start as we are going to the Killing Fields today. So another day of reflecting life as we have it.

The Cambodian Killing Fields are one of a number of sites in Cambodia where millions of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970–1975). The mass killings are widely regarded as part of a broad state sponsored genocide.

Estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a 1975 population of roughly 8 million. In 1979, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime.

A UN investigation reported 2–3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed. Demographic analysis suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed. Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion. By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to "the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot", who were saved by international aid after the Vietnamese invasion.

What is also very interesting: on the cruise one of the passengers is actually part of the UN contingent assisting in genocide tribunal.

The morning was so sad it makes you really think about how greed and power ruins lives.Read more