Phnom Penh - Cambodia’s Very Dark Past

My next stop was the capital, Phnom Penh, with the main purpose to learn more about Cambodia's dark days during the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975-1979, in which 1.5m-2m people - almost 25% of the population - were killed by the regime.

Khmer Rouge’s ideology was to create a communist agricultural system, in which everyone that was not a farmer or handyman or useful to the regime's goal (i.e. artists, intellectuals, teachers, or anyone just wearing glasses, etc) was tortured and murdered. In particular torture was a popular method during this genocide and even kids and babies were not sparred from the sick ideology.

Anyway, in Phnom Penh, I visited two places that are infamous for what the Khmer Rouge did - the S21 prison and the Killing Fields.

The tour started with a visit to the S21 prison, a former school, which was repurposed to torture people into confessing (a lot did not even know why they were imprisoned) under the harshest circumstances (not making a noise during torture or it continues, prevention of prisoners committing suicide so that they can be tortured even more, etc). Those that confess (or do not) were then brought to the nearby killing fields for execution. S21 had a total of between 14,000 to 17,000 prisoners, of which only 12 survived!

Some of the methods were just unbelievably inhumane (cutting holes in multiple prisoners hands and put a rope through them to prevent escape/suicide or cutting their throats with a bamboo as bullets were too expensive).

The by far most shocking and horrifying method I saw, however, was how innocent babies and children were killed. At the Killing Fields there is a tree from which now lots of colourful bracelets hang - the killing tree, where babies and small children were taken by their legs, swung with their heads smashing against the tree - I mean, how can human-beings do anything like that. How sick!

It is difficult to put into words the feelings I had during those visits, but they are important - however uncomfortable they are.

Horrible things like this should never be forgotten in history and always remembered as a stark warning to future generations - unfortunately, things do repeat as I have seen in Rwanda's genocide that came 20 years after Cambodia's. That should be enough of genocides for this trip, I hope!

After such an emotional half day, it was time to process everything and have a quiet day at the hostel before heading to the beautiful island of Koh Rong the next day for some chill and relax time.Read more