Journey to Peace Village

Between 1975 -1979 the Pol Pot Regime killed almost 3 million Cambodians. I visited one of the chief concentration camps, known as "S-21."

S-21 was the chief camp in Phnom Penh, the capital city. During the early days of Khmer Rouge rule, the population was forced to evacuate the city and made to labor in the countryside. In the ghost town, S-21 became a place of horror and hopelessness.

Almost 20,000 adults died at S-21 and an equal number of children. Anyone suspected of opposing the paranoid Pol Pot was murdered. Women and children were brought to the center, photographed, and taken to "the killing field" where they were clubbed and then had their throats slit. Men were tortured and forced to confess to their crimes. As time went on, the machinery of death became more efficient, the victims were numbered, with special shaped badges indicating the group, and in the last year the badges were both numbered and dated. Up to 800 people a day were killed.

A visit to S-21 is a poem of sorrow. You see pictures of those who were murdered, and shed tears for the victims, many of who were very young. Guards were anywhere from 14-20 and one wonders how a teeeager could commit such horrible crimes.

Our guide was a 43 year old Cambodian woman. She was separated from her family at 10 years old and forced to work in the fields. Workers where given 3 spoonsful of rice gruel a day, twice a day. Her mother died during the time the family was separated and she couldn't remember how to read by the time the Pol Pot era ended.

I didn't know what to say to her.

Labels: Cambodia, genocide, Khmer Rouge, Phnom Penh