The Killing Schools and Killing Fields of Cambodia

Imagine your local school being suddenly surrounded with razor wire, its classrooms turned into rooms for torture and interrogation, its playground a place to string up victims, its back yard a place of hasty execution.

Tuol Sleng was a pleasant neighbourhood school, in a residential area in Phnom Penh. During the Pol Pot reign of terror from 1975 to 1979, it was the main detention and interrogation centre. 14000 Cambodian citizens were incarcerated, and tortured to obtain ‘confessions’. There were many other prisons and places of torture around the country, But Tuol Sleng is in the capital and is the best documented.

Tuol Sleng Prison PP — Tuol Sleng Prison

Today the school is a museum

People walk in silence through the classrooms, where children’s desks of former days were replaced by a bed , shackles and instruments of torture.

Instead of children’s work on the walls, there are hundreds and hundreds of photographs. Each victim was meticulously photographed on entry to the prison, and often again after death.

Among the posters were two New Zealanders

David Thorpe who was a journalist, arrested for being a CIA agent.
Kerry Hamill, brother of Rob Hamill, again arrested and charged with being a CIA agent, after his yacht accidentally sailed into Cambodian waters. His story can be seen on the recent documentary Brother Number One.

Only seven people survived the appalling cruelty of Tuol Sleng.

Two of them are still alive, frail old men, telling their story and selling their books on the site. They have no other means of financial support, in spite of their history.

I have no way of summing up the experience of being at Tuol Sleng, except to say it is inexpressibly sad and haunting. I hope it is has deepened my humanity or understanding,and I hope it is not just a kind of tourism of grief and guilt , like going to Gallipoli or Dachau.

From The Killing School to the Killing Fields

We then drove to the Killing Fields, to see the place where truck loads of prisoners were driven up the Buddhist temple, and killed before daylight, night after night. The area looks like a green park, with pathways between the trees and several hollow areas, some of which were fenced off.

These proved to be full of human bones, the remains of the thousands of Cambodians slaughtered by Pol Pot, in the mid 1970s.

Every time it rains, even now, in this low lying land, more bones rise to the surface , along with fragments of clothing. We saw blue shirts and baby clothes lying half buried in the clay, and pieces of bone and even a tooth.

In the middle of the Killing Fields is a tall tower. You take your shoes off and walk through the glass doors in silence. Reaching four floors high is a pile of human skulls. It is heartbreaking to be there.

The brutality of the Pol Pot years is evident in almost every place we visited.

There was a cave , near Kampot, where a solitary monk keeps an all day vigil to remember the hundreds who were tossed down the deep chasm.

Pol Pot’s aim was to return Cambodia to some sort of peasant utopia. To this end he needed to remove all ‘intellectuals’ from society. All teachers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, anyone with any education, anyone who wore glasses, was detained, tortured and killed. Then their wives, husbands, children, parents and relations were also rounded up, so there was no-one left to tell the story.

‘To kill a plant, you need to pull up the roots as well’.

His genocidal reign lasted three years, eight months and twenty one days . Almost two million people were killed- almost a quarter of the population. Our guides are of the generation who were children in those terrible days, and they all told us stories of their own childhoods.

Pol Pot is long dead, others in his leadership are in prison, some have been granted amnesty ,and are actually members of the ruling party. There is said to be a residue of distrust and corruption in Cambodia today, as it endeavours to rebuild a modern society.

Cambodians in New Zealand

Back in the 1980’s I remember a little family standing at the door of our garage. It was a single garage, converted into a studio, with a kitchen , bathroom, and beds for four.

Very small by New Zealand standards, but prepared with care for the new arrivals. The Parish of St John’s Napier had sponsored a refugee family from Cambodia.

The young Cambodian couple looked in, looked back at us, and asked, ‘Who else will be in here with us?’We assured them it was just for their family, smiles broke out all round, and we started the process of getting to know each other. Their story of forced evacuation from their home, forced work on the land, time in a refugee camp, then acceptance by New Zealand, has stayed with me over the years.

Many New Zealand individuals and groups sponsored Cambodian families over that time.

I was very eager to see Cambodia for myself, to learn how it is rebuilding after the Khmer Rouge era, and to see first hand some of the history. It is tough story, and I found it coloured every thing I saw.

Tourism is a growing source of income in this very poor country. I would encourage anyone with an interest in South East Asia to include a leisurely trip through Cambodia. I travelled with Intrepid, and loved the level of interaction with locals, and the mindful values exhibited by the Intrepid company with whom we travelled.