A Sober Ending
On our last day in Cambodia we spent some time seeing a few things in the city of Phnom Penh. There are many fascinating street scenes along with Independence Monument, monument to King Sihanouk, and the Royal Palace.
We also visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center—both very sobering. Tuol Sleng was originally a secondary school which the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison called “S-21” which was the biggest in Kampuchea Democratic. It was surrounded with a double wall of corrugated irons, surmounted by barbed wires. The classrooms on the ground and first floors were either divided into individual cells or a room for mass detention. Thousands of victims were imprisoned and exterminated. On the top floor of one of the classroom blocks is being converted into a Peace memorial with children’s drawings from Okinawa and from Phnom Penh.
Between 1975 and 1978 about 17,000 men, women, and children who had been detained and tortured at S-21 were transported to the Extermination camp of Choeung Ek. They were often bludgeoned to death to avoid wasting precious bullets.
Much could be said about both places. It is hard to imagine the horrors that went on here only three decades ago. And the West heard very little about it. But it is also hard to realize that there are these sites and horrors all over the world—Holocaust, Uganda and LRA, Rwanda, and now many spots in the Middle East.
-
- Tuol Sleng prison
-
- Tuol Sleng prison
-
- classroom/prison block
-
- cell
-
- prison block with barbed wire
-
- classroom divided into cell
-
- Cambodian drawing for peace
-
- Okinawa drawing for peace
-
- Pagoda memorial at Killing Fields
-
- mass grave
-
- Killing Fields
-
- Killing Tree
-
- skulls
-
- skulls
-
- Buddhist Wat
-
- at the Wat
-
- reclining Buddha
-
- school children
-
- overflowing ox cart
-
- monks
-
- Independence Monument
-
- monument to King Sihanouk
-
- royal palace