The Killing Fields
Warning: This post contains graphic depictions of violence and suffering against average everyday humans, it’s sad and shocking. It’s also a story that a 91 year old prisoner of the Khmer Rouge and genocide survivor asked me to tell to anyone who would listen.

So I will.

After we arrived in Phnom Penh we met our new Cambodian tour guide and translator, a really great guy 42 years old, married with five kids (got a surprise one during covid) Lives with his wife’s parents in the new part of Phnom Penh. As we walked to see the royal palace I asked him what year he was born and he told me 1980. He then said that his father had died when he was three months old from the injuries he sustained during the interrogations and torture by the Khmer Rouge. Two of his siblings were also killed. I turned to Nigel and said “oh my god, his Dad was tortured to death”. When can you say that you’ve ever said that to anyone?

It was the start of a very emotional day for me.

The Khmer Rouge was a communist political party officially the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Built up in the late 1960s and supported by the Viet Kong, the North Vietnamese and the Chinese Communist party. It was led by a particularly despicable dictator called Pol Pot. Pol Pot believed that Cambodia could become the ultimate Utopia if it followed a very extreme and strict version of Communism. This version of communism meant you all wore the same clothes (black pants , black shirt, black peaked cap and sandals made from old tyres), there was no currency, no one owned any land or anything else and you all went to work 12 hours a day to feed and clothe everyone else. He also knew that you can’t stay in power if people are educated enough to know any better and then form an opposition party. So his theory was to get rid of anyone who was a threat to his regime. He and his top ranking officials started by killing the Buddhist monks who were well educated and highly revered by the people.
In Angkor Wat the Buddhist monks in their orange robes were rounded up and taken to the main square. There as they kneeled on the ground they were shot in the back of the head by Communist China provided guns. There was one surviving witness to this massacre, a monk who had diarrhea and was still in the jungle when it happened. They then piled the bodies into a shallow grave and moved on.

Pol Pot was incredibly racist and xenophobic so the minority races didn’t have a chance. He also didn’t want anyone with an education to come up against him so got rid of them in the the first wave too. You were asked your profession at check points and if you were a doctor, teacher, engineer or anyone with an education you and your family were held at the border. They told you that they needed ‘people like you’. What that meant was an immediate death sentence, as anyone with an education was immediately sent to prison to be tortured and killed.
Our guide’s father lied when asked what his profession was, “a farmer” he said. “I only know farming”. This allowed our guide’s mother and father and four children to pass through the border without capture when Phnom Penh was forcibly evacuated in 1975.

We visited the Tuol Sleng prison, hurriedly created in 1975 from a former school with four classroom buildings surrounding a central courtyard. These buildings are now a genocide museum. Locked in time from 1979 when Phnom Penh was liberated.

The first building A was the interrogation building. We entered a room with an iron bed with shackles on it, a small desk and blood spatters on the floor, and walls and ceiling.
This is where the interrogations for days and sometimes weeks on end would happen. They would use electrocution and boiling water poured on your face to get people to confess that you were part of the CIA. If you denied it they continued with the torture, pouring battery acid down your throat or pulling your toenails out with pliers. If you admitted you were part of the CIA they would ask for the names of all of your relations and friends and then send you that night to the Killing Fields. They would then go and find all your family and friends.

The Killing Fields was an area outside of Phnom Penh where you and hundreds of others were forced to dig a large hole in the ground and then kneel on the edge of it. You were blind folded with your hands behind your back. Then the Khmer Rouge would walk along and smack everyone on the back of the head with a piece of iron and you then fell into the pit. The blow to the head didn’t necessarily kill you so it was more likely you would suffocate from the bodies that were piled on top of you.

As we entered the first torture room our guide started telling a story. Not a generic anyone story of someone at the camp, but the story of his mother and father and siblings throughout that time.
He told how the government told everyone that they had to leave Phnom Penh because the Americans were going to bomb and kill them. That they would only be away for three days so don’t bother taking your belongings (all lies). He told how the people were so happy to be leaving with such incredible support from the government. The photos taken on that day show joy and happiness on their faces as
they left.
He spoke of the days and nights of his family walking, constantly being sent in another direction than where they wanted to go. How his mother carried his sister and held the hand of his brother and his father pulled a cart with the few belongings they had.
Eventually they ended up in their home village surrounded by Khmer Rouge where even after the liberation in 1979 they were still under siege by the guerilla warfare, the land mines and the constant presence of the Khmer Rouge. That’s where his father was captured and tortured and eventually died of his injuries when our guide was three months old.

The torture rooms were also used for medical experiments on people where bleeding to death was one option they used to kill people. They would perform operations with no Anesthesia and remove organs to see what happened to people.
In the torture rooms I started to feel it… the sadness, despair, pain, horror and fear that these rooms held. As we continued through the different buildings I couldn’t shake this horrible feeling in my gut of the sadness the walls and floors had absorbed. I cried the whole time I was there it really affected me. I still cry now when I think about that feeling I had.

The next building was where the prisoners were housed in one of two types of room, the first floor was a tiny cell about the size of a person where you were shackled to the ground. These small cells all had blood on the floor and walls. Varying degrees of pooled blood stains everywhere. The other type of room was one large room where everyone was shackled to each other and then shackled to the floor. They would hose the prisoners down occasionally. But apart from being taken to be interrogated that is where you stayed in silence as it was forbidden to speak or cry or make any noise until they came and got you to go in the truck to the Killing Fields. Of course no one knew where you were being taken , you just disappeared.

The balconies outside the cells were covered in razor wire mainly to stop people being able to commit suicide. One woman still made it though after watching her son being beheaded in the courtyard.
The courtyard is also where New Zealander Kerry Hamill was burned to death after being captured off his yacht. He had been tortured for months prior to being covered in fuel and set alight. He was one of only a handful of foreigners who were housed there and we saw his photo on the wall along with the other foreigners.

There were rooms and rooms of mugshots of scared and terrified people. Cases full of skulls and examples of all the torturing tools. Babies and toddlers were also housed there but the 10-14 year olds were the ones the Khmer Rouge could train easily to kill and torture people so they were recruited immediately and indoctrinated.
Picture this, 10 year olds being taught how to kill and torture and rape. How to tie hands behind a human’s back and lower them head first into sewage. To dunk them in and out multiple times until they confessed to something that they didn’t even really know what they were confessing to.
The prisoners were given a small metal artillery box for a toilet, if they spilled anything these young kid guards would make them lick it up. The whole thing is horrific and sad and sick and only happened 43 years ago.

At the very end we had the opportunity to meet one of only seven survivors of the prison. Chum Mey is 91 years old now and has written a book about his time in the prison which I bought. He also will tell you his story through the interpreter if you want. Prior to the occupation he was a mechanic and was able to fix most things mechanical. He starts by telling how he was captured and blindfolded and brought to the prison. He didn’t know what was happening to his pregnant wife and she didn’t know where he had gone. After three days in the prison the interrogations began and lasted every day for a week. They ripped out his toenail and attached electric wires to his head to shock him. They beat him with metal pipes and wire ropes. Eventually he decided to just make up lies about his time with the CIA, a tactic most people ended up taking. His confession was almost his own death sentence as they didn’t need him anymore after he confessed and gave the names of all his friends and family. That was until the guards found out that he could fix the typewriters that they used for the confessions. He attributes this simple skill to saving his life. However he also spent most days trying to work out how to kill himself but the guards were very careful not to allow that. Chum Mey was imprisoned for three months before Liberation Day.

The day of the Liberation, as most of the guards went through the rooms and killed the last remaining prisoners he just walked free from the gates amid the chaos and so he just kept walking. He didn’t know where to go so he just kept going. About a week after he left he was in a small village and saw his wife with his son who had been born while he was in prison. It was an incredible coincidence and he couldn’t believe it. That night he heard some of the soldiers speaking about the people they had been ordered to kill, he woke his wife and they started to escape. She was shot and killed in the back and the baby was killed too. Chum managed to escape once again but this time without his wife and child.

Chum Mey was one of the lead witnesses in the 2009 trial of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime. After the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia in 1979 it was decided by the people that only the top officials should be punished for what happened in the war. So he went and told his story and eventually the head of the prison was sentenced to 35 years.
No one else including the interrogators, the guards or any of the Khmer soldiers were taken to court. They are still walking free amongst us all today. None of those who actually performed the acts of violence have ever been held to account for anything.

I asked him if he ever felt happiness again afterwards. He said he feels happy to tell his story and wants us to tell the story too. Please tell people in your home country about these horrors and how the Khmer Rouge killed 3 million people in my country. Please tell them everything and please make sure this never happens again.

On the bus afterwards our Cambodian guide came to say that he would leave us with our thoughts for a while but let him know if we have any questions. I told him through sobs of how sorry I was for him and his family. He said “it’s ok, we’ve processed it now and we are at peace”.

That night when Nigel and I were talking about it we both felt that there should have been some retribution to those who actually committed these human rights abuses. How could they just get away with it and carry on a normal life? Where was the justice? How could you carry on living knowing that the person who tortured you and killed your family was living in the building next door? It made no sense to us at all.

I’ll leave you with the final sentences in Chum Mey’s book.

“But I do not condemn the people who tortured me. If they were still alive today and if they came to me, would I still be angry with them? No. Because they were not senior leaders and they were doing what they had to do at the time. I consider them victims like me, because they had to follow other peoples orders. How can I say I would have behaved differently? Would I have had the strength to refuse to kill people, if the penalty was my own death? During the interrogation I was angry but after a long while, learning about that place, understanding that people had to do what they were told to do, I wasn’t angry with them any more. Even the ones who tortured me, they also have parents and family members”.

There is a saying in the Khmer language “If a mad dog bites you, don’t bite it back. If you do then that means you’re mad too”.