The Khmer Rouge

As you can see on my pictures i've visited The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng museum. The Killing Fields is a site south of Phnom Phen where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge.

The Tuol Sleng Museum was a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge.

For the ones who are interested, I wrote a little summary of the horror Khmer Rouge brought to Cambodja.

The Khmer Rouge was the name given to the followers of the communist party of Kampucha, who were the ruling party in Cambodja from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot and 4 other generals.

So communism, everyone had to be the same and have the same. So they made all the people of the city move to the country side. They wanted a agricultural reformation. The real farmers were the models of there perfect society. They were pure and were not badly influenced by the capitalism. As a result they had more power and were threated better than the city people. So communism?

In their new society there was only room for the perfect uninfluenced people. Khmer Rouge cadres would look for any excuse to kill new people. If you spoke French, you would die. If you were educated, you would die. If you wore glasses, you would die. And just killing them wasn't enough. They were first brutely tortured in the Security Prison 21.

The organisation wanted absolute self-sufficiency. The people only ate what they grew on the land. There wasn't any medicin unless the one's they made themself. So many people died of fever or hunger. Even if there was enough food, the Khmer Rouge used a lot of it to trade with China for weapens.

They didnt believe in family relationships, because they thought parents take advantage of their children. Children were brought to work camps and molded into fanatical communists. Young children were also seen as being pure. From an early age children were propagandized and brainwashed - even their parents might become their worst enemies.

And then to believe the people in Phnom Phen cheered at the Khmer Rouge soldiers the first time they drove into town, because they believed it was the end of the war. They had no idea the wurst part still had to begin.

By the time the Vietnamees conquered the Khmer Rouge, they had allready killed two million people, which is 1/4 of the population.

And even then the horror didnt stop for the Cambodians. Parents went to look for their children, and ignored the land, which had even more famine as a result. The Vietnamese were seen as the good ones, but there are stories about cambodian girls being raped by them, ... and so on and so on.

I always thought that Auswitch was the wurst place i ever visited. I did not see this coming. Visiting the Tuol Sleng museum was really confronting. Going in those rooms where they tortured all those people.. They have rooms full of pictures of the prisoners. I have never seen so much fear in people's eyes.

And it is just 30-40 years ago so every single cambodian can tell you horror stories about his family.

If you see Phnom Phen now you would never guess his past. But in the bus to Siem Reap you pass the country side, the little villages, the huts, ... That really grabs you by the throat.