Cheong Ek: The Killing Fields
From the horrifying Tuol Sleng we headed to Cheong Ek, 15km southeast Phnom Penh. This is the site (now a memorial) where all the victims of Tuol Sleng being executed by the Khmer Rouge after the gruesome interrogation.
On our way to Cheong Ek. It was just 11.00am, but the temperature here was already hitting 34 degrees celcius.
Green vegetation lined along the dusty and bumpy road, cool to the eyes amidst the hot and dry weather.
After the tiring 30 minutes journey under the unforgiving sun, we finally arrived at the memorial. The place was quiet and there were not so many people around excepts for a bunch of tourists (including us). We got ourselves an entrance tickets and added another USD3 for the audio tour. The audio guide is highly recommended – they are informative and poignant, and the tour would be less meaningful without them. Apart from detail description of the burial sites and distressing extermination procedures, we learned a great deal about the beginning of the atrocity ruling of the Communist Party of Kampuchea a.k.a the Khmer Rouge and their ideology, that led to the massacre of nearly half of Cambodia population.
Unfortunately, Cheong Ek was not the only killing field that ever existed in Cambodia; there are many of such place scattered throughout the country (tiny red spots indicate the killing fields while yellow is the marker for the security prisons). Hours after Khmer Rouge seized to power, the civilians were forced to evacuate the cities. People were classified, segregating the peasants and the intelectuals. The latter were asked to identified themselves and were told that they were welcomed to help build the nation. However in reality the Khmer Rouge hidden agenda was to deliberately and systematically destroyed all the potential threats, as well as the racial, religion and social ranks in order to establish a uniform agricultural-based working class. So obsessed the Khmer Rouge with their mission that anyone seen as educated, even those who were wearing glasses or just having a ’smooth hand’ were not being spared. These were the people who’s life ended at the many security prisons and killing fields.
Entering the compound, the path led us to a lone stupa in a middle of well-groomed lawn, and we stopped at each audio spot for debriefing.
The audio tour took us past the stupa and arrived at the yard with explaination signposts littering the area. Where we stand is the exact location whereby the ill-fated prisoners were kept pending execution.
Usually, the victims were taken to this site from Tuol Sleng by a truck in the middle of the night; all bound, blind-folded, silent and terrified. They were then made to kneal on the verge of a shallow pit and bludgeoned to death almost immediately one after another (imagine a production line of mass murder). Their lifeless body were then kicked into the hole, piling up over each other. Chemical substances were poured afterwards to eliminate the stench, and to ensure that nobody survives the attack. As Khmer Rouge grew more paranoid each day, the number of prisoners increasing tremendously and unable to be executed at once. They were then detained in a dark cell while waiting to be killed the next day. Most of the buildings in the area, including the detention cells have been torn down by raged citizens when the place was discovered after the fall of the Polpot regime.
Tourists listened intently to the audio under the shades of some wiggling tree in the compound of the memorial. Some of them shed a silent tears.
As ammunition was expensive and the victims too many, crude weapons were used to beat the innocent to death as to save precious bullets.
With the headphone still stuck to our ears, we treaded lightly over the grass to the excavated burial sites.
We were delivered to the first mass grave of 450 victims, the largest ever found.
A recent downpour filled up the cavity of the makeshift grave, leaving a muddy puddle. A shelter was built encompasing the area to avoid further exposure of what buried underneath.
Out of 129 identified mass graves, only 43 have been excavated while the rest remain buried. Fragments of the victims such as bones and clothing often resurface from these untouched sites especially after heavy rain.
A tooth found lying under dry leaves and dead twigs.
The place was once an orchard and a Chinese cemetary before Khmer Rouge took over the land and turned it into a killing zone. Some of the gravestones could still be seen.
We walked uncomfortably from one grave site to another despite the serene surrounding, realizing that we were actually traversing the same footpath of the doomed prisoners. We finally came to a grave by a tree where hundred of children and women were slaughtered. No life was spared at Cheong Ek; even the harmless kids and babies perished by Khmer Rouge rampage madness. It is no surprise as Polpot’s favourite slogans run something like these :
“To dig up a grass one must remove even the root” and;
“Better to kill an innocent by mistake, rather than spare an enemy by mistake”
Colorful ribbons and wristbands were tied to the fences barricading the area; an offering and prayers to those innocent souls. May they rest in peace.
As children and babies were too small to handle, they were usually smashed to death against this very tree. Bones and human tissues were found stuck on the bark and scattered on the grass when the place was discovered in 1980.
It was a peaceful place, the memorial; and it is hard to imagine that such tragedy had befallen here. The grass were green and well-kept, the birds chirping happily and occassionally you could spot butterflies fluttering around. Pieces of victims clothing and broken bones that crop out from the earth were the only reminder of its horror past.
A tourist seen corresponding with village kids, separated by the gate of the killing fields. Perhaps she was trying to see the whole thing from a local perspectives.
This is the tree where they hung a loud speaker with revolutionary songs blaring at full blast as to drown out the screams of the victims.
We ended up back at the stupa at the end of our audio tour, and solemnly entered the building.
Enclosed inside the claustrophobic stupa are the skull of the victims found during the excavation. They were stack in tiers, 17 levels altogether and arranged based on age and gender. Most of them were broken, a result of the deathly blow.
Cloths of the victims were kept on the lowest tier as keepsake.
I threw one last look at the stupa as we walked out of the compound at the end of our tour, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. The visit to Cheong Ek completes our harrowing journey of Cambodia pasts, but yet something did not feel right. This tour was not right. Deep down inside I’ve this heavy feeling that the victims were still injustified; perhaps no more by the Khmer Rouge, but by commercialization of their pain and death. Revenues are being generated each day by manipulating people sympathies. On a brighter side the site provides an insight to those who seek to understand the enormity of the Cambodian history. However based on my humble opinion, I honestly think that these people deserves proper burials instead of being displayed like props and to be gawked by passing tourists. Pictures I presume, should be enough.
