S21 and The Killing Fields

As the first few weeks were very busy I put off going to S21 and the Killing Fields for a while but finally got around to it on Sunday. This worked out rather well as over the past couple of months I’ve heard a number of bits and pieces about the atrocities committed during the Khmer Rouge which I think probably lessened the shock a little. That said I doubt any amount of knowledge about what had happened could really prepare you for the horrors depicted at these two places. While I had heard a few people’s say that they had lost family during the rule of the Khmer Rouge the enormity of these crimes were like a surreal story that didn’t seem entirely real. It wasn’t until seeing the rooms with beds and shackles still in them, the tiny makeshift cells that it would be inhumane to keep animals in and the torture tools used to elicit confessions that it really started to seem real.
I found it amazing how the sheer number of photo’s of the people committed to S21 meant that while they were chilling it was difficult to imagine them entirely as people with family, hopes and emotions that suffered greatly within the buildings. It was as if there were so many that they become the numbers they were labelled with rather than complete people. It wasn’t until reading reports from some of the few survivors of S21 that they became fleshed out and the sense of suffering really hit home.
I found the same thing in the Stupa of skulls at the killing fields. The enormous number meant that it was almost like looking at a horrific statistic. If anything I found the clothes piled underneath more troubling as they seemed much more personal and also acted as a reminder how recent these atrocities were committed.
Both these places were absolutely horrific and I am sure I am not going to forget seeing teeth lying on the ground at the killing fields of the paintings depicting the torture methods at S21 in a hurry. But I am so pleased I visited them as Russ, Mikaila and I discussed we hear a lot about the horrors of the Nazi regime but almost nothing about the mass torture and slaughter committed by the Khmer Rouge only 30 years ago. It seems this is an important reminder that the most horrific crimes against humanity are not really a thing of the past but could still be committed by another irrational and paranoid regime without the rest of the world really knowing. As much as this is an extreme case it seems to raise concerns about any secretive and oppressive governments for the slight possibility that such horrors could occur again.