Previously a Chinese graveyard regarded as a 'quiet' place to commit genocide, The Killing Fields was an area just outside of Phnom Penh where the despot Khmer Rouge and his henchman Pol. Pot slaughtered men, women and children no more than 40 years ago - people considered politically unsound or of a different viewpoint (sound familiar all good psychos think alike!). The place was disquieting as there were still bones in the earth we were treading and our tour leader had close family (father, brother and sister) murdered under the regime! His story was unbelievable and it was hard to think the atrocities had been committed so recently. Unfortunately, Cambodia's dark past is still widely unknown in the general world and I wonder why this is?
S21 was a high school coverted into a prison camp where the inmates were beaten and tortured to death. Many of the officers in charge were teenagers which had been brainwashed into thinking what they were doing was okay. They started by killing animals and then moved onto killing humans. Touring these places was very intense and it was a very dark day.
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