S-21 prison and the Killing Fields

I don't know why exactly I decided to go to the killing fields, followed by a visit to the S-21 prison today, but I did. I think part of it is because I want to be a better person, and part of being a better person is enlightening yourself to what atrocities others have gone through. With that being said, today you're going to get a history lesson.

In April 1975 the Khmer Rouge regime took over power in Cambodia. You do realize that was only 36 years ago right!? During the four years that they were in control of the country they killed thousands and thousands of Cambodians. Simply because they wanted all the people of Cambodia to be ignorant and submissive, who would bow to whatever the regime wanted the country to do.

During these 4 years they converted what was once a school into their base of offices and prison, S-21. They would torture people mercilessly before transporting them to a remote place where they would finally kill them and dump them into mass graves, the killing fields. It's hard enough to imagine one human being treating another like that, much less someone of the same ethnicity. I thought of Hitler and the Jews, and in this case, it was fellow country men. Men, women and children, it didn't matter. Their thought was that if they killed the entire family, there would be no one left to survive and get revenge. They would take babies and hold them by the feet/legs and swing them against a tree to kill them and there was a painting showing soldiers throwing babies into the air and shooting them as if doing target practice.

There were only 7 people that survived the thousands that they abducted during the 4 years! And the only reason they survived is because they had skills that the regime wanted to use, i.e. painter, photographer, etc. I don't want to get into more details about what happened as it's all pretty gruesome and you can easily find information online.

I'm amazed I hadn't heard anything about this on the news, because they just had the hearings and gave a sentence this last July to Duch; the highest ranked living person still living from the regime.