Phnom Penh and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge

The capital city of Phnom Penh is big, noisy, and not really my thing. Okay, if you wander around the busy streets a bit, you can actually discover some nice and quiet places, like Street 240, a small alley full of street art and a nice café, or a few peaceful temples. Unfortunately, I had to endure a few days here waiting for my visa for Vietnam.

In Phnom Penh, you can learn a lot about the gruesome history of the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979 and beyond. Under the rule of the Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot, 2-3 million Cambodians were killed, about 1/4 of the total population.

At the Killing Fields, which used to be orchards and a Chinese cemetery, located just outside the city, approximately 17,000 people were brutally executed in secret. To save ammunition, the victims were beaten to death with simple tools and buried in mass graves. Young children were beaten and killed against the so-called Killing Tree. The remains of about 9,000 victims were found on the site, but there are likely many more underground. After rain, bone fragments and clothing are repeatedly brought to the surface.

In the S21 Museum, which operated as the Tuol Sleng torture prison under the Khmer Rouge, you could learn many gruesome details during an audio tour. The prisoners were brutally tortured, forced to make false confessions, and later executed at the Killing Fields. Only 7 of the 17,000 inmates survived the prison.