A museum is designed to inform and enlighten. Museum exhibits can empower and evoke. Have you ever attended a museum that featured several placards bearing the words “don’t step on bone”? Until yesterday I hadn’t. The killing fields here in Cambodia still possess the horrors effected by the Khmer Rouge during the 1970’s.
Victims clothing and bone fragments are still being unveiled as the rain churns the soil and delivers another permanent reminder that the fields near the capital Phnom Penh are the resting place of thousands of men, women and children, all of whom had been tortured at the nearby S21 prison before being committed to death in the most barbaric and hideous manner.
Don’t Step on Bone Fragments!
On arrival at the killing fields each visitor is presented with a headset which provides an audio commentary of each segment of the grounds. Consequently the fields are silent – nobody speaks as they immerse themselves in the graphic audio description being fed into their shocked brains. The heavy traffic that creeps through the nearby capital city does not audibly pollute the fields because of its distance.
Impact on the Visitors
A sombre and constant trickle of bodies amble slowly through the small expanse of land that comprises one of humanities more mournful nightmares. Nobody wants or needs to speak or communicate. Instead, each individual is left to absorb and process a genocide that liquidated more than 3 million people in just 4 years. For many, the mass murder is overwhelming. Their silent faces reflect the brutality of the graves beneath them. Some people are more emotional; tears trickle down their cheeks. For most visitors, the horror feels like a rusty dagger slicing through them and wrenching their guts from within.
Killing Fields and the Scars They Have Left Behind
Why such horror you may ask? One poignant feature separates the Khmer Rouge atrocities from prior dictatorial regimes. The fields, the prisons, the victims and the survivors represent a recent history; international trials are being conducted as I write, attempting to condemn to prison those responsible for genocide.
Survivors of the Khmer Rouge are scarred, disfigured and emotionally disturbed. Fragments of victims are still being uncovered in the killing fields, the prisons still stand, some untouched. Each key feature represents a wound that is healing, but as it heals it erupts once more and begins to ooze blood. The horrors that symbolise Khmer society are in living memory unlike some of the previous genocides of the turbulent 20th Century. The visitors feel like they can extend their fingertips and touch the victims.
Torture Victim Images in S-21
Some of the photographs in the notorious S21 prison evoke muddled but grim and nauseating sentiments. Some prisoners on being photographed on entry smile for the camera unaware that they will be incarcerated for approximately 2 – 3 months and subjected to permanent torture tactics before being transferred to the killing fields for execution. Within minutes of the click of the camera the grim reality would envelope them like a black mist, and would only dissipate again once their bodies had perished. Other prisoners were aware of the grisly reputation of S21. Fear is detectable in their faces. They are awaiting torture and death and they know and comprehend their fate. Only 7 of approximately 14,000 thousand prisoners survived. Just two are still alive today. I experienced the privilege of meeting them both.
On closure of S21, 14 remaining victims were discovered. In some of the individual cells, the original beds remain. On the wall, a solitary photograph depicting a victim. His battered and mutilated body left to rot. But probably the more poignant aspect of the entire experience is what has become known as the ‘killing tree’.
The Killing Tree at the Killing Fields!
The killing tree is instantly identifiable. It’s adorned with gifts left by tourists. For the killing tree was used by Khmer soldiers to swing small babies by their legs and smash their skulls against the hard uncompromising bark, normally in front of their mothers who were then raped, slowly killed and tossed into a mass grave. On discovery of the killing tree, a local man who was searching for food conveyed how blood, bone fragments and skin were molded into its bark. This ungodly feature of the killings fields provokes more reaction than the thousands of skulls and bones of victims contained in the commemorative Stupa.
One last thought. I finished reading a book yesterday called The Boy in Striped Pajamas. Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at Auschwitz concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence leads to both Bruno and his friend Shumel perishing in the death camp. The book concludes with these words which I would like to reproduce here:
“Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age.”
Well, could it?
For more information visit this website: www.killingfieldsmuseum.com/