Phnom Penh

So today we did all of the touristy and very depressing things to do in Phnom Penh.
Cambodia suffered through a horrible civil war and went straight into a mass genocide by the political party known as the Khmer Rouge. Led by a man named Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge killed 2 million Cambodian people from 1975-1979. The idea was to build a socialist society of farmers and to start life over at year zero. Pol Pot and his regime killed all educated Camodians. Anyone who thought for themselves was killed and only those who were easily rainwashed were left. If you were a farmer you were "safe" because you were uneducated. However, under the Khmer Rouge conditions thousands of the farmers died of starvation.

Today we visited two integral parts of the Khmer ROuge movement. We went to S-21 an old HIgh school the the KR took over and used as a housing and tofture chamber for the people that were going to be executed in the killing fields. The rooms were either filled with torture instruments or made up of jailike cells where people were interrogated for months. The most educated people were held for about 6-7 months before they were sent off to the killing fields for execution. IN 4 years over 20,000 prisoners of s-21 were sent to the killing fields. of the 20,000 that stayed there only 7 survived.

It;s crazy to think that such travesty happened only 28 years ago. It means taht everyone living in Cambodia now knows someone who was in or died in the genocide. Our tour guide's uncle was killed in the genocide, but his parents "luckily"were farmers and survived (barely) even though they were separted and placed in different farm fields for 4 years. INsane.

The Killing Fields were crazy. there were mass graves that housed over 450 bodies. The victims were placed in a line and executed sometime up to 300 people at a time. And they were done do brutally as the use of a bullet was considered a waste on the people. They killed them by slitting their thraots of beating them to death. The babies (all children and babies of educated people were also exectued) were killed by having their heads hit against a large tree trunk. IT is possible the most grusome thing I have ever seen. the momement taht is for rememrance houses more skulls then you can imagine. It was rainging and the tour guide said that when it rains, bones and old rage of clothing come up from the ground. Sure enough we saw many bones on the walking paths.... very scary.

After a long day, it is really hard to feel in a happy mood knowing that everyone in this country was effected for a mass murdering leader. Pol Pot died in 1998 of old age... so he was never even convicted of war crimes and denyed his involvement until the day he died... isnt that insane?

Anyways tomorrow we are going to go on a walking tour of the city and see the royal palace... A little less depressing! I miss and love everyone very much xoxoxo