Tuol Sleng Prisoners, Phnom Penh

Our experiences in Cambodia have been varied - wonderful, educational and traumatic. Our next stop was Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Here, we were to learn about the horrendous suffering of the Khmer people and how they endured so much during the Khmer Rouge's 'ethnic cleansing' - about 2 million people were tortured, killed, or starved to death - just 30 years ago from 1975-1979. I remember when I was a kid, I saw pictures on telly about Cambodia - pictures of people needing help, suffering from starvation. I was too young to realise the magnitude of their suffering, or more importantly, the cause of it. I had not realised that, like Mao's regime in China, the educated, intelligent people were obliterated after forced labour in the fields (to make Cambodia a strong producer and competitor in rice export). They wanted a nation of people who could/would not think for themselves. At Tuol Sleng - one of the many prisons controlled by the Khmer rouge, people were tortured to death in order to get alleged confessions about plotting with the CIA against the regime. Known as the 'Killing Fields', the people were shipped out of the prisons and the cities to be killed in mass graves. Even now learning about the gruesome details, it is hard to comprehend the atrocities, the pain and suffering. 2 million people! On the same level, if not worse than the Jewish Holocaust in WWII! What is worse is that the western world turned a blind eye. The leaders of the regime never were brought to justice. *Mush