Saturday, September 15, 2007

Phnom Penh-The Killing Fields




'To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.' This motto of The Khmer Rouge, under the rule of their leader Pol Pot, was the regime's justification for the deaths of over 2 million people in Cambodia between 1975-1979. Today I visited the site of many of these executions, the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre, better known as The Killing Fields on the outskirts of the nation's capital, Phnom Penh. Around 9000 bodies were taken from the ground here in 1980, at which stage the extractions ceased. Many of the bodies buried here were the educated people of the city, whom Pol Pot , (referred to locally as Ta Mok, or 'The Butcher) saw as the greatest threat to the success of his dictatorship.

Words cannot describe the feeling as you walk into these grounds.
Coming home I ran into a Phnom Penh traffic jam.

The guy on the fron of the truck weighs the recycling people give him, then he pays them for it. Brilliant.


View from my new pad.

3 comments:

rob said...

You are doing it!It didn't take you long to get into travelling mode already with beard and shades. By the time you get to Tibet/Nepal you'll be a guru.Storm to play Eels, Manly play Cowboys who whipped the 'Dogs 49-12

Stephen said...

Up Manly!!!

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry to say, "Up Manly" was correct!! They got hammered by Melbourne Storm - go the storm......