I didn't feel like taking any pictures, but two days ago I hopped on the back of a motorbike (a really nice way to see the countryside, I kind if want a motorbike now :D ) and rode the 15km to Choeung Ek (The Killing Fields) and then over to Tuol Sleng (S-21), the high school that was converted into a prison and torture centre where Pol Pot and his army got his fellow Cambodians to admit to false crimes, then took them to Cheoung Ek and killed them and their families (to ensure no one would seek revenge at a later date) to create a race of followers that were fit for labor (he wanted to triple rice production). To achieve this, Pol Pot and his army killed people with glasses, physical or mental disabilities, monks, educated people, women and children. They were tortured in disgusting ways (how human beings are capable of this I will not understand) and then lead to believe they were moving to a new home when in fact they we're taken to Cheoung Ek to be slaughtered. Bullets were expensive and so they used blunt force and any other available means such as garden tools and nails and then threw the bodies into pits (some still alive), covering them with DDT to finish them off and mask the stench. To kill the babies, they swung them by their feet into tree trunks and then threw them into the pits alongside their mothers.
Nothing is worth this much suffering, not if it happens to one person, let alone the thousands of people that lost their families, we're tortured and starved and then beaten to death - especially not politics. And though I recognize that much of the outside world had no idea what was going on at the time - and that fear (of not joining the movement and becoming one of the tortured) was a powerful driver - I find it inconceivable that this happened during the 21st century and nothing was done to stop it.
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