Today we visited the killing fields and S.21, the headquarters for the Khmer Rouge where they tortured and murdered 17,000 people.

 

Arriving at the Killing Field, it was hot, and we payed our 2 dollars a person to get in. I had been told that there was a display of 8000 skulls, so I was looking for that. Then I realized that it was in the tall building in front of me. skull upon skull. All of them dirty and haunting. All of them were screaming at me. The holes where their eyes had once been were panic stricken as the life was sucked out of them 30 years ago. These people were not killed nicely. They were unloaded off a truck and brought to a previously dug hole and beaten, shot, or stabbed. Then the poisonous chemical DDT was poured over the whole lot. It took care of the smell of the freshly killed bodies. Many times, people weren't completely dead, but the DDT took care of that. There was a tree that had a sign that called it the "Killing Tree". They would beat children against it.

 

We then went to Toul Sleng (S.21). 14 people were found dead on their torture beds. The photos of how they were found were on the walls in the rooms. Toul Sleng was once a high school before it was transformed into the headquarters to hell. 3 million people were killed in the Khmer Rouge era. That is more than the amount of people killed by Hitler and the Nazi's. Walking through the rooms that once held learning children, the floors were stained by the blood of innocent Cambodians. There were photos of the dead. There were skulls in displays that showed how some were killed. Some skulls had simple bullet holes. Some had been beaten and fractured. Some were badly mutilated. It is unspeakable the things that happened in the place that I walked today. Pray for the healing of these Cambodian people.