CAMBODIA - Phnom Penh, the Killing Fields (Saturday 7th April 6.30pm)
I've just posted my story of arrival in Phnom Penh so start from the post below and work up to this one (which is depressing).

Phnom Penh replaced Angkor as the capital in the 1430s. The move was lemented as symbol of decline and really, given its history since, perhaps the foreboding was not far off the mark. It has been dragged through the mud. The mid 17th Century saw it robbed of its access to the sea by the Vietnamese and it became a buffer zone for Vietnam and Thailand. In 1772 Thais burned it to the ground. The arrival of the French brought comparative calm but the city really began to develop in the 50s once Prince Sinhanouk managed to negotiate a peaceful independence. In the years of the Vietnam War and right wing dictator Lon Nol, the city was full to bursting with refugees and a booming middle class getting fat off a corrupted system of capitalism.
On the 17th of April 1975, however, everything changed. The Communist fanatics, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, stormed in and forced the entire population out into the countryside, separated them from their families and forced them to labour in the fields like 'honest peasants.' For 4 years they enslaved Cambodia, working its people to the bone, many starving to death, on inefficient, hair brained projects, spurred on by their fierce and pig headed ideology.
They butchered teachers, doctors, monks, women, children and even each other as they struggled to 'purge' the country of those 'anti the regime' and relinquish their own paranoia.
Tuol Sleng, or S-21, and the Killing Fields still stand as a grim testimony of humanity at its worst. The old school buildings of Tuol Sleng became prisons and torture chambers. In the playground stands the graves of the last 14 victims who lay decomposing, still strapped to their iron beds, the photos of whom remain on the walls of their cells.
Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge were meticulous in documenting their brutality and you can see wall after wall of mug-shots of men, women and children, hands tied behind their backs, each pair of eyes a haunting accusation of a crime to which we are all answerable as it lies within us all.
On other walls hang the photos of the Khmer Rouge 'Combatants'. Dressed in Maoist uniforms, carrying Chinese guns and glaring with arrogant insolence into the camera, some of them can not be more than 10 years old.
15km out of town lie the Killing Fields where S-21 prisoners were executed. You can still see the mass graves, bones and bits of cloth strewn everywhere. A monument has been built and is stuffed full of skeletons of the victims. With cows grazing in the field beyond and children merrily chasing 'farang' asking to have their photos taken and for "1000 ril for a school pen" it is hard to get your head round what was happening on that very spot only 30 years ago.
But time moves on. Phnom Penh is a busy, lively city. Due to the extermination of such a huge proportion of Cambodia's population, there is a great number of young people around. Cambodia has had to start all over again and the post Khmer Rouge generation are rushing around on motorcycles and desperately trying to learn English. For such horrific past, the place does not seem gloomy but hopeful and eager to join the rest of the world. S-21 and the Killing Fields still cast a terrible shadow, in which, I'm sure, the older generation will always remain.
Given the significance of today for Westerners, the day after Good Friday and before the hope granted by the celebrations of Easter Sunday, it seemed a fitting day for me to explore the darker sides of the human character. Tomorrow I shall reconcile myself with the chirpier sights of Phnom Penh.
Now I think I've earned a beer...
Happy Easter!