Matthew Botos

If Angkor Wat is Cambodia’s brightest jewel, the history of the Khmer Rouge is its darkest stain. They came to power under Pol Pot in 1975, and shut down the country’s banks, schools, and cities, sending everyone into the fields to farm. This agricultural communism turned into genocide, killing millions of Cambodians before Vietnam chased out the regime in 1979. Intellectuals and the opposition were tortured in prisons like Toul Sleng before being executed in the mass graves of The Killing Fields and hundreds of other sites.

As a former complex of school buildings with palm trees in its sunny courtyard, the transformation of Toul Sleng in the capital Phnom Penh seems particularly sinister. Drawing close to the buildings, you see the barbed wire strung across to keep prisoners from jumping to their deaths and the cramped, crude holding cells. Amidst the leg irons and torture devices, black and white mug shots of the prisoners and guards stare back like ghosts.

The Killing Fields are almost tranquil by comparison. Just outside of the city, a beautiful stupa (tower) reaches into the sky, holding the skulls of the many victims found here. Behind it, the excavated graves slowly return to nature under shady trees as butterflies dodge in and out. Signs and piles of victim’s clothing provide a link to past events. Though Cambodians grieve that none of the victims were given a properm religious burial, one hopes that they’ve finally found their peace as the country moves forward with an impressive optimism.