Cambodia Killing Fields
Disclaimer - the following pictures are very graphic. This was the toughest day, March 4th, during our whole trip...very emotionally draining. We live such a sheltered life in Canada...we really need to appreciate our lives and lifestyle. We will start the day with a visit to Tuol Sleng prison, or S-21, which was initially a school complex in the city of Phnom Penh. It became the main interrogation center of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge (KR) were a radical communist militia in Cambodia in the 70's and on April 17, 1975 just 2 weeks before the fall of Saigon they marched into Phnom Penh and the terror started. Their goal was to turn the country into a pure, self sufficient rural peasant society. To do that they had to rid the country of its urban and educated members of society. This included anybody with more than a rudimentary education. By the time the Vietnamese invaded the country on January 7, 1979 the KR had killed over 1.7 million people, either by starvation,