Tuol Sleng and Ek Killing Fields

     Yesterday, Kels and I went to Tuol Sleng (S-21) and Ek Killing Fields. Because I am not a historian, I will not even attempt to explain what these places are in detail. I will provide you guys with a website that gives the history of these places: http://www.killingfieldsmuseum.com/s21-victims.html. A brief overview, though, is that a communist party, the Khmer Rouge, came in and took over Cambodia making people work in fields all day with only water and no food.  If they complained, cried, or were thought to be against the Khmer Rouge they were taken to Tuol Sleng.  From there they were taken to the killing fields to be tortured some more and ultimately killed.  By the end they were just shipping people straight to the killing fields by the hundreds.  There should be pictures in the photo section of our blog with descriptions. This may give you a better idea of what we witnessed, while on our day trip. 

     We started our day at S-21 prison facility. This location was a school, before 1975... yes, that is right. 1975. I found it interesting that such an atrocity could have happened not that long ago. Our guide--Visoth, a BYKOTA boy--seemed to have a hard time grasping the concept, also. He kept pointing to things and saying, "This is very old." Although S-21 was a school before it was a prison, and may be very old, we had to explain to Visoth that S-21 was not that long ago--we explained that our parents were alive while it was happening. This didn't seem to help him, because I think he thinks we are old, but when we met a survivor from the prison in the museum, he seemed to understand. 

     I am going to share the thing that shocked me the most at S-21 and then Kels will tell you what shocked her the most:  When I realized that S-21 was a school prior to being a prison, I thought that was odd. We came to some really tall, what seemed obvious to me to be, gallows. Underneath the gallows were big jars. What I found out, after reading the sign, was that these were built with the school and used in PE for the children. After the Khmer Rouge took it over, they turned these tools for play into instruments for torturer. They would tie inmates hands together behind their back and hoist them up. This tended to make the inmates black out, so the torturers would bring them down and dunk their heads in the jugs--which were filled with excrement and water--to wake them up again, so they could continue to be tortured. 

     Now Kels will tell of what shocked her the most:  The thing that shocked me the most was to find out that the Khmer Rouge had no heart for babies and children.  Children were made to work just as much as the adults.  At the killing fields there were tons of clothes still coming up out of the dirt and a lot of what we saw were children's clothing.  Also, we saw several pictures and read testimonies of women who had babies and still had to work in the fields all day with only water and no food.  This left them with no milk for the babies and most did not live more than a few months.  

     Since Kels mentioned the Killing Fields, we will continue on to this part of our day. The killing fields were haunting. It was an audio tour from station to station. I had a moment as we walked, when I realized that the cloth on the ground was not from litter, but was the clothing of the people who were killed, finally resurfacing--that was horrifying and really displayed how recent the Khmer Rouge genocide had occurred.

     I think Kels would agree that the worst station at the Killing Field was the "Killing Tree" station. At this mass grave is where mothers and their babies were murdered. This is what the Khmer Rouge would bash the babies' heads against to kill them--in the most efficient and easy way possible. One eye witness account stated that as he was searching for food, shortly after the Khmer Rouge was ousted, and came upon this tree. He was confused as to why it had blood and brain matter all over it...

    Rhonda tried to prepare us for this day trip, and explained that it would clear up why Cambodia is the way it is... It was hard to listen to the descriptions of the events and see the pictures and the actual bones and clothing, but it really did clear up things. The orphans that we are serving here in Cambodia are orphaned for a reason. The parents of some are still in touch, they simply just don't know how to take care of children. This is because during the Khmer Rouge massacre, families were broken apart. Parents were killed, and children were left to raise children. The children that were raised by children are the parents of the orphans in BYKOTA House, and many other orphanages in Cambodia.

     Cambodia still has not fully recovered from this, but God is still working and present here. Continue to pray for us and most importantly for the family structure in Cambodia. Pray that God would help those who did not have good parents to become the godly parents their children need, and that God would bring restoration to this small country. 

BecauseHeLives,

Micah and Kelsi.