We started our day with a trip to one of the Killing Fields. The Cambodian Killing Fields are a number of
sites in Cambodia where collectively more than a million people were killed and
buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to
1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970–1975). There was a stupa which is a dome-shaped
building erected as a Buddhist shrine filled with the skulls of those killed on
the site we visited.
Also the site contained mass graves with bones and
remnants of clothes showing. The whole
visit was very upsetting and many sights are not for repeating here.
Afterwards we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom
Penh, the capital of Cambodia. This
museum chronicles the Cambodian genocide.
The site is a former high school which was used as Security Prison 21 by
the Khmer Rouge regime during its rule. From
1976 to 1979, an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng. Tuol Sleng means "Hill of the Poisonous
Trees" or "Strychnine Hill". Tuol Sleng was just one of at least 150
torture and execution centres established by the Khmer Rouge, though other
sources put the figure at 196 prison centres. On July 26, 2010, the Extraordinary Chambers
in the Courts of Cambodia convicted the chief of Tuol Sleng Prison, Kaing kek
Iew, for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva
Conventions and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Our guide told us of many inhumanities again
not for repeating here.
We met a survivor of Tuol Sleng. He was keen for the world not to forget what had happened in Cambodia.
In the afternoon, back at the ship, there was an Armistice Day
gathering as it was Remembrance Day. In
Australia people wear rosemary instead of poppies so sprigs of rosemary were
handed out. Some poetry from the WW1
poets was read out and then we observed two minutes of silence. The gathering was completed by the handing
out of Anzac biscuits.
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