Yesterday we visited Choeung Ek which is more commonly known as The killing fields, where the Khmer rouge regime executed about 17,000 people between 1975 and 1979. Mass graves containing 8,895 bodies were discovered at Choeung Ek after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. Today, Choeung Ek is a memorial, marked by a Buddhist stupa. The stupa has glass sides and is filled with more than 5,000 human skulls. Some of the lower levels are opened during the day so that the skulls can be seen directly. Many have been shattered or smashed in. Also at the site was a large tree which was reportedly used for killing babies and young children. They were held by their legs and swung at the tree trunk thus smashing their skulls......
Around the grounds are ditches which are the sites of the previous open graves. Before being brought here to meet their end, prisoners were often kept at The Tuol Sleng which is the site is a former high school was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer rouge regime from its rise to power in 1975 until its fall in 1979 (pictured below). Prisoners were kept in tiny cells and brought into interrogation rooms for torture.
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