Killing Fields

This has clearly been the most emotional day so far. In fact, it almost seems obscene to put into words what I saw today, though it is only a record of events from 30 years ago.

Tuol Sleng was a high school, place of learning and promise for the future and it was turned into the infamous S21 torture centre. It has been kept just as it was when Pol Pot used it as such, and it is the purely banal nature of such outrageous evil that hit me so hard.

Pictures of the victims are arrayed in a gallery (all were photographed at intake), and their eyes hypnotised me -- the shy smiles of hopeful young girls, the blank stares of stunned infants, the eye-bulging terror of one man and the snivelling pouty fear of another.


And I found out that Donald Rumsfeld did not invent water boarding -- they used it here very satisfactorily.

The Killing Fields surprised me by their modest size -- just far enough out of town to keep a secret, they made up in horror what they lacked in extent. I am uncomfortable chatting casually about the evil: but here is a detail that will reveal the profundity of it -- they have a tree maintained beside the mass grave for young women and children, the tree against which they would dash out the infants' brains.

I know that's too much for some -- the terrible thing is that I could go on and on reporting on what I saw.

But I won't.