Killing Fields

Situated 15km from central Phnom Penh, Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia with terrifying history that large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War.

Between 1975 and 1978 a great quantity of men, women, children and infants who has been detained and tortured at S-21 were transported to the extermination camp of Choeung Ek. The remaining people, many of whom were bound and blindfolded, were exhumed in 1980 from mass graves in this one-time longan orchard. The 20,002 mass grave sites indicate at least 1,386,734 victims of execution. The total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, is estimated to range from 1.7 to 2.5 million.

Fragments of human bone and bits of cloth are scattered around the disinterred pits. More than 8000 skulls, arranged by sex and age, are visible behind the clear glass panels of the Memorial Stupa, which was erected in 1988.