The Killing Fields

2 million people died during this period due to hunger, torture, forced labor, execution, murder, and disease, representing about 20% of the population. The educated and the intellectuals were first deported to collective farms in the countryside to plow fields and build dams.

The Khmer Rouge emptied out the cities and relocated city dwellers like the merchants, businessmen, teachers, doctors, professionals, and artists to the countryside because they were classified as the enemies of the State who did not contribute to the food supply and cultivation. Many died in the ruralization policy due to the lack of agricultural ability.

People with opposing views to the Khmer Rouge, ties to former or foreign governments, foreign language skills, those wearing eyeglasses or simply looked suspicious were rounded up and sent to the prisons to be tortured and to confess. Only seven out of the many thousands who sent to the prisons survived.

Ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian and people of the Buddhist, Islamic or Christian faith were singled out and killed. The United Nations defined that deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group is Genocide.

Khmer Rouge's motto during the killing was: "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss." (Photo courtesy of Taiger808).

After the war, a stupa was built in Siem Reap to house some of the skulls and the bones of the victims died during 1975-1979.

The stupa and the nearby temple were managed by Buddhist monks today.

More burial grounds around the temple.

The open question was ---- WHY the killings?

The Killing Fields - Wat Thmei in Siem Reap, Cambodia.