The Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of 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 Vietnam War. In 1979, communist Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime.
The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals which includes:
Ethnic Vietnamese
Ethnic Thai,
Ethnic Chinese (except for those already prominent among the Khmer Rouge themselves),
Ethnic Chams (Muslim Cambodians),
Cambodian Christians (most of whom were Roman Catholic, along with its Priesthood)
Buddhist monkhood were the demographic targets of persecution.
Some victims were required to dig their own graves; their weakness often meant that they were unable to dig very deep. The soldiers who carried out the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families.
Skulls of the victims
Mass Grave, hidden of remain corpse
Legend
1. Former prison at Choeung Ek "Waiting room for death".
2. Former warehouse for chemical products.
3. Former site for manacles
4. Former hiook
5. Mass grave of naked women and babies skulls.
6. Mass grave of 450 victims.2. Former warehouse for chemical products.
3. Former site for manacles
4. Former hiook
5. Mass grave of naked women and babies skulls.
7. Mass grave of 166 headless victims.
8. Actual stupa.
Killing Fields of Choeung Ek
Between 1975 and 1978,about 17,000 men, women, children and babies (including nine westerners), detained and tortured at S-21 prison known as Tuol Sleng Museum, were transported to the extermination to death to avoid wasting their resources.
The remaining 8985 people, many of them who were blindfolded were exhumed in 1980 from mass graves in this one-time long an orchard; 43 of the 129 communal graves here have been left untouched. Fragment of Human bone and bits of cloth are scattered around the disinterred pits. Over 8000 skulls, arranged by sex, are visible behind the clear glass panels of the Memoral Stupa, which was built in 1988.
There were killing fields in cambodia,but Choeung Ek was believed to be the largest killing fields.
Border crossing by land is available from neighboring Thailand and Vietnam,. One popular gateway from Vietnam is through Bavet. From Laos, the checkpoint is called Voeun Kham. Beside these major border check points, there are still others that are also open as official international entry / exit points from neighboring countries, but were still not very popular with tourists.
