Ever wonder what 8,895 human skulls look like?
Just outside Phnom Penh there's a memorial to those tortured and executed by the Khmer Rouge (KR). It's on the site of one of the Killing Fields. At Choeung Ek Genocidal Center there is a stupa (monument) containing the skulls of every body unearthed on the site.
Inside the glass you can see shelves stacked from floor to the top of the stupa. Each shelf is full of skulls.
Here's a really shaky video I took with my camera which gives a better idea of what a horrifying sight it is.
None of the buildings remain. There are signs on the grounds to indicate where the various buildings were. The KR couldn't kill the people fast enough so some were forced to stand in shacks overnight to await execution in the morning.
As this sign indicates, tearing down the buildings was a mistake. Visitors are left to imagine what the site might have looked like.
I was struck by how ordinary the area looks. Without the stupa a casual visitor might walk through the field with no notion of how much blood was spilled here.
But a cursory examination of the terrain reveals of pit rows and row of pits in which nearly 9,000 people were buried in mass graves.
The cries of the condemned were too much even for their executioners, as this sign states.
The KR played music to drown out the cries of their victims. I noticed with a shock that this is a Bodhi tree which is the type of tree under which the Buddha sat to attain enlightenment. Like everything else at this site, the irony is cruel.
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