Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge: A Journey Through History

Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia endured a genocide that decimated a quarter of its population. Led by a teacher, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge came to power with a radical vision: to build a communist agrarian utopia. They abolished currency, dismantled religion, evacuated cities, and labelled anyone educated or urban as an enemy of the state. Nearly two million people died through starvation, forced labour, disease, or execution.

What remains today are the bones, the buildings, and the stories, echoes of a nation's trauma. On a trip through Battambang and Phnom Penh, I visited sites where these horrors unfolded. As a journalist, I've covered conflict and remembrance before. But nothing prepares you for Cambodia's quiet, almost reverent landscapes, where the ghosts remain close and its people don’t forget.

A Silent Descent – The Killing Caves of Phnom Sampeau

I approached the Killing Caves of Phnom Sampeau early in the day. The morning was still, the air thick. Inside the cave, cages full of human bones sit quietly against the rock wall. Here, victims were beaten and thrown into the pit below. No gunshots, bullets were too expensive. Just crude weapons and gravity.

The Bones of Memory

Inside the Killing Caves, a case of bones caught the light. Some were fractured. Others looked eerily whole. Each was once a person - a child, a farmer, a teacher. They weren't just victims, they were citizens. Their remains aren't just evidence. They are testimony.

The Forgotten Tracks

A few kilometres outside Battambang, a rusted railway track cuts through the fields. Weeds curl around the sleepers. It's peaceful now, but in the late 1970s, Cambodia's rail and road networks were instruments of state control. Cities were emptied; people were moved en masse to work the land.

The Rules of Silence – Tuol Sleng

Tuol Sleng, once a secondary school, is now a museum of genocide. One room contains a large board listing prison regulations. They are written in curt English so the tourists can understand. This was S-21, the regime's central prison. An estimated 15,000 people entered. Fewer than 20 emerged alive. The rest were tortured, photographed, forced to sign confessions, and sent to die.

 A School Turned Prison

The whitewashed corridors of Tuol Sleng still echo like any Southeast Asian school. But the barbed wire strung across the balconies says otherwise. Inside, classrooms were sliced into cells with brick and wood. This is where teachers became prisoners, and classrooms became execution sites. The Khmer Rouge hated intellectuals. Glasses were enough to mark you as an enemy.

The Torture Bed

One room at Tuol Sleng has been left exactly as it was found. A metal bedframe sits in the centre, flanked by rusting shackles. Above it, a black-and-white photo hangs on the wall, an image of a man, alive, chained to that very bed, blood pooled beneath him. The guards took the picture. Documentation mattered more than mercy.

 The Numbered Survivor

Another image shows a man with a number tag 162 sitting beside corpses. He is alive in the frame, but not for long. His expression is empty, resigned. There's no drama. Just record. The archives at Tuol Sleng are vast. But the silence in each photo is louder than any testimony.

 Choeung Ek – The Killing Fields

South of Phnom Penh, Choeung Ek is the most well-known of Cambodia's Killing Fields. 8,000 skulls were exhumed here. After rain, bone fragments still rise to the surface.

There's a stupa, a dome-shaped building erected as a Buddhist shrine, filled with skulls. I removed my shoes to enter. The silence inside was absolute.

Cambodia is moving forward, but its past isn't far behind. The Khmer Rouge tribunal has delivered justice in some cases, but many perpetrators remain free, some in positions of power. Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier, has ruled for nearly four decades. The space for dissent is narrowing. Still, Cambodians continue to remember, to educate, to heal.

The Killing Caves, Tuol Sleng, and Choeung Ek aren't just historical sites. They are mirrors. As I walked among the bones and photographs, I felt the gravity of history and the necessity of telling it. In Cambodia, remembering isn't optional. It's survival.