The Killing Fields

Arriving in Cambodia by way of a small jet, the capital of Phnom Penh looks to be nothing more than a dusty network of red roads from the air. After filing for a brief visa and passing customs, we hire a tuk-tuk to make the drive out to the Killing Fields, where under the command of Saloth Sar – widely known as Pol Pot – the genocidal Khmer Rouge faction brutalized and buried tens of thousands of their countrymen. Between 1970 and 1980, over four-million Cambodians were tortured and executed in the name of spiritual cleansing, and the region remained locked in civil-warfare until the U.N.-sponsored elections, held as recently as 1993.

It is a sobering forty-minute drive along unpaved roads, past collapsed slums and fields still armed with active land-mines. Emaciated cattle wander untethered in the red clay, while expensive land cruisers filled with Westerners blast by, kicking up a sail of dust and gravel. The air is bone-dry and sometimes clotted black from piles of burning refuse lining the roads. At the fields, beggars – many missing arms and legs – eye the money changing hands between tourists and officials. A group of schoolchildren clambering over a nearby fence sing “Jingle Bells,” their words punctuated by the sporadic pop of small-arms fire and the heavy, thundering caliber from a machine gun at a distant shooting-range.

The below photos were taken over the course of my first day in Phnom-Penh.

Victims.
Children.
Locals.
The Mekong Basin.
Phenom-Penh by tuk-tuk.