Hi, Dear Steemian Friends
Here another picture of the last 14 victims found on the camp at the time Vietnamese army arrive at the location.
In my yesterday post, I was telling you about 17 000 people have died in this facility S 21 but the number of the victims under the Khmer Rouge ruling is close to 2 million in only three and a half year, bringing the death toll to one-third of the Cambodian population. Pol Pot (his real name is Saloth Sar) was born in the province of Kompong Thom in 1925, he was the son of a prosperous rice farmer and his mother was renowned in the province for some good work and piety. One of the cousins of Saloth Sar called Maek joined the royal ballet in the 20' and later bore a son from the Prince Sisowath Monivong, who became the King in 1927 and get a position as the "lady in charge of the woman" in the Royal Palace and also became the teacher for the Royal Ballet. She used to live next to the Palace in the district reserved for Cambodian elite. Saloth Sar older brother also went to work as a clerk and one of his sisters joined the Royal Ballet. in 1934 Saloth Sar was sent to Phnom Phen to live with Maek and as a young boy get access to the Royal Palace, also part of his family prosperity come from the Palace connections. Saloth Sar was sent to the best schools of Cambodia and despite not being good at school he received in 1949 a government scholarship to go study in Paris, during these years the kingdom of Cambodia was a French protectorate. During his time in France, he makes some relation with the communist party of France which was never in the government position. He learns from them about the communism and also experiments a little more during a trip to the communist state of Yugoslavia and he really started to become a communist. in 1957 he returns to Phnom Phen with other Cambodian also communist. In 1963 he and his communist comrades leave the capital to take the maquis and start their political group with military actions against the Cambodian government. It was during the years of Vietnam war, Pathet Lao, China when a big part of the region falls into communist hands. He gathers some help from all of these countries and starts the guerrilla and get farmers involved under constraints in the revolution. Using intimidation and executions on farmers he gains more and more people by forcing them to join. In April 1975 he finally took over the capital and become the head of the country under the name of Pol Pot. After evacuating all the cities of the country and force the population to enslavement, he declared that there is two kind of people "the base people", they were the farmer and uneducated people who have joined his revolution before, they get a little more rights than others and "the new people" who were the very expendable one. The entire world has no clue about who was Pol Pot, it is only in 1977 that his real name was told during a radio news in North Korea. He died the 15 April 1998 the same night he learned that he will face the international court for genocide. Here a few more pictures of the S 21 "Killing Field Camp".
Pol Pot (Saloth Sar)
The graves of the last 14 victims in the middle of the S 21 camp.
A Khmer Rouge uniform.
Many of the hooks use to torture the people.
Many rooms with all the pictures of the victims.
A memorial Stupa in the center of the camp with many black marbles plaques with the names of known victims.
