Horrific Story of Tuol Sleng & The Killing Fields

Thursday the team and I got to visit the genocide museum in Cambodia called Tuol Sleng. At one time it was the high school the best and brightest that Cambodia had to offer. Think of a really elite high school in your town that everyone wants to go to and then you'll have a good idea of what Tuol sleng was. Pol Pot who was the evil guy that brought Cambodia to it's knees in the mid to late seventies, once applied here but was rejected. This is a fact I found out while on the tour. When he came back to Cambodia in 1975 he turned this elite learning environment into a torture chamber.
Here Cambodian were forcefully interrogated to give up anyone in their family on any of their friend who were educated. They had the eyes gauged out, their finger nail pulled from the cuticle and tortured with water. As we walked through the room where this happened, I could still see the blood spatter on the ceiling. It was old and faded but very distinct. Dr. Setan Lee, who is a killing field survivor said that when he first visited Tuol Sleng after the reign of Pol Pot, that there was still the stench of human bodies, and when as the blood was even more visible. This was reminiscent of when I visited Dachau, which was a Nazi concentration camp in Germany.
It was a very heavy day. A lot of pain still lives there.

When we left Tuol Sleng, we then went to the Killing Fields. Here an estimated 20,000 people were slaughtered by the ruthless Khmer Rouge. The most unsettling thing for me was not seeing the mass burial sites, although that was hard. It was not seeing all the exposed human bones (and in some cases the pieces of clothing that were attached to them) everywhere. The unsettling part for me was seeing the tree were the Khmer Rouge used to kill infants. They would hold them by the ankles a swing & smash them against a tree that is still there. I saw it! Our guide that was taking us through the Killing fields ( not Dr. Lee at this point) was very descriptive. I could since the disdain in his voice as he said the names of Pol Pot and the other Khmer Rouge leaders. He was bitter and upset. He has every right to be because 30 years later the Tribunal is still going on. One of the leaders Duch has been back to visit the Killing fields. The guide is not a believer so his anger is eating him up and you can her it when he speaks. We were told by our team leaders that he drinks to forget his pain. This is what he told to them. We prayed with him after, he was visibly touch by it. This was a very heavy day.
I am glad I came to Cambodia because now I know why there are kids with bloated stomachs and no clean water. Khmer Rouge ruined this culture. They are trying to rebuild and move on but have such a long way to go. we are here to show them God cares about their struggle and that he want to show them, through Musicianaries how deep His love is for them.