When Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge communist party started recruiting, he turned to the peasant classes, those with little hope of ever leaving the slums and promised them power, prosperity and hope for their families. These lies were sufficient to engage an army, soon caught between obeying his orders to carry out mass genocide on their own people or to fall victim themselves. It is unimaginable that boys (and girls) as young as 17 or 18 were being taught to torture, to eradicate their own more educated neighbours and to commit atrocities on such a scale through fear. But they did, and all whilst I was a teenager of a similar age studying for O and A levels in a warm, safe home with a loving family. Some of the photographs that follow are shocking though many fail to convey the story : being up close leaves you stunned.
After breakfast we first headed out to Choeung Ek, formerly a simple Chinese cemetary about 14k outside the city and now known as The Killing Fields. Here we followed a moving and almost matter-of-fact audio tour around the extensive site culminating at the central memorial erected to honour the 8985 individuals, victims whose remains were unearthed from hundreds of pits - mass graves. Prisoners were brought here at night, often having already suffered months of torture in prisons and detention centres to elicit information about their friends and family, or to make them confess to knowledge that would implicate them as educated professionals, were marched shackled and blindfolded to the edge of a pit, ordered to kneel and, to the strains of loud propaganda-boosting music to muffle their screams, were bludgeoned, hacked or stabbed to death, to fall in a heap into their own pre-dug graves. Many victims were so weak from forced labour and starvation at the hands of the Khmer Rouge that it is believed death was considered a relief.
It's shocking isn't it? By now we were wrung out and yet the day had only just begun. I'm afraid this blog goes on. Feel free to stop reading but I'll continue as it seems important to share .... Deep breath.
Part II
Pour le Sourire d'un Enfant (PSE).
Translated from French this means "For the Smile of a Child" and is a charitable organisation, a school and vocational training college for some of the most underprivileged children in Phnom Pehn, either directly or indirectly the legacy of the genocide years. 20 years ago, whilst making a similar visit to ours out to the Killing Fields, a retired French couple were driven past the city dump. There they spotted hoards of small children scavenging for plastic, paper and fabric to collect and sell, knee deep in squalor and toxic waste, sometimes even eating what they could find in an attempt to survive. Immediately they changed their plans and set about providing one hot meal a day to these children. Soon they realised it was not enough. And so was born a now hugely successful operation that strives to rescue, educate and train the young people whose future would otherwise be bleaker than you could imagine. Make no mistake - the scale of the problem here is huge. The parents of these children have to be 'paid' in rice to allow their children to be educated by PSE - after all if they are not on the dump, peddling goods on the streets or worse they are not paying their way! It was a moving visit to the school - Dani our guide there was herself a street worker until the age of 15. Now at the age of 28 she has a business diploma and a future. We ate lunch in the on-site training restaurant where we felt able to ask if we might photograph our young trainee server preparing our fried banana dessert. If you would like to learn more about this charity please visit http://pse.asso.fr/ 
Some detainees, the more highly educated, were held in isolation. Thinking themselves lucky to have so much space they soon faced the reality of being shackled to an iron bed, starved and tortured.
Previously a fitness climbing frame this structure was used by the Khmer Rouge to suspend prisoners by their wrists and beaten. When they passed out they were taken down, their heads were plunged into the jars of stinking waste beneath to revive them, and so the process began again! 
Many of those tortured here were young children.
Tiny cells 3ft square to house lesser humans. This corridor went on for miles.
Time to stop. It was a difficult day. Next blog back to some semblance of enjoyment. Thank you for reading.
Part III
Tuol Sleng (S-21) Detention Centre
As if all that was not enough, our final stop today was another school - or formerly so. Once a city centre place of learning, Tuol Sleng was taken over by the Khmer Rouge when the population of Phnom Pehn was driven out of town and rounded up for interrogation. Now a memorial to all those who passed through these doors, where only 9 of the 17,000 detainees escaped alive, each one was photographed on arrival, and some again after torture but before being shipped out to The Killing Fields. These images are now evidence of the atrocities. At the time they were essential means of communication to indicate between the ignorant peasants (now Khmer Rouge soldiers) who was being detained there, who was to be tortured, and who was of no further use!
These were actually Khmer Rouge sympathisers (indicated by their flat caps) but who fell out of favour and who ultimately faced the same fate as their own earlier victims.
Needs to be seen....
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