Choeung Ek

Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia was ruled by the Khmer Rouge headed by Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge sought to transform Cambodia into an agrarian socialist society, and one of their first acts were the emptying of Cambodia's cities where two million people became labourers on farms. Khmer Rouge soldiers targeted members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, and the educated among others as part of the Cambodian Genocide. As a result of poor conditions, starvation, disease and violence, around one quarter of Cambodia's population of 8 million died. == Use by the Khmer Rouge ==

The majority of those killed at Choeung Ek first went through the Tuol Seng prison and detention centre (S-21). In his testimony to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge operator of Tuol Seng Kang Kek Iew (Comrade Duch) stated that Choeung Ek was chosen as a site to bury victims away from Tuol Seng to mitigate the risk of the corpses causing a disease outbreak. Staff at the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre have also stated that Choeung Ek was chosen due to its distance from the city centre of Phnom Penh, the abundance of trees which provided privacy and that it was already a cemetery used by the local Chinese community during the 1960s and early 1970s. Some of the headstones from when it was a Chinese cemetery still remain. It was also used by the Chinese community as an orchard for growing corn, rice and watermelons. The Khmer Rouge actively used the site between 1977 and 1979. Loudspeakers were also hung from trees to play revolutionary Khmer Rouge music to cover up any screaming or shouting. Women were also sometimes subject to rape before being killed. A few dozen to over 300 people were executed each day. In 1979, a Vietnamese invasion deposed the Khmer Rouge government and led to the establishment of the Vietnamese backed People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). Mass graves were subsequently unearthed, first by returning villagers and then by officials. == Victims ==

Between 1977 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge is estimated to have murdered up to 20,000 people at Choeung Ek. In 1979 or 1980, officials from the Department of Culture and Information of Kandal Province documented 8,985 exhumed individuals after the Khmer Rouge was toppled. These 8,985 skeletons have been exhumed and treated with chemicals to ensure they could be preserved A minimum of more than 7,770 people are represented by exhumed remains, although only 6,426 crania are present. At Choeung Ek, at least 129 mass graves have been discovered and of them, 86 remain untouched. The number of individuals per grave vary on average between 10 and 30, with one grave containing up to 450 people. At Grave No. 7, 166 people were buried without heads. At Grave No. 5, over 100 women and children were buried naked. After heavy rainfalls, pieces of bone and clothing can sometimes become visible. Between 1988 and 1989, a Vietnamese team from Ho Chi Minh University headed by Professor Quang Quyen and Dr. Tran Hung was commissioned by the Phnom Penh Municipality Department of Culture to analyse crania remains. In 2012, Prime Minister Hun Sen approved a project to preserve and curate the bones, textiles and weapons at Choeung Ek - beginning the first comprehensive analysis and preservation of human remains from a Cambodian mass grave. In 2019, an analysis of 508 crania from Choeung Ek by Julie Fleischman was published. The article investigated the demographics of victims and their traumatic injuries. Of the 508 crania analysed, the research article found that the majority of victims were male and aged between 20 and 35 years old. Women and children were also victims. A majority of crania had perimortem trauma present, with blunt force being the main mechanism of trauma while the basicranium was the most affected region. Gender and age did not seem to affect the method of execution. == Memorial and museum ==

A memorial was constructed at Choeung Ek in 1988 by Cambodian authorities when the country was under the Vietnamese-backed PRK government. Its purpose as a public memorial also served to legitimise the PRK government for both the Cambodian population and international community. On 3 May 2005, the Municipality of Phnom Penh announced that they had entered into a 30-year agreement with JC Royal Co. to develop the memorial at Choeung Ek. Since then, the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center has been managed by the JC Royal Company, a Japanese company also responsible for maintenance of the roads to the centre. Choeung Ek is a popular tourist attraction in Phnom Penh. In 2007, 300 to 400 people visited the site per day during the low season which increased to 400 to 600 people per day during the high season. In 2025, the site was designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO as part of the Cambodian Memorial Sites. ==References==