Bones and scraps of clothing still protrude from a pit in the fields of Choeung Ek, located ...

Bones and scraps of clothing still protrude from a pit in the fields of Choeung Ek, located approximately 15 kilometres southeast from the centre of Phnom Penh. The majority of the victims of the Tuol Sleng prison (where up to 17,000 men, women and children were brutally tortured) were brought to this site (a longan orchard) and forced to dig their own shallow graves before being executed with blow to the back of their heads with a hoe, a shovel or a pick. Babies and children were usually grasped by their legs and their heads bashed against tree trunks, and travellers' anecdotal information suggests that the large tree in the left background may have been used for this purpose. It has been claimed these methods of killing were used to save bullets, while others suggest it was the Khmer Rouge cadres' literal interpretation of Pol Pot's exhortation to 'smash the enemies of Angkar'. Some 9,000 bodies have been exhumed from 86 separate graves at this site while 43 pits remain undisturbed. One of thousands of recorded mass grave sites across Cambodia, Choeung Ek is small compared to others which have yielded up to 50,000 bodies.