Guide Note

The Killing Fields were sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the communist Khmer Rouge party from 1975 to 1979. An estimated 1.7 to 2.3 million people died due to torture, starvation and execution.

Fast Facts

1. Most of the killing fields were located near the city of Phnom Penh
2. Dith Pran coined the phrase the "killing fields"
3. Pran won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting
4. None of the perpetrators of the crimes have been charged or prosecuted
5. A monument to the victims, containing over 5,000 skulls, is located at Choeung Ek

People that received two warnings after committing minor or political crimes were sent for "re-education," which meant death. Belonging to a different ethnic group, knowing another language, having any association with a foreign or Cambodia's former government, and showing loyalty and love toward friends and family members were all considered executable "crimes."

Executions were often carried out by using hammers ax handles, sharpened bamboo sticks or spades and most of the executions were carried out by fellow prisoners. Some of the victims were required to dig their own graves, which ended up being very shallow because of their weakness.

A movie, called The Killing Fields, about Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran's survival of the Khmer Rouge's regime, was released in 1984. Pran died of pancreatic cancer in March of 2008 at the age of 65. After escaping from Cambodia in 1979, he moved to New York City and worked as a photographer for the New York Times.