Cambodian Landmine Museum

Landmine Museum - darkometer rating : 8 - A small private museum run by an ex-soldier-turned-mine-clearer alongside an NGO/charity near Siem Reap (Angkor), Cambodia . It's dedicated to, as the name suggests, landmines (so-called "anti-personnel" mines especially) – which are the lingering curse of previous horrors during the Khmer Rouge years which left Cambodia one of the world's most heavily mine-infested countries. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info : Poor Cambodia has seen decades of conflict, including being drawn into the Vietnam War and subsequently being subjected to one of the worst genocides ever, at the hands of the Khmer Rouge , between 1975 and 1979 (see also Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek ). But the horrors continued even after that – the Khmer Rouge, driven out of Phnom Penh and much of the southern parts of the country by the Vietnamese in 1979 retreated to the north (see Anlong Veng and Preah Vihear ), where they held out (and continued their terror) until the late 1990s … in the midst of the "security" provided by all their minefields. The legacy of all this today is not just trauma – it's also still killing people: millions of landmines are still left all over the country, but especially in the north. To this day they claim hundreds of casualties every year and maim even more victims. The victims are often children. The topic has attracted a lot of attention over the last decade or two and is being tackled (perhaps most famously Princess Diana helped publicize the issue).