Choeung Ek killing fields

Choeung Ek killing fields - darkometer rating : 9 - This is THE national memorial site for the Cambodian Genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot between 1975 and 1979. It's best known by the name "The Killing Fields " (even though it was just one of many such fields) – and has become a premier tourist attraction in Cambodia . In fact it is one of the top dark tourism destinations world-wide (see lists – esp. Top 20 overall , and top 10 darkest ) > 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: When the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975 they instantly set upon their crazy plan of turning the country into some kind of agrarian utopian society – in fact the most anti-intellectual movement of all time. All people living in cities or towns were forced out to work in rice fields and the like. (Phnom Penh became a ghost town !) Teachers, doctors, anybody knowing a foreign language or even just wearing glasses was seen as a danger to the "course of the revolution" and had to be exterminated. All this was well depicted in the film "The Killing Fields", which tells the story of an American journalist Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian interpreter Dith Pran at the time just before and during the Khmer Rouge take-over. Schanberg got out in the nick of time but Dith Pran was captured by the Khmer Rouge and lived through the genocidal period. He survived and became one of the key figures to tell the world about what was going on in the country at the time. In fact it was apparently Dith Pran himself who first coined the term 'killing fields' – the word has become the metonym of genocide (post- Holocaust ) in the second half of the 20th century (e.g.