p “It is impossible to convey in words everything that happened,” Sa Mon told us. His staff showed us the places where the horrors had taken place. The Pol Pot tyrants turned the province’s main town into a mass concentration camp. We were taken to a big prison situated in the camp’s former barns. Beams and columns were enmeshed in barbed wire. Dozens of chains were lying on the ground. Steel rods fastened to the walls had been drawn through them. Up to 30 prisoners chained in a single row had lain here on the bare earth.

Fifty metres away, right near the empty Dam Rai Pagoda, 163 from which all the statues of Buddha had been stolen, there was an execution square in which many thousands had met their death. We were shown common graves, from which the stench of human flesh still emanated. Skulls could be identified. The bones of hands were bound by barbed wire. But the most horrible thing of all was a clay urn filled with the bones and skulls of children. Anyone who showed any displeasure with the regime was punished by the authorities’ slaughtering his whole family, even small children.