Man's inhumanity to man....

....makes countless thousands mourn. It is a long time since Robbie Burns wrote those words but unfortunately nothing changes. This morning I went to Prison S 21 (Tuol Seng) where political prisoners were tortured and murdered by the Pol Pot regime. 14,000 went in and 12 came out alive. The crimes were documented and photographed and the victim pictures on display are a chilling reminder of what happened here while the world stood by and watched.

These are some of the "political" children who went through Tuol Seng....



And, some miles outside Phnom Penh, the Choeng Ek memorial at the Killing Fields, is where they came. 17,000 people were murdered here, often bludgeoned to death to save ammunition, and were buried in 129 mass graves. The excavation of the site and the erection of this memorial containing the skulls of 6,000 victims is a permanent reminder of what we allowed to happen.



And now, with the only sound the birdsong around the graves, this is the scene.



I was struck by one visitor's comment written on the wall at the prison, S 21, "we do not learn anything from history, I can say this, Jan, a German". Amen to that.