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Choeung Ek (ជើងឯក in Khmer). was the main place of execution and mass grave of prisoners of Democratic Kampuchea, the regime of the Khmer Rouge, when it chaired the destinies of Cambodia, from 1975 to 1979. It is located 17 km southwest of Phnom Penh and extends over two hectares.
Before its transformation into a camp, Choeung Ek was a Chinese cemetery.
When the Khmer Rouge took power, they established the country's largest security center, which included Tuol Sleng Prison in central Phnom Penh, for the torture and interrogation of prisoners and the execution camp. Choeung Ek, for Tuol Sleng detainees and other centers in the area.
The place was discovered in early 1979, after the fall of the Pol Pot regime, by a peasant from the village of Choeung Ek returning home and discovering a tree with hair and brain matter embedded in the bark. Further on, he found a hole filled with human bodies.
Excavations have since allowed the exhumation of 8,985 bones from some 17,000 estimated victims.
It is today a place of meditation, but also of visit for the tourists. Many bones were taken out of the pits and gathered in a stupa in the center of the site, but the ground still suggests a lot of human remains (clothes, bones ...).
