Garish murals grace the walls of Ta Mok's home in Anlong Veng, including this painting of Angkor Wat.
( Sebastian Strangio / GlobalPost )ANLONG VENG, Cambodia — The memorial is eerily mundane: a simple mound of earth covered by a low roof of rusting corrugated iron and a hand-stenciled sign.
Mixed into the sandy soil, amid the stalks of scrawny pink flowers, are the ashes of one of the worst mass murderers of the 20th century, Pol Pot — the mastermind of the bloody Khmer Rouge revolution that left as many as 2 million people dead in the late 1970s.
Its dark history notwithstanding, this makeshift grave in northern Cambodia attracts a steady trickle of visitors, many of whom actually revere Pol Pot. They light incense and pray to the ghost of a departed tyrant.
“Without Pol Pot, I wouldn’t have survived till today,” said Khim Suon, a 56-year-old who has a job selling tickets to the cremation site. “Pol Pot was a leader who protected the nation, so foreigners and locals come to respect him. ... They come to pray and take souvenir photos.”
It’s a common sentiment in Anlong Veng, the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, which lies near the Thai border and around 60 miles north of the famous temples of Angkor. READ MORE
