Heart PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The fields of Choeung Ek on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, carry a dark secret.

Across the baked earth scraps of cloth and human bone poke through the soil and are slowly bleached white by the harsh tropical sun.

In the center stands a glass-walled shrine containing more than 8,000 skulls -- the remains of just a few of those who died here.

These are the Killing Fields of Cambodia.

Here, just a few kilometers from the center of Phnom Penh, tens of thousands of people met their deaths -- entire families wiped out.

Many of those killed were intellectuals or trained professionals -- people considered counter-revolutionaries by the Khmer Rouge leadership bent on turning Cambodia into a peasant's paradise.

Towards the end of its rule, as the regime became increasingly paranoid and turned on itself, many once senior Khmer Rouge cadres also met their end at Choeung Ek.

Men, women and children -- some just a few months old -- were killed here, often in the most violent and brutal ways.

With bullets in short supply, the condemned were forced to kneel before an open grave then stabbed through the head with a sharpened bamboo stake.

Just one example of the horrors these now silent fields have witnessed.
of darkness: Cambodia's Killing Fields