Life in focus

Locals call it Smoky Mountain. Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump is a 40-hectare tip on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where thousands come to escape the crippling poverty of rural Cambodia. Here, amid the haze of toxic smoke from the smouldering garbage, they scavenge their living. Sonang, 13 (above), is one of the many children whose families live and work here. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

September 6, 2009
By CLAIRE HALLIDAY
The AGE (Australia)

WHEN Age photographer Simon O'Dwyer first visited Cambodia in 1997 to photograph the landmine clearing work being done by AusAID and the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, he found a country devastated by war and death.

Under the command of Pol Pot, between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated 2 million Cambodians, almost a quarter of the country's population.

The victims' ''crimes'' ranged from having an education or speaking a foreign language to being a soldier or government official from the previous regime. Entire families were imprisoned and murdered and, even today, the country remains forever changed, with generations lost to the Killing Fields.

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