PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- The Cambodian government has turned the site where Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot was cremated into a tourist attraction.
For $2 in U.S. currency, visitors can gaze at the corrugated metal roof put up to protect the ashes from the elements, The Telegraph reported Monday. Scraps of rubber and wire from the tires that made up the pyre in 1998 are still visible.
Known as Brother Number One, the ultra-Maoist Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge, which is estimated to have killed 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979 before it was deposed by a Vietnamese invasion.
Three miles from the cremation attraction in Anlong Veng, stand the remains of Pol Pot's house. Little remains of the structure except for a concrete basement, a tiled floor and the brick walls of two rooms, one containing the smashed remains of a western-style bathroom.
National Tourism Secretary Thong Khon, who lost 18 family members under the regime, defended bestowing shrine status on the cremation site.
"I don't think about the money," he said. "I want to educate my younger generation to know what Pol Pot has done."
