ANLONG VENG Cambodia -- Call it cra...

ANLONG VENG Cambodia -- Call it crass, macabre or educational, if it were not that Pol Pot's shabby grave and a towering stack of his victims' brains are drawing a growing number of visitors to Cambodia's genocide trail.

These and other relics of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror are the grim counterpoint to Angkor Wat, Cambodia's world-famous ancient meeting-house Some decry it as "dark tourism," while officials and entrepreneur argue it will reap tourist dollars.

The latest station in succession the circuit is Anlong Veng the final fortification of the Khmer Rouge and its leader, Pol skillet who turned the country into a slave labor camp in which as many as 2 million died from disease, starvation and executions in the mid-1970s.

"Cambodia is known to the world for pair things -- Angkor Wat and the 'killing fields,' " said Youk Chhang, a researcher of Khmer Rouge atrocities.

This town in northwest Cambodia housed the same of the 20th century's largest assemblages of mass killers. Now, officials plan to restore about 40 houses of former Khmer Rouge leaders and build a museum where the guides are ex-soldiers of the ultra-communist motion

"Pol pan was cremated here. Please help to secure this historical site," says a Ministry of Tourism sign nearest to a dirt mound.

The cot where Pol Pot died in 1998 has disappeared. Thirty yards away, bulldozers lay the foundations for a southern Korean-built resort.

Youk Chhang, who heads the Documentation Center of Cambodia, is businessed that sites such as Anlong Veng will let slip through the fingers their power and raw authenticity.

'WE DON'T WANT DISNEYLANDS'

"We don't want them move rounded into Disneylands," he said.

A private Japanese enterprise last year won the concession to make Choeung Ek the vast killing earth tourist-friendly.

Roberto Rossano, a 22-year-old Londoner, said he knew little about the Khmer Rouge until he visited Choeung Ek

"When one tells you one or pair million were killed it's just a number, moreover when I came and saw just a fraction of what they did - - these brain-pans -- it absolutely shocks you," he said.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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