Police halt Mia Farrow's genocide protest

The Hollywood actress Mia Farrow has been prevented from holding a rally at a former Khmer Rouge prison where thousands of Cambodians were held and tortured before being dispatched to their deaths at nearby "killing fields".

Cambodian police prevented the activist and fellow campaigners from lighting an Olympic-style torch outside Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. There was some pushing and jostling before Ms Farrow and her group left the scene.

"My heart – our hearts –are breaking for what happened in Cambodia today, especially for the survivors of genocide," she said.

Ms Farrow is part of a group called Dream for Darfur that is calling for China to use its influence on the government of Sudan to end the atrocities and killing in Darfur. China, the next Olympic host, is one of Sudan's major trading partners.

To raise awareness, the group is visiting seven countries that have witnessed genocide. During the latter part of the 1970s, up to 1.7 million people in Cambodia were killed either as a result of forced labour, starvation or execution after the extremist Khmer Rouge seized power and held power for four years. Both China, and later the US, supported the Maoist-inspired group.

Tuol Sleng, built on the site of a school, is notorious as the place where thousands of people were brought and tortured by the regime. Today, preserved as a museum, black and white photographs of the people brought here are posted to the walls. Some of the rooms contain the bare steel beds to which victims were chained. Of the estimated 17,000 people taken to Tuol Sleng, there are only a dozen known survivors.

The Cambodian government banned the Dream for Darfur ceremony several days ago, calling it a political stunt to smear China. Its spokesman, Khieu Kanharith, accused Ms Farrow's group of trying "to exploit the bones of the dead Cambodians [to further a political cause]". He added: "Why don't they just go to China to do that?"

When Ms Farrow, 62, arrived at the site , dozens of police pushed back the group, who had linked arms.

Ms Farrow, holding a bunch of white lotus flowers, a traditional offering for the dead in Cambodia, said: "Our goal today was to deliver these flowers in deepest respect."