Arriving at the gates of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum you cannot help but be overcome by an immense feeling of sadness. What took place at the site of the S-21 Museum in Phnom Penh can only be described an incredibly cruel and heartless.
In the center of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is the memorial site of the S-21 interrogation and detention center of the Khmer Rouge regime. Of the 189 interrogation centers in Cambodia during the reign of Prime Minister Pol Pot, Tuol Sleng remains the most notorious and most frequently visited. Tuol Sleng is also called S-21, with ‘S’ being for ‘sala’ or hall, while the number 21 was the code number assigned to santebal, a Khmer compound term that refers to ‘santisuk’ (security) and ‘nokorbal’ (police).
As you enter the museum you are greeted by a sign explaining that the Tuol Sleng site used to be a secondary school named “Tuol Svay Prey High School”. On 17 April 1975 the Pol Pot regime took over the school and transformed it into a prison called S-21 (Security Office 21). This was the largest prison in Cambodia, then renamed as Democratic Kampuchea. Democratic Kampuchea, which existed from 5 January 1976, was a one-party totalitarian state which encompassed modern-day Cambodia and existed from 1975 to 1979.
The school, when converted into a prison, was surrounded by a double wall of corrugated iron covered in dense barbed wire. The classrooms on both the ground and first floors were divided into individual prison cells whereas the classrooms on the second level were used for mass detention of prisoners. Several thousand victims, of various professions, but particularly those with an education, were imprisoned at S-21 and exterminated along with their wives and children. As you walk around the site, you are left to view the ornaments of torture and various documents related to the atrocities committed. You will also see photographs of the prisoners that were held captive at the site, including their clothes and other belongings.
Venturing onto the second floor of the school, used for mass detention, you are struck by the overwhelming sense of cruelty from the captors and the absolute sense of despair that must have existed amongst the prisoners, all of whom were innocent men and women just going about their daily routines before being rounded up by a regime committed to the extermination of their countrymen. You will be struck by the solitude of the now empty rooms where prisoners were held in cramped conditions with minimal food and only basic sanitary conditions.
Heading down to the ground floor, you will enter the prison where prisoners were housed in individual cells, chained to the floor for hours on end. Take your time to reflect on the conditions faced by the prisoners as you wander from classroom to classroom, prison cell to prison cell, along the lengths of the corridors that were once filled with the laughter of school children trying to get an education. Imagine the horror that took place at the site on a daily basis, and the overall feeling of helplessness that pervaded the site for many years.
While the prisoners were tortured at the site, the executions mainly took place at the Choeung Ek site, known as “The Killing Fields”, 15 kilometers south-west of Phnom Penh. Prisoners were controlled with actual violence or threats of violence. “You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect”, “While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all”, “If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire” and “If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge” were just four of the ten “Security of Regulations” listed as part of the rules of the site.
In the courtyard of what was once the school, there is a wooden structure that was previously used by the students for their daily exercises. This was converted into a structure called “The Gallows”. The Khmer Rouge regime used it as their interrogation ‘room’. The interrogators would tie the hands of the prisoner behind their back and then lift them, upside down, using ropes attached to the gallows. The prisoner would eventually lose consciousness. The prisoner would then be lowered into a clay jar of foul water used as fertilizer for the fields and would quickly regain consciousness. This process would be repeated until such time as the captor decided that the prisoner had endured enough torture or that his questions had been satisfactorily answered.
Seeing the photos of the prisoners and their possessions in the museum, one can only imagine the absolute terror that must have pervaded this sad place. When I visited the museum I was fortunate to meet one of just a handful, between 12 to 15 apparently, of prisoners who survived the death camp. Approximately 12,000 people died at the site or at the nearby Choeung Ek site to which prisoners were sent by truck each evening. The prisoner who survived, and shared his story with us, had been an artist and completed work for the Khmer Rouge regime, thereby endearing him to his captors and saving his life.
By the time that the rule of Pol Pot ended, it is estimated that two million people, about 25% of the Cambodia population, had been murdered or starved or had died from disease due to the lack of medical treatment.
When you visit Phnom Penh I highly recommend that you visit Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, found on Google Maps here, if only to fully appreciate the terror that so encapsulated this wonderful country under the rule of a maniacal dictator, and pay your respects to the people who lost their lives at the site. Their website may be found here. After my visit to S-21 Genocide Museum I visited the nearby Choeung Ek Genocidal Museum detailed here.
When I visited Phnom Penh I stayed at the very lovely White Mansion Phnom Penh. If you would like to do the same then please consider making your reservation by clicking here. Otherwise consider one of the other accommodation options in Phnom Penh by clicking in the box below with booking.com or with Agoda here.
Booking.comOur other posts on Cambodia may be found here.
(Visited in May 2015)