2017-10 S-21 prison or Tuol Sleong Genocide Museum (Cambodia)

My previous post was on the atrocities of the killing field of Cheoung Ek. This post continues on the brutality of the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979 in Phnom Penh. S-21 was a former highschool in Phnom Penh. However, after the Khmer Rouge forced everyone to leave Phnom Penh, it was used as a top secret Khmer Rouge prison. We were able to walk in the four main buildings from the highschool.

A form of torture: tying the prisoners hands behind his/her back and then stringing the prisoner up by the wrists. After the prisoner would pass out, dunking them in the large pots of water below to revive 

During the four years, 17,000 total prisoners passed through S-21 and only a very few survived until Vietnam Invaded/Liberated Cambodia. The first building was for more important prisoners, prisoners who would have had larger connections or more powerful networks. Each prisoner here had an entire classroom to himself. Two of the other buildings were for general prisoners. Classrooms were divided up into tiny cells. The cells were 5 tiles wide by 11 tiles long, or approximately 3.5 feet by 7 feet. Each cell had a munitions box to be used as a toilet.

Men's cells

Men and women were on separate floors. In the men's section, the walls were made of brick and mortar and only 6 feet high. There were no doors. In the women's section, the walls were made of wood; and, each cell had a door for more privacy, as all the guards were male. According to our guide, there was no sexual violation of women here, as one guard who did was swiftly executed.

Women's cells

Any communication was strictly forbidden. The prisoners didn't escape their cells because each was shackled in irons around their ankles. Prisoners would be taken out from the cells for interrogation and then returned afterward. Interrogation would require that people sign false confessions and provide lists of other names who were involved. While interrogation started without any brutality, as the interrogations progressed, torture was applied in increasing ferocity. During the entire time, systematic records were taken of every prisoner who ever entered the prison, even to the point of sometimes photographing before and after torture. Guards became especially skilled at keeping their prisoners alive through interrogation, because accidentally killing a prisoner could mean the killing of the guard, as this was seen as the guard killing someone to hide secrets. After no more information could be obtained from the prisoners, at night, they would be trucked in a covered truck to the killing field of Cheoung Ek for execution.

Barbed wire installed along the face of the buildings after one female prisoner broke away from the guards and jumped to her death over the railing

Throughout all the buildings, there were walls and panels with the photos of all the victims with their prisoner number. It was a sight too sad for me to photograph. However, in the last building, there were survivor stories posted. Not many survived; and several of them were children, who were carried out of the building. There is often a survivor onsite to talk about their experiences. The day we visited, Bou Meng was onsite; but, what does one ask someone who has lived such an experience?

2017-10 The Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek (Cambodia)

Former cow pasture used as killing field. Depressions are mass graves

Today was a very sobering day. We started by driving 13 km outside of Phnom Penh to visit an old cow pasture that is now a memorial set-up to honor all the people that the Khmer Rouge killed from 1975-1979. This is Choeung Ek. Now, it is an idyllic field, with depressions where mass graves have been exhumed. There are thatched roofs over various mass graves noting the types of people found at each one: political prisoners, rebellious Khmer soldiers (who were decapitated) and women and children.

Thatched area over mass grave

The Khmer Rouge was the communist party in Cambodia since the 1950s. Led by Pol Pot, it emerged victorious in its civil war in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh. The people in Phnom Penh were very excited to be liberated from the military government that had ousted their royal king. However, within three days, the Khmer Rouge forced exile the entire city of Phnom Penh to the countryside to work in the fields.

Choeung Ek wasn't part of the countryside where city people had been relocated. In fact, the farmers on this and surrounding land were forced to move away. This allowed the killings that went on here to be unknown by the general public.

The Khmer Rouge didn't want to waste bullets on killing the prisoners brought here. Instead, the prisoners were brutally killed in various ways, including being bludgeoned over the head and stabbed with bamboo. One of the saddest reminders is a tree where children that were beaten to death. A farmer found it with blood and brain on it after the Khmer had evacuated on what is called Liberation Day (or Invasion Day in Cambodia), January 7th, 1979. This is the day that the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia.

Walking on the raised wooden platform over the field, we see bones and bits of clothing sticking up from the field. Signs ask us not to touch these reminders of the men, women and children who died here. 9000 bodies have been found to date. Many of these human skulls have been categorized and placed in a stuppa on the site as a memorial to the victims of this killing site. If only this was the only killing site. Unfortunately, this is only one of several within Cambodia.

Memorial Stuppa full of human skulls of those killed at Cheoung Ek

Our guide told us that from 1975-1979, one third of the population of Cambodia died, from killing fields like this, from starvation and disease. He even mentioned his own personal remembrances, including that his uncle's entire family disappeared and no one knows what happened to them as well as about how he was so malnourished as a child that he had the spindly legs and big belly and that he almost died from measles.