Tuol Sleng

December 6, 2010

Jean and I arrived in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, a few days ago. For the most part, the tourist sites of the city focus on two eras of Khmer history - the prosperity of the the Angkor kingdom from the 8th - 12th century and murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 – 79.

In the spring of 1975, after expelling the denizens of Phnom Penh, Pol Pot and the leaders of the Khmer Rouge moved into the capital to set up the new government. In late 1975 they converted a former school, Tuol Sleng, in the south section of Phnom Penh into Security Office 21 (S-21). Under the command of a former mathematics teacher, Kaing Kek Ieu (Duch), S-21 would become an infamous detention, torture and execution center.

This morning, Jean and I made the 15 minute walk from our hotel to the site of the prison. On August 19, 1979, soon after Vietnamese troops liberated Phnom Penh, S-21 was opened to the public as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Thus the site remains very much the same as they did during the Khmer Rouge regime. Two rows of corrugated iron fence covered with razor wire surround the compound.

Inside, the grounds still very much resemble a school campus with large, tree-lined courtyards and ceramic tiled walkways. In one corner there's a set of pull up bars and a large, upright wooden frame that could have been used for a swing set. Khmer Rough interrogators would bind their subjects and hoist them upside down from the frame. If the subject lost consciousness he or she would be submerged in a pot of filthy water until the prisoner became alert and could continue the interview.

Interrogation Room

Jean and I began in some of the interrogation rooms. Glass had been installed over the windows to muffle the screams of the prisoner's during torture sessions. The rooms were dank and bare except for a cot frame, a pillow, shackles and a bucket. The floor beneath the cots were all covered in dark stains. When the liberation force arrived on January 7, 1979 they found the bodies of S-21's last fourteen victims. Many of which were still shackled to the beds. The haunting photos of how each was found is in each room.

In some of the other buildings rooms were blocked off into individual cells with hastily built brick or wooden walls. On the upper floors, prisoners were kept bound, lying on their back shoulder to shoulder.

Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, kept detailed logs and photographic documentation of their interrogations and subjects. On display at the museum are seemingly endless rows of the victims' mug shots.

Over the four years the agents of S-21 extracted thousand and thousands of confessions from their subjects. In the first six months the victims were soldiers of the ousted government, intellectuals, foreigners and fellow revolutionaries with differing opinions. Pol Pot was extremely afraid of conspiracy within the ranks of Khmer Rouge and thus he initiated numerous purges. High ranking officials, long time party member, and even friends were accused of conspiracy and sent to S-21.

Waterboarding equipment

Under interrogation many seemed to show genuine devotion to the party but they all eventually confessed. Over time the conspiracies became larger and more complicated. In 1976, after months of interrogation, a Khmer Rouge military commander, confessed to being employed by CIA, the Vietnamese, and the revolutionary group, Khmer Serei (“Free Khmer”). Files grew out of control as distrust festered. In 1978, nearly 6000 prisoners passed through S-21, more than total of subjects who had come through in 1976 and 1977 combined. The staff fled in early 1979 after torturing and killing an estimated 14,000 men, women and children.

Many rooms of the museum were covered wall to wall with head shots of the S-21 detainees

Barbed wire mesh installed on third floor to prevent prisoners from leaping their deaths