It was almost 4 pm yesterday afternoon before we got to Phnom Penh. The schedule called for us to visit the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda, but since the palace complex closed at 5, we went to S-21 instead. S-21, or Section 21 is what the locals call Toul Sleng Prison Museum. During the time the Khmer Rouge controlled Cambodia, this former school was converted into a prison where more than 17,000 were held and tortured, before being transported to the Killing Fields for execution. Some of the buildings have been maintained as the prison cells, and other buildings contain photographs of some of the victims and some of their captors. In the less than four years that the Khmer Rouge was in power about 2 million men, women, and children were murdered.
Our guide, Veasna, spoke very openly and emotionally about the days of terror
. His father and many other members of his own family died or disappeared during this time. He said that there was not a single family in Cambodia that was not affected by the killings. While the cells for the important prisoners were of a reasonable size, those for the ordinary prisoners were barely large enough for them to lie down. There were no doors on the cells, but since the prisoners were either shackled to their beds or chained by the ankle to a ring in the floor, doors were not necessary. The building contained three floors of cells and the outside passageways were covered by barbed wire mesh to prevent the prisoners from killing themselves by jumping from the top floor.
When the Khmer Rouge fell, there were only 7 known survivors of Toul Sleng, and the things that happened there are based on their memories. One of the survivors, was an artist and a number of his paintings are displayed in one of the exhibit rooms. By the time we left S-21 everyone was very quiet. Afterwards we agreed that it would have been overwhelming to see both the Museum and the Killing Fields on the same day.
Some Very Sad Things
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
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