On April 17, 1975, Tuoi Sleng Primary School and Tuel Svay Prey High School in Phnom Penh, Cambodia were taken over by the Khmer Rouge. The schools were used for detention, interrogation, inhuman torture, and killing -- after confessions of false charges were forced by the Khmer Rouge. The school became a Security Prison and was commonly known as S-21.

Phnom Penh had been the pearl of Asian in the 1920's . By 1975, the population was 2 to 3 million people. 
 
The Khmer Rouge arrived in Phnom Penh in 1975 with the streets filled with cheering. The war was over. (Saigon would fall to the North Vietnamese two weeks later.)

The Cambodian people thought the Khmer Rouge was their hope for the future. I detail the timeline of events for this in my next post.

Instead of being a hope for the Cambodians, the Khmer Rouge immediately began a genocide of the ordinary, helpless citizens.

The entire city was forcibly evacuated by the Khmer Rouge. The evacauation has been described as a "death march". Those not arrested were driven into the countryside and forced to work the fields in slavery conditions. The entire city of Phnom Penh was emptied within days of the Khmer Rouge taking over.

Francois Ponchaud wrote this:
"I shall never forget one cripple who had neither hands nor feet, writhing along the ground like a severed worm, or a weeping father carrying his ten-year old daughter wrapped in a sheet tied around his neck like a sling, or the man with his foot dangling at the end of a leg to which it was attached by nothing but skin"; John Swain recalled that the Khmer Rouge were "tipping out patients from the hospitals like garbage into the streets ....In five years of war, this is the greatest caravan of human misery I have seen."
 
The classrooms in this previous high school, became the torture chambers. They were outfitted with various instruments of torture to cause pain, suffering and death. It was the largest incarceration center in the country. 

I walked through the halls and rooms. The Khmer Rouge, like the Nazis, documented and photographed each prisoner. The photos are now on large boards, filling classroom after classroom. I look at the faces of old men and women. I see faces of young and middle age men. There are young boys and small girls. There are photos of babies. All these have names and ages. All these were put to death, children, women and men of all ages. The crime was intelligence. Anyone that was not percieved to be peasant quality was arrested. Teachers, monks, anyone who wore glasses. Along with these people, their entire famiy would be arrested. The Khmer Rouge did not want any children to grow up and seek revenge for the killing of their family members .

The four high school buildings had their classrooms divided into 2.5X6 foot cages for the prisoners. Many were just shackled to walls in larger rooms in the other buildings. The iron rings where the prisoners chains were connected are still in tack, all along the wall. 

Corrugated iron and barbed wire fencing was placed around the perimeter and balcony areas on the upper floors to prevent the prisoners from jumping to their deaths. Suicide was preferred by many to the torture and living conditions they were subjected to.

I walked through the classrooms that had been converted into small cells. Brick walls had been made to separate and isolate each prisoner. It seems barely large enough for an adult to stretch out in. There is a door only big enough to barely enter through. As I stand in the cell, I can't wait to get out, and I imagine what it was like to be confined there for days or weeks or more on end .

In the schoolyard there is a bar that was used for pull-ups and exercise for the school kids. The Khmer Rouge used it to hang prisoners from, lifted by arms behind their backs. Their heads were held in barrels of water, until they confessed to trumped up charges, so they could be documented and executed.

By 1977-78, there was resistance building against Poi Pots regime. Building "A" was divided into rooms 18X12 feet. It was used for detaining cadre that were suspected of being part of the resistance. The windows were paneled with glass to reduce the sound of the screams of vicitims being tortured. The cages had a bed, blanket, small pillow  and bamboo mat for a mattress. The bucket was their bathroom. 

During the 4 years it is estimated there were 20,000 prisoners in S-21, not counting the children. When the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh in early 1979, there were only 7 prisioners alive in S-21, all of them had used their skills at painting or photography to stay alive.

As the Vietnamese approached to liberate the S-21 victims, the Khmer Rouge quickly killed as many of the remaining prisoners as possible. The last 14 killed were buried in the courtyard by the Vietnamese. Only 7 Prisioners were still alive.

I visited S-21 with Jonathan, staying at the same guesthouse. We walk through this unbelievable site. I wonder where the civilized world was during the years this was happening to these helpless people.