On Sunday, we went to Tuol Sleng Genocide museum which is just 10 minutes walk from our guesthouse. It used to be a high school, but the Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison called Security Prison 21 (S21) during their reign. We got a guide to take us around and explain what happened there. The prison was used to hold people while they were tortured and interrogated before they were taken to the killing fields to be killed. They were not allowed to talk to each other while they were there, and were kept chained constantly, only released for torture and interrogation. Below are the rules they had to abide by:

We were shown the cells where the high ranking prisoners were kept. You can see the chain there which was used to chain the prisoner to the bed.

And then these were the cells for the normal people. The only thing in the cells was a container for the prisoners to use as a toilet.

We were shown pictures of the people on the day the Khmer Rouge took charge of the country. They were all celebrating! They thought that they would bring an end to the huge gap between the rich and the poor and all the corruption. The Khmer Rouge then announced that the USA was going to bomb the city within 3 hours which forced the mass evacuation of the people out of the city to the rural areas. They told them that the evacuation was just for a few days, but once they were out, they then forced them all to work as farmers. The people who they imprisoned were anyone who was educated, or anyone they thought was opposing them. Towards the end of their reign, even the high-ranking party leaders were imprisoned as Pol Pot the leader of the Khmer Rouge, suspected everyone of being traitors, even his close friends! We were told that he gave himself the name Pol Pot and it stood for Political Potential!

We were shown the torture instruments they used at the prison. The picture below shows the gallows where they would hang people upside down before lowering their heads into the containers which were full of human excrement!

Pol Pot never visited the prison himself, so his soldiers there were told to send him reports on everything that took place there. All over the museum, there are pictures of the people who were imprisoned here and subsequently tortured and killed at the killing fields. From men to women to children. We were told that entire families would be captured together and killed, even babies!

There were also pictures taken of the prisoners after they had been killed in order for the soldiers to prove that they were carrying out their instructions and not secretly releasing any prisoners. I don’t want to publish those pictures though as I think they are too graphic and disturbing.

At the end of the tour, there is the opportunity to meet Chum Mey, 1 of the 7 survivors from the prison out of 20,000 prisoners. He is 83 years old now, and sells his book there to make a living. Unfortunately he had fallen asleep on the chair at the time we were there so we were not able to talk to him.

The experience of visiting the museum was pretty horrible. I felt sick walking around reading about the atrocities that were committed there. There is an eerie feel around the place. It raises all sorts of emotions though. You can’t help but question how human beings can actually do this to one another. It is unbelievable, yet it actually happened.