Formally a school know as Ponhea Yat located in the middle of Phnom Penh the almost ghostly building that became know as Toul Sleng or Security 21 (S-21) still stands as a ever present reminder of the atrocities carried out by the Khmer Rouge.

S-21 was Angkar’s (meaning the organisation of the Khmer Rouge) premier security institution used for the interrogation and extermination of anti-angkar elements. It is estimated as many as 10,499 prisoners plus 2,000 children passed through S-21, all of which died many at the Choeunh Ek killing field.

The old school was modified little save for classrooms being clumsily divided into cells. We entered the prison at Building A and walked slowly from room to room. In each room on the ground floor was a metal bed, without mattress, and a picture on the wall. Each picture seemed more horrific than the last and showed a dead prisoner as they were found in the room when the Khmer Rouge deserted the prison upon the fall of the regime. Inside the room some of the shackles used to tie the prisoners to the bed remained and blood splatters were still visible on the ceiling.

The Khmer Rough meticulously documented each prisoner that passed through S-21. On arrival they were taken to a special chair that made them sit up straight and held their head up for their picture. These pictures were kept with the confessions extracted from the prisoners under torture, many of which are though to be false.

The ground floor of Building B contained rows and rows of pictures of the prisoners. Some of them looked defiant, others scared and some just seemed to be pleading for mercy. I’m sure whilst being photographed most of them were already aware of the fate that awaited them. The most shocking of all the walls was a collection of photographs of small children some no older than about three. The Khmer Rouge worked on the basis that: “to dig up the grass one must dig up the roots”.Therefore if one member of a family was deemed to be anti-angkar often the entire family would be “exterminated”.

Looking at the pictures and seeing the haunted look in the eyes of the victims was the hardest part of the museum. Emily didn’t even make it through the first room before her imagination got the better of her and she spent the rest of the afternoon in the courtyard.

Upstairs in Building B was an exhibition of stories told by relatives of those taken away by the Khmer Rouge, Having already read two different personal accounts of life under the Khmer Rouge I was prepared for this. However it was still much easier to take in the information without dwelling on it too much. Emily’s problem was she would spend ages imagining if it had been her and her family. I found it easier to try and detach as much as possible, otherwise I’d have been sat in the courtyard with her.

Building C is the only building that remains as it stood during the Khmer Rouge time. The front of the building is covered in barbed wire woven into a net to prevent the prisoners jumping from the second and third floor and committing suicide. On this first floor are some badly built brick cells measuring no more than 0.8 meters by 2 meters where the men were held. On the second floor are similar sized wooden cells where the women were held.

On the third floor of each of the building were collective cells. Here row of prisoners were kept sleeping close together waiting for their turn to be integrated, tortured or killed. A metal bar measuring four or five meters long was placed through the shackles on their ankles to prevent them moving anywhere and talking to each other was forbidden.

The museum also contained an exhibition of some of the torture implements used by the Khmer Rouge guards. Among them was a bed filled with water. The victim’s hands would be tied to each side of the bed and his legs to the bottom. The bed would be then filled with water almost submerging the victims head. Women would be tortured with their hands and feet shackled to a bed then scorpions and centipedes used to sting her or pliers used to clip off her nipples. In the courtyard of the school once stood a wooden frame with wires attached that student, from the buildings time as a school, used to do exercise. The Khmer Rouge utilised this as another torture device tying the victims hands with a rope and hanging them upside down until they lost consciousness. They were then lowered into a tub of smelly, filthy water used for fertilizing the crops causing them to regain consciousness and the interrogation could begin over again.

This kind of inhumane torture hardly bares thinking about. Although from reading the books I have on the Khmer Roue regime I know it could get even worse!

One of the final parts of the museum took us through a series of paintings by Vann Nath an artist who was one of only seven people who survived S-21 (A website with images of his paintings can be found by clicking this link). He painted images he had seen during his time as a prisoner. Then later we watched a documentary on the prison where the painter walked around the prison with a former guard talking about the torture and killing methods and asking weather his paintings were accurate. Throughout the interview the guard wore an inane grin, possibly because of the horror of the acts he once committed, possibly because of having blocked out the reality of what he had done, or maybe he was just an evil man – regardless he admitted that the acts of depravity and degradation in the picture were accurate portrayals of life in the prison.

Sarim (our tuk tuk driver friend) had walked around the whole museum with us explaining things as we went seemingly unphased by his countries horrific history. But having seen the documentary before he excused himself before the prison guard came on screen saying it was too much form him.

It seems that abominable acts committed by the Khmer Rouge will not any affect the generation to which it happened but many generations to come who grow up with the knowledge their ants, uncles, and grandparents were among the two million Cambodians who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. As long as S-21 and the killing fields stays open to the public it will be an ever present reminder of just how barbaric a regime can be.

* Posted by j150vsc on 30/07/2007.