While we were in Phnom Penh, we took a trip to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and Choeung Ek extermination center, more commonly known as S-21 Security Prison and the Killing Fields. Both were used as places to hold and execute over 17,000 men, women, and children during the Khmer Rouge genocide between 1975 and 1979. It is still unknown how many people were killed throughout Cambodia during the reign of this Communist regime, but most estimates fall between 1.2 and 1.7 million people who were either executed, starved to death, or died from easily-treated sicknesses.
The Khmer Rouge evacuated the cities, and began to exterminate anyone they didn’t like, including:
- anyone with connections to the former government
- ethnic minorities
- intellectuals and professionals (basically anyone with an education, including all teachers, doctors, artists, musicians, writers, and people who wore glasses because it implied that they were literate)
- the people who had been evacuated from the cities, if they hadn’t already starved to death
S-71 was formerly a high school before it was turned into a prison and
torture center. The prison held between 17,000 and 20,000 people during
Khmer Rouge rule.
The barbed wire was mean to keep the prisoners from attempting suicide over the balconies.
Certain classrooms were used as torture and detainment centers for really “important” prisoners. The prisoner was chained to bed frames like this one, and repeatedly tortured for information. Bloodstains still cover the floors of these classrooms.
They photographed every prisoner that came into the prison.
The Khmer Rouge also made a point to kill all of the children and family
members of their victims to protect themselves from future retaliation.
After walking through 3 rooms lined wall to wall with pictures of the prisoners, this baby is when I finally broke down. She was too little to even know what was going on, and she didn’t even fit in the chair they used to photograph the prisoners.
View through a prisoner’s window
This Buddhist stupa was built as a monument at the Killing Fields, and holds over 5,000 skulls recovered from the mass graves. Over 17,000 people were killed at The Killing Fields– so far 8,895 bodies have been found in mass graves there.
The shelves that fill the stupa, packed with skulls.
