Rule Number One: No laughing.
One of the must-see attractions in Phnom Penh is also one of the most disturbing in Asia. Welcome to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, or S-21 Prison. In its early days it was a good boys secondary school in a wealthy part of Phnom Penh. (Tuol Sleng means Poison Tree Hill in Khmer, and according to a video I watched in the Museum S stands for “security”, 1 stands for Brother Number One (Pol Pot), and I don’t remember what 2 stands for.) Vestiges of its educational past still remain, but it is first a very eerie, even nauseating place to visit, and second, a surprisingly effective museum. Of the places I visited in Phnom Penh, it was my favourite in a dark, dark way. It’s not overly dramatic or pedantically vengeful against the Khmer Rouge, but it effectively shook me up.
20 000 people were interred here between 1975 and 1979, and only 7 survived until the Vietnamese “liberated” the country. In the very front of the grounds you can see 14 graves of those who were hurriedly killed just before the Vietnamese arrived. Most of the people here were executed at the Cheoung Ek Killing Fields outside of Phnom Penh (because the grounds here were too full of burials after a few months.) People were brought here for various reasons including being part of the old government, being educated, being deemed dangerous, being disliked by the wrong person, etc. Here they were tortured into confessing ridiculous crimes (being members of the FBI/CIA, stealing official records, being in cahoots with foreign governments, tampering with Khmer Rouge workings) and then executed.
The rules of the prison ca. Khmer Rouge days. Click for a larger image.
An original bed from the political holding cells on the ground floor of building A. They were far larger than the brick and wood cells in building B. You can also see a leather cushion, shackle belt and bowl.
Same bed, same room, same bowl, same metal stick, same body-shaped blood stain on the floor. This is FOR REAL. There were pictures displayed of corpses lying on the bed unimaginably flayed or mutilated. I took pictures of the pictures but decided not to post them. If you want to see you can google them or email me.
Here is building B (left) and a service building ahead. The wooden frame was once used in school sports, and later a torture device. They hung prisoners by their feet and dunked them repeatedly/prolongedly headfirst into urns of dirty water. The urns are there too.
As I wandered around on the upper floors avoiding the huge tour groups that were milling about even though it was early morning, I accidentally startled three young Cambodian boys straying from their group. They must have thought I was a ghost in my white flowing shirt, wearing a white scarf over my hair (because the sun is HOT on black hair) and they squealed and ran before they realized I was just a foreigner. They laughed for a long time with me and followed me around for the next half hour.
I noticed these women comforting each other when I started climbing the upper floors, but by the time I got to the third floor I was shocked to find that one had taken off her shirt, displaying angry red welts that another woman was rubbing with something small. Were they lash marks? A strange linear disease? Kunthea later told me it's "coining" or "cao gio", a form of traditional SE Asian healing involving a medicinal oil and a coin. And red welts.
A blackboard remaining from the prison's school days.
As I moved to building B, I passed the torture frame. It looked so innocent.
Building B displayed pictures of prisoners and torture on the ground floor. They kept meticulous records of prisoners, taking photos of each new prisoner, each prisoner that died while still imprisoned, and keeping notes on others sent to the Killing Fields.
The upper floors were not accessible. I found out later that not all of the photos displayed were from S-21. Some were from other prisons, sometimes people who visit can find pictures of living relatives or even of themselves even though only 4 of the 7 survivors of Tuol Sleng are alive today.
Often prisoners-to-be were told to pack their belongings because they had been reassigned to better working conditions, or a new job in the city, or to do a special assignment for a high-ranking individual. Often they didn’t realize where they and what they were doing there until they were locked in their cells.
Just like the National Museum, there was little explanation of the organization of the pictures: just row after row of faces. Sometimes they seemed organized by gender, other times by age. One board had a few foreigner picture on it. The rooms were hot and smelled like too many sweaty people in not enough space, which added to the claustrophobia of the maze of faces. I can’t say Building B was informative or enlightening or enjoyable (obvi not!) but in its own way it added to the eerie, sick ambience of the place.
Typical haunting portrait of a prisoner. Maybe he was just realizing then that he wasn't being relocated to a bigger work farm as they probably told him.
I found two young gentlemen smiling at the camera. What's the story here?
The picture-taking chair in Building C. The photos showing it in action use an old regime politician's wife as model. She's holding an infant.
Part of the foreigner board. It mostly showed Chinese and Indian men, but there is one picture of an Australian reporter who was interred at Tuol Sleng and later executed at the Cheoung Ek Killing Fields. I don't know if it's appropriate to point out his awesome 70's collar, but it really drew my attention in a positive way.
Some of the massive rows of shackles displayed near some pictures in Building B. The were as long as the room. The terrible part is that in modern Cambodian prisons these same shackles are being used to immobilize prisoners. Talk about insult to injury!
Building C was the creepiest by far. The ground floor held narrow brick cells. Lots of them. The “unimportant” (read: not actually dangerous to the Khmer Rouge) prisoners were held here while they were being tortured into false confessions.
The brick cells of Building C. The entrances to the cells were narrower than my shoulders. I'm not a claustrophobic person, but I remained slightly nauseous while inside this building.
Inside a brick cell. I'm 95% sure that is blood. There were similar stains in other cells. I rubbed at it with my sandal, but it wasn't raised or rusty or putty-like. Definitely a liquid stain. You also have an idea of how narrow the cells were.
The brick cell hallway.
Inside a cell: bowl, shackle chains cemented down.
Above the brick cell floor, there were wooden holding cells. These were, if possible even creepier than the brick cells. The entire floor is connected by a long narrow aisle between two rows of dark wooden doors with low square windows. They were shut with the metal latches we still use in public bathrooms, but prisoners were put in shackles cemented into the floor. For some reason it really bothered me that almost all of the cells were still latched shut. I opened one, but that creeped me out even more!
Just as I entered the first room of wooden cells, a tour guide with a monk tried to make me join his tour, but I was distrustful and stayed back. Still I was happy for the company in the long lonely aisle until the monk abruptly turned and left 10 feet in. I like ghost stories, and even have dabbled in ghost hunting, but have never experienced anything even remotely ghosty. Still, I willingly admit that this is one of the top three spookiest places I’ve ever been.
The upper floors wooden holding cells. Mysterious words on the wall. Are they from the school era French classroom? A rogue French prisoner? A guard with an inexplicable and dark sense of humour? What is the story?
A look down the aisle. I would like to draw your attention to the terrible little low windows on the door that I was compelled to look through into the empty cells. I dare you to imagine this place at night.
Building D had a few more photo exhibits and some instruments of torture as well as a small gallery of paintings done by one of the survivors of the prison. They depicted both things he had seen and things people had told him they had seen (or had done! In the film, he talked to an S-21 guard to confirmed many of the gruesome punishments he had painted.) Strangely, two of the seven survivors were painters/sculptors.
An image of torture as painted from memory by one of the surviving prisoners.
The seven survivors. I saw Bou Meng, the man third from the right selling his book by the water seller gesticulating wildly while talking on his cell. I also met the man on the far left.
That's him! Chum Mey.
I was reading a board with the stats of S-21 when an elderly Khmer man came up behind me and pointed at the “20,000″ and said “twenty thousand” in Khmer. Then he pointed to the grounds. I nodded.
Then he pointed to “7 survivors” and said “seven” English with great care. He pointed to the picture of the 7 survivors, arms around each other. I nodded.
Then he pointed to the far left man and said, “me”. He pointed to himself. My jaw dropped.
I didn’t know how to react. I think if I was assured he could understand me I might have wrung his hand with both of mine and just babbled things, but I managed to keep myself in check. I think my obvious awe and reverence were enough for him. He pointed around the room at the paintings and at his eyes to tell me he’d actually seen these things. He mimed how the instruments of torture were used. Then I thanked him in Khmer (the only words I know) and sampeah‘ed him. I wonder if he just shows up some days and interacts with solo visitors.
Then I managed to catch the film they show, which was about a woman named Bophana and her ill-fated love with her husband. It was heartbreaking but sometimes confusing (story of Cambodia!) Finally, I looked in on the information floors on the trials being currently held against the Khmer Rouge heads.
A well-hated picture of the prison director, Duch. Duch is, I think, the only one of the big 5 Khmer Rouge names currently to have been convicted. If he serves his full sentence of around 40 years, he will be released when he's 87. Apparently they made him tour Tuol Sleng after a reporter found him in the late 90s teaching math in a secondary school in Phnom Penh and preaching at a church as a lay pastor. He repeated broke down, and continues to claim all of the blame for the massacres and torture at Choeung Ek and S-21.
