Tuol Sleng Museum was formerly a primary school, occupying a central space in the downtown area of Phnom Penh. But when Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge Regime took control of the country, the school was closed and converted into S-21, a detention, interrogation, torture and killing center to aid the party’s interests. Interested in the inhuman acts of the Khmer Rouge and the impact they’ve had on today’s Cambodia, this was an essential, albeit gruesome, part of my Cambodia experience. But before I begin describing the heinous scenes inside the museum, I have to tell you about Paula.
Upon purchasing my entrance ticket, I was approached by a woman asking if I would like an English tour of the museum. I agreed and the woman who began to lead me towards the museum introduced herself as Paula. We had not taken more than 30 steps before Paula began to unravel the horrors that the Khmer Rouge inflicted upon her family. Paula’s father, mother, son, daughter, husband, sister and brother-in-law had all been killed, directly or indirectly, by the inhumane acts of Pol Pot’s regime. I questioned her about this and she led me through gruesome details of how each of them were killed, with a sadness that had been soothed by time, but an anger that began to simmer, as her impassioned speech became more and more revealing. I listened as the details of her daughter’s starvation, her brother-in-law’s beheading and her schemes to avoid death, as a lump started to develop in my throat. This was real. And I was talking to someone who had lived with the horror, seen the futures of her loved one’s mowed down like blades of grass, and whose family support system had been shattered by a group of revolutionaries. It was like staring into a window full of nightmares, realizing that it could as just as easily been me on the other side experiencing the terror first hand.
It was awful to see this sweet mid-50’s woman almost loose it before we began the tour, and I offered to pay her for the tour and she could go about her day if it was too much. But she declined, telling me it was important to share about the tragedies that happened here.
The interesting thing to me about Paula was that her work made her relive the horrors of her past each day, and the way that she earned her living was by exploiting her past to foreigners interested in her experience. To me, this seemed akin to having a deep cut and pouring salt into the wound each day, never allowing it heal. And making your living from something like this seemed absolutely wrong in my moral scale, but as my upbringing was in a land much, much different than Paula’s, I cannot judge her for her decisions (and more possibly, lack of choice).
The tour started in the interrogation rooms, where the centerpiece of the tiled room was a bed frame, used to tie down prisoners for questioning. Axes and other blunt objects filled the floors, used to strike the prisoners when they would not be cooperative with interrogators, and horrific photos of dead bodies hung on the wall, taken in the same room we were standing. I tried to imagine myself as the photographer, opening the door to the room and documenting this mangled, bloody and mutilated body, but the reality of the situation made it too tragic for my mind to hold onto. Outside of the rooms were the instructions given to the prisoners by the interrogators, which are posted below.
We then moved into building B, used as prison cells for the inmates. The most horrifying part of this building were the photos of the prisoners’ mug shots plastered all over the walls. Boys, girls, men and women alike, were all forced to be photographed before they entered S-21, and this building housed all of the documented Khmers, most of whom would soon have their futures cut short. I can’t fathom the emotions these people went through as this process took place. As I looked into the eyes of some of the prisoners, I saw fear, anguish, and in some I even identified an indifference, likely conditioned by the past months of forced labor they experienced. When I look out on the street, I see the same faces that I saw on those walls and it makes it even more evident that despite the progression the world has managed to experience, something like the Khmer Rouge could happen anywhere and at anytime.
This part of S-21 functioned as the individual holding cells for the prisoners and while the walls of the cells had been removed, you could see on the floor the remnants of the small cells each of the inmates were forced into. Each inmate was allowed to shower once every month, offered an old bullet case for their toilet, and had their feet shackled to the cell to prevent their escape. The open hallways of the jail were also covered in chicken wire, to prevent prisoners from jumping off the buildings to their death, a seemingly common occurrence before the Khmer Rouge remedy.
Paula led me through the different parts of the compound, offering information about the leaders of S-21 and their whereabouts today, the different torture techniques performed upon the Khmers, maps of the forced progressions of Khmers by the Khmer Rouge and paintings of the lives of the inmates, created by one of the 6 Cambodians who made it alive out of S-21.
After S-21, it was off to the Killing Fields.
Accompanied by Paula and her driver, we left downtown Phnom Penh and started out trek outside the city. Preparing mentally for the Killing Fields was a difficult experience, especially when the drive was comprised of developing neighborhoods and children playing in the streets. Hardly an indication of the horrors we were about to see, we approached the museum and found a large stupa filled with the skulls of the victims. Now, I had my indication.
Walking through the huge covered holes in the ground, it was awful to know the things that happened where my feet were standing. Bones and pieces of clothing were strung out around the area, the last remnants of those executed long ago. Paula showed me the nearby bamboo trees whose limbs were so sharp that they were used for cutting the throats of the prisoners to save bullets. We passed by a large tree only to find out it was used for killing babies, by guards slamming their bodies into its’ trunk. There was another tree nearby, where a large speaker played music loud enough to drown out the screams of those being attacked. It was a formalized killing factory, an assembly line of death, designed to make the process as quick and as inexpensive as possible.
Looking out beyond the Killing Fields, it was hard to imagine that such inhuman acts happened here. The Fields were surrounded by lush countryside, and the connecting field was full of young Khmers laughing and playing. Furthermore, the Killing Fields had a sense of peace about it, as if the lives that had been taken there had learned to absolve their murderers. I distinctly remember having this thought and a beautiful yellow butterfly flew over one of the mass graves 5 feet in front of me, a possible sign that spirits can forgive.
I asked Paula how she felt about coming here and after a 20 second pause all she could say was, “I just miss my sister and brother-in-law so much.” “I hope this never happens to anyone, anywhere, ever again,” I responded. Paula looked at me with eyes I’ll never be able to understand and nodded her head.
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