February 3, 2010 – Day 405 – Phnom Penh, Cambodia

On first glance, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Musuem seems fairly non threatening and even walking around the grounds feels pretty innocuous. But take a step just inside any door of the entire compound and you will feel your gut seize and your heart tighten.

Cell at S21

The musuem was once a school but when Pol Pot seized power in 1975 the school was then turned into a torture prison for those citizens who did not fit into Pol Pot’s scheme. His plan was to take all Cambodia’s people out of the cities and make them into farmers in the countryside, living on communally owned property cultivating rice and owning no indivual possessions. He wanted to cleanse Cambodia of everything evenly remotely western and make Cambodia a completely self sustaining country through the raising and exporting of rice.

Faces of S21

The people who worked well in his plan were those already farming and living in the countryside. Those who fared worst were the city people working as doctors, artists, musicians, teachers and so forth. For more clear and in depth information about the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, click here.

Halls in S21

Inside the buildings are pictures of what the Vietnamese found when they invaded Cambodia in 1979. There is a single bed, and usually the accompanying pair of shackles on top of it, in the rooms of the building next to the small cemetary. In the other 2 buildings there are rows and rows of photos of the inmates, simple black and white portraits for record keeping purposes under Pol Pot’s direction. Though not every single person once imprisoned at S-21 is pictured, Pol Pot was meticulously in his record keeping and much more is scattered throughout the country. Walking through the rows of faces is very difficult. Their expressions and their pleading or empty eyes haunt your mind while you get a glimpse of the horrors that those people went through before a miserable wretched death. Out of some 14,000 prisoners, only 8 made it out alive and only then because they were put to work under Pol Pot’s regime. Many of them were artists and were thus used to paint images of the happenings at the prisons. Some of these works can be seen in the musuem alongside the rooms of rows and rows of photographs of faces.

Cells at S21

Visiting the musuem can be emotionally exhausting. You are left with a sense of horror and wonderment at seeing what human beings are capable of. Probably best to plan something upbeat for when you finish at the museum…