Tuol Sleng, From Prison to House of Memory
In August 1979, Tuol Sleng ceased being a prison and began its life as a museum, a collective memory of the atrocities of the Khmer Rou
A small group of tourists on a recent Tuesday shuffled through thehalls of Tuol Sleng, a dreaded prison under the Khmer Rouge that has become themost famous museum in Cambodia. Through one old building tothe next, the group moved, and in the eyes of some, tears built, as theyscanned the mug shots of scores of Cambodians who had been photographed justbefore their executions. As the tourists passed thephotographs of the dead, the beds where they had lain, and the shackles thathad held them, a few had to flee the building, sobbing. "Terribly shocked,"one foreign woman said. "We all followed the events at that time, throughmedia and television. And when you see the real place and you are a witnessthough the photographs and paintings and the torture instruments of the torturecell, it's difficult to imagine the horror and tragedy." Still, she said, "I think it is important that this museum was made." As many as 100 visitors passthrough here a day, most of them foreigners. "When you come here you feel like you just want to be silent and try toimagine," said Valerie de Robillard, a French visitor who come in Cambodiafor the first time. "It is a dimension that is even more terrifying inthis genocide." A high school called TuolSvay Prey until August 1976, Tuol Sleng became the Khmer Rouge's largest prisonfacility. In less than two and a half years, the prison held at least 12,000Cambodians, and as many as 16,000, who were tortured and interrogated undersuspicion of spying or disloyalty to the regime. Nearly all of them were laterexecuted and dumped into mass graves on the outskirts of town, at a placecalled Choeung Ek, touted now by tour guides and taxi drivers as "thekilling fields." Kaing Kek Iev, the65-year-old former chief of the prison better known by his revolutionary alias,Duch, is now set for trial under the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Duch's trial, which will be held by the beginning of 2009, will be the first in 30 years for leaders of the regime, which led one of the worst atrocities of the 20th Century. The prison he onceran stands now as an icon of his regime's cruelty and will hold a center place in Duch's trial. The trial will show average Cambodians one of the clearest pictures of a regime that was shrouded in secrecy until the very end. Tuol Sleng serves as astorehouse of evidence in that trial, having housed thousands of documentsand photographs that testify to atrocities committed under the ultra-Maoistregime, under which as many as 2 million Cambodians died. Only seven survivors of theprison have been positively identified, and only three of those survive.Records indicate as many as 177 were released, but these survivors have notbeen found. Tuol Sleng is now underconsideration as a Memory of the World site, its documents and photographs, thewalls themselves, and even the Choeung Ek "killing fields" to beprotected by Unesco. "We need to servejustice for all victims, whether they died or survived," the director ofthe museum, Chhey Sopheara said. Prisoners were routinelytortured here, their confessions against the regime extracted under the worstof circumstances: waterboarding, electric shock, burns,prolonged hanging. The Vietnamese forces thatousted the Khmer Rouge, on Jan. 7, 1979, found the prison and recognized a needto preserve it. Tuol Sleng ceased being a prison and began its life as a museumon Aug. 19, 1979, following a trial in absentia of the regime's leaders, KhieuSamphan, Ieng Sary and Pol Pot. Pol Pot has died. Khieu Samphan and Ieng Saryhave joined Duch in tribunal detention. The Vietnamese left many ofthe rooms and cells as they found them. The museum is still inscribed by rusty coilsof barbed wire, and visitors can walk past rows of cells just 1.2 meters wide.In a closet sit the old instruments of the Khmer Rogue: shovels, sticks, axes.Photographs of tortured children, handcuffed or chained, are on display onlarge wooden tables. A requisite stop for mosttourists in Phnom Penh, Tuol Sleng, known to the Khmer Rouge by its code name,S-21, is also visited by Cambodians who suffered from the regime. "The prisoners were tiedby their feet and hanged," said a man named Kreusnar, 26, whose father,older sister and uncle died under the Khmer Rouge and who came from Prey Vengprovince to visit the museum alone. "The Khmer Rouge prisoners were soakedin water jars or in basins. They had their nipples cut off. This torture to meseems fresh."