Cambodia Part 2 – S21 & The Killing Fields

S – 21 Genocidal Centre

There is part of me that does not want to write this blog. Instead I wish to leave the souls lost to rest in eternal peace, but there is also a part that screams let their voices be herd and let there be no more atrocities like this in the world again.

I visited the S21 Genocide Centre in Phnom Penh on the 20 March 2007 and it’s now 2012. Each time I go to write this I look at the pictures and remember the stories. This place will haunt you forever.

Rising in the morning and strangely excited to be going to the Killing Fields we quickly got breakfast sorted and made our way to our bus where Mara was waiting with out driver and another well dressed Cambodian guy.

Mara our guide was to take us to a school that had been converted to a concentration camp. on the way there in the bus Mare told us that she herself wound not me going into the school grounds and that for the rest of the journey we would be taken by another guide (the well dressed guy) and she was just coming along for the ride, We feared that Mara had too many memories of what happened here during the rein of Pol Pot

We were told that today was going to be a long and hard day. not physically, but mentally. as we traveled down narrow crowded streets full of locals preparing for their day ahead our new guide for today told us the recent Cambodian history and the terrible things that Pot Pot bestowed to the people of the region. As we pulled up outside the school our guide informed us that this place will impact people in many different ways and that there will be time when you will want to be alone with you thoughts and you may even cry, this is OK and is understandable he said.

Entering the school grounds leaves you with an ere feeling that its a somber place, there is no laughter here. No thoughts of children running around the playground.

Looking up to see barbed razor wire along the border fence you know this was no ordinary school and any thoughts of teaching here was diminished to the furthermost thoughts in your mind.
This is the result of one mans quest to become the brutal ruler of a country.

Elena had mixed emotions and decided that she would not be entering the buildings here , but instead she would remain in the car park and the playground area of the complex with a couple of others from our small group.

Walking through the corridors of what was classrooms at some time the rooms were divided into smaller rooms with a crude method of bricks and mortar These were the cell blocks that held political prisoners. The rooms had no doors and were heavily guarded by the Khmer Rouge.

Once inside you cubicle you were not allowed to speak. these rooms were silent, if you were to make a noise you were severely punished Your family members could be in the very next cell but you wee not to mix with other political prisoners and were taken daily to interrogation rooms for “questioning and conditioning which translates to torture chambers.
Some who were lucky enough to be on the second and third levels of the school classroom block would try to take their lives by jumping of the balconies, so the soldiers placed a steel mesh over the openings so that no one could escape.

Being led into what was once a classroom on the lower level of an adjacent building we saw a wire framed mattress with a electrical cables attached. This was used to “get answers to questions” or more to the point get the prisoners to tell the Khmer Rouge what the wanted to hear. These interrogation rooms were furnished with only a school desk and chair facing a steel bed frame with shackles at each end. On the far wall are photographs of the sights that confronted the two Vietnamese photographers who discovered S-21 in January 1979: bloated, decomposing bodies chained to bed frames with pools of wet blood underneath.

The Rules of S-21 were crude but should you not follow them the penalties were swift. The guards were children who had been specially trained to carry out the punishment. One tactic used was to tell the prisoner that they could become a guard if they confessed and answered all the questions that were going to be asked.

When prisoners were first brought to Tuol Sleng (S21), they were made aware of ten rules that they were to follow during their incarceration. What follows is what is posted today at the Tuol Sleng Museum; the imperfect grammar is a result of faulty translation from the original Khmer:

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.

2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.

9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

About 1,720 workers controlled the prison. Most of the personnel were boys and girls from peasant backgrounds ranging from ten to nineteen years of age who were trained to work as guards and interrogators.

The prisoners included Vietnamese, Laotian, Thai, Indian, Pakistani, British and American nationals, but the majority were Cambodians. Civilian prisoners were workers, farmers, engineers, technicians, intellectuals, professors, students, politicians, and so on.

Whole families were taken to S-21 to be interrogated and tortured to obtain a ‘confession’. Afterwards they were sent to Choeung Ek extermination centre. The average period of imprisonment was from two to four months

Of the 14,000 people known to have entered S-21, only seven survived. Not only did the Khmer Rouge transcribe the prisoners’ interrogations, but also carefully photographed the vast majority of inmates.

Each of the almost 6,000 portraits that have been recovered tell the same stories: shock, resignation, confusion, defiance and horror.

Although the most gruesome images to come out of Cambodia were those of the mass graves, the most haunting were the portraits taken by the Khmer Rouge at S-21.

Today, S-21 Prison is known as the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide: the name means ‘poison hill’, an apt description. The ground-floor classrooms in one building have been left as they were in 1977.

Leaving this place couldn’t come soon enough. Returning to Elena in the car park with her eyes puffy from crying and standing with our group dumbfounded in what we just saw we, in silence climbed back onto the bus. Almost nothing was said as we took the short ride to the next harrowing part of today’s journey.

The Killing FieldsFor those who survived the S-21 Centre their next and final place was the Choeung Ek (known as The Killing Fields) This place seemed more peaceful than the S-21 but once the stories are told about this place the horror sets in again.

As we walked past the gate we gazed upon a tall tower like structure.

As we got closer we noticed the shelves inside covered in human sculls. They were sorted by ages and sex and were stacked to the top of the tower.

We were told that the skulls in this tower were only from a few of the mass graves here and there were thousands more still buried in the unearthed mass graves.

The palms above have a very sharp and jaggered stalk, our guide tells us that at The Killing Fields not many people were shot,instead they were beaten or cut to death by using this part of the palm as a human saw.

The mass graves were everywhere here and sometimes you’re not sure if you are on the path or walking over a grave. The photo above is the grave that was excavated and now displayed its victims in the tower at the front gate

Walking the ground our guide explains the brutal and gruesome details of what happened here, then he points to the rags protruding from the ground and tells us someone is laying to rest here and that you can find clothing in the mud after monsoon season every year, as her examines the ground he bends down and picks up a small fragment of tooth to show us. Elena and I loose it and just have to walk away to gather our emotions once again.

The sign above says it all, the tree was adorned with large speakers that played music loudly so that others victims could not sear the screams as the executioners would take the small children by the feat and then swing them against the tree – I’m not going to explain the rest – you can only imagine what was explained to us…

Leaving here couldn’t come soon enough, the tour was long enough to and informative enough to give us a sense of relief that were we live we are the lucky ones. This madness hapened in MY lifetime, not that long ago. May all who perished in the mad time rest in eternal piece as you story is told you will never be forgotten.

Links

The Killing Fields Movie

Who Was Pol Pot?

Cambodia genocide: Khmer Rouge trio go on trial