Hell on Earth

Mon 07 Mar 2016 - S21, Phnom Penh

Rather oddly we both had a bit of a cold this morning so an easy day ahead. Following breakfast Glenn nipped along to the Vietnamese embassy, which by a stroke of good fortune is just up the road, to lodge our visa applications. All being well they should be ready tomorrow.

On his return neither of us felt like doing much so, after working out how to optimise our 30 days in Vietnam,  we stayed in and booked the rest of stay in Cambodia - a week in a nice seaside resort. 

After a nap we bucked our ideas up and walked the short distance to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The museum is in the grounds of a former high school that was actually used as torture camp S21 during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Armed with our audio guides and headphones we wandered around the site directed by the narrator to learn about the terrible atrocities committed here in the 70’s. The centre has been left as the Vietnamese liberators found it and has been augmented with photos of many inmates, much of the torture equipment and some harrowing paintings of real life scenes painted by one of only 7 survivors of 20000 people who passed through the centre.

For anyone sent to the centre, life, or what remained of it, was grim. Detainees would have been accused of some sort of misdemeanour against the state and sent to S21 to extract a confession before being killed in one of the notable ‘killing fields’, where they were beaten to death to save bullets. Most inmates had no idea what they were supposed to have done and even included some foreigners who just happened to be in the area at the wrong time. On arrival they were sent to communal cells where they were undressed to the underwear, shackled to the floor in lines of ten and fed a pitiful quantity of rice porridge (basically water with a few grains of rice). When it was their turn for questioning detainees were moved to solitary cells and taken to the torture room one a time.

The torturing was brutal. Beatings with all manner of things, electrocutions, water boarding, submersion in water, being hung by their arms behind their bodies until falling unconscious and then being dunked in a vat of sewage water to bring them round and other such gruesome acts. If they screamed or called out during torture they were beaten. If they spoke without request they were beaten. If they made any sound at night, clinking chains, moans etc, they were beaten. Once they signed a confession of what they were accused of, and this could be anything: being a member of the CIA, damaging needles in a clothing factory, destroying buildings, they would be sent away and never seen again. 

Detainees were men, women, children and, increasingly as they became more paranoid, members of the Khmer Rouge. A death during torture or a suicide was considered a bad thing as the confession was not obtained and had to be explained to superiors. Sometimes an unsuccessful torturer would become a detainee.

It was a haunting place full of terrible, terrible stories and the very worst example of how low humankind can sink. For obvious reasons photography was forbidden so there are no photos today but for those interested Wikipedia has an interesting article complete with images.

Although S21 is comparatively well known there were dozens of such camps around the country and it is estimated that up to 25% of the population met such a fate.