Tuol Sleng - Phnom Penh - TravBuddy

A visit to Tuol Sleng Museum is a shocking experience, displaying the most evil forces humans are capable of portraying. Yet I would recommend anyone to visit this museum. It gives you a deep insight into the troubled recent history of Cambodia.

And then it was off to the Tuol Sleng Museum, or Security Prison 21 (S21) where the Khmer Rouge had detained and tortured 17.000 people before ending their lives at the Killing Fields we visited yesterday. You might think that seeing the Killing Fields would prepare you for S21. Well, think again. Nothing can prepare you for such absolute inhumanity and terror and I can easily say that this was the most shocking thing I have ever seen in my life. I've was walking around feeling fits of nausea and utter despair at what people are seemingly capable of.
The Khmer Rouge had a very efficient way of administrating their doings at S21. Every prisoner got a number when he or she came in and was photographed with the date on which they were brought to the Killing Fields. People who died at S21 during torture were also photographed. One of the building sections is filled with row upon row of photo's of the prisoners deported. Thousands of people. Innocent people who were killed just because they were (thought to be) intellectuals (e.g. if they wore glasses) or opponents of the regime. Man, women and children.

And if this wasn't enough madness, another section of the buildings was reserved as 'VIP rooms' (as our guide Sophie called them). This is where high ranking Khmer Rouge officials that had been detained and tortured in the 'privacy of their own room'. Seemingly nobody was save from the Khmer Rouge, not even their own people. When Phnom Penh was liberated by the Vietnamese in 1979 the liberators took pictures which are displayed in these VIP rooms. It shows the people being horribly tortured while chained to the beds. The only other object in the room besides the matressless bed was a small metal box which proved to be a toilet. As if all of this wasn't horrible enough, the walls and ceilings (!) still showed traces of blood.

Another building was filled with tiny little cells of brick or wood. The balconies of this building were blocked by barbed wire to ensure that the prisoners couldn't commit suicide by jumping off. The cells themselves measured one by two meters. The two most moving moments for me where a big picture of a woman with a baby and the 'guestbook'. The woman in the picture had been the wife of a high ranking Khmer Rouge official, but for some reason she and her baby had been killed in S21 anyway. A tear was rolling down her cheek.

I almost didn't notice the guestbook. It was lying on a chair on one of the floors of a building where paintings of the horrible tortures were on exhibition. I opened it and it turned out to be filled with remarks of visitors of the museum, in many different languages. As you can imagine these remarks were very, very emotional. They echoed and strengthened my own feelings and filled my eyes with tears.

I'll not go into all of the gruesome ways of torture that the Khmer Rouge had invented and which were displayed in the pictures and paintings. Suffice it to say that it's beyond my understanding that a human being can think of something like that and actually bring it into practice. The biggest mystery is perhaps the question 'why?'. What on earth did they have to gain from these unspeakable acts? Again I left another 'highlight' of the journey in a state of shock.

As with the Killing Fields, a visit to S21 is essential to understanding the history of Cambodia and experiencing the utter cruelty that the human race is capable of. Utterly depressing but highly recommended.