Remembering Tuol Sleng

Before coming to Cambodia, I had a vague knowledge of the genocide that occurred under the Khmer Rouge regime in the 70s. For a little more context, from 1975 to 1979, Cambodia was ruled by the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist movement led by Pol Pot. The regime sought to transform Cambodia into a completely agrarian, classless society. Across the country, Cambodians were subjected to forced labor, starvation, disease, imprisonment, persecution, and execution. Religious and cultural practices were suppressed, families were separated, and anyone considered a threat to the regime could be arrested or killed. By the time the Khmer Rouge were overthrown in 1979, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people, roughly a quarter to a third of Cambodia's population, had died.

I really struggled with how I wanted to go about sharing about the Cambodian genocide. It is such a deeply personal topic to this country and these people, and how could I, a foreigner, possibly understand? One of the places we visited during orientation was Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. At the end of the audio tour, the guide, Ros Kodak, a survivor of Tuol Sleng, left us with this quote:

"You too are a keeper of our memory. Tell others what happened so that we may all strive for human dignity, compassion, and peace everywhere, today, and for generations to come."

This closing message gave me the confirmation that I needed that sharing about what I have learned is not only appropriate, but also necessary.

The first room on the tour was one of the many torture chambers at S-21. The orange-tiled floor and yellowed walls still held bloodstains from the victims who were housed in this very room. In the center of the room was a metal bed made from a lattice of metal strips, along with metal handcuffs that were used to secure victims to the bed. There was no glass case or barrier separating us from it. On the wall was a harrowing photo of the body that was found in this room. Seeing the photograph while standing in the exact place where it had been taken made the room feel much less like a museum exhibit.

Upon leaving, I noticed a small sign that held the names, genders, and ages of those who were known to have been held in that space. Men, women, and children, with the youngest on that sign being 16. I continued to walk through room after room, seeing more of the same. Metal beds, pictures of victims, names, and ages.

It is one thing to read of atrocities. It is another to walk through them, seeing the remnants, hearing the voice of a survivor. I cannot pretend I took it well. I left the first building feeling sick to my stomach and faint. Maybe it was partially the Cambodian heat, but mostly it was Tuol Sleng.

The torture methods that were used at S-21 were unimaginable. I will not be sharing those methods in this essay, but if you would like to know more, the following link is a good resource.

Continuing on to the second building, new voices joined Ros's. Voices not of those who had been at Tuol Sleng as victims, but those who came looking for family members. As I walked through the rooms, looking at image after image of those who had been admitted to S-21, I listened to Ohk Neri, a woman who came to Tuol Sleng as a teenager in hopes of identifying her father.

"Looking through room after room of identification pictures, I wondered if the horror was to see the emaciated faces of children, men, women, even babies sometimes, or if it was to think of the others whose pictures were not even there.

I told my brother we have to start over and look at each one of them again, because perhaps my father is there and if he's among them we can't afford to miss him. So numerous were the pictures on the wall, and I was thinking of all these victims who waited for help, who tried to hold out as long as they could, but nobody ever came."

As I listened to Ohk Neri's words, I couldn't help but think about what it would feel like to search through thousands of photographs, knowing that somewhere among them might be your father.

The next building didn't hold torture chambers, but contained a different kind of horror. Cell after cell, barely big enough for a person to sit down in, lined the walls. In order to enter the second floor of the building, visitors must walk through one of these cells. I had to work up the nerve to pass through the small space that had held countless victims. This cell had seen them cry, scream, and eventually be taken to die. The hallway outside had been covered in barbed wire to prevent prisoners from jumping from the second floor to kill themselves.

The final rooms contained even more visuals of the atrocities committed not only at Tuol Sleng, but throughout the country. Most notably were the human remains. Thousands of bones belonging to people who were killed during the Khmer Rouge period. This included a map of Cambodia made entirely of victims skulls. 

In conclusion, I will end with a quote given at the end of the audio tour by Joachim Baron von Marschall, a German ambassador to Cambodia.

"It reminds us to be wary of people and regimes that ignore human dignity. No political goal or ideology, however promising, important, or desirable it may appear, can ever justify a political system in which the dignity of the individual is not respected."