Tuol Sleng Museum, Phnom Penh

4 more images

Security Prison 21 (S-21) or Tuol Sleng (meaning "Hill of the Poisonous Trees" or "Strychnine Hill") was the Khmer Rouge's primary interrogation and extermination centre, designed to purge anti-Khmer Rouge elements from the new society Pol Pot and his henchmen were hell-bent on creating. Before the 1975-79 regime, the building was the Chao Ponhea Yat High School, named after a Royal ancestor of King Norodom Sihanouk. Smaller interrogation centres were scattered across Cambodia, but S-21 was by far the largest and most important. All of the classrooms were converted either to tiny prison cells or interrogation rooms, while the upper balconies were covered in barbed wire so that prisoners could not kill themselves by throwing themselves off.

Like the Nazis before them, the Khmer Rouge were meticulous in their record keeping, taking photos of every new arrival and painstakingly retaining detailed confessions made by prisoners. Many of these haunting photos are displayed in the museum along with torture equipment such as a water board where the prisoners legs were shackled to a bar, their wrists restrained to brackets and then water was poured over their face.

Up to 16,000 people were interred, tortured and eventually executed here or at the nearby killing fields. Victims included Khmers, Vietnamese, Laotians, Thais, Indians, Brits, Pakistanis, Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians. The vast majority, of course, were Khmer, and many were former Khmer Rouge themselves, victims of the regime's systematic and paranoid internal purges.

When the Vietnamese ousted the Pol Pot regime, they arrived in Phnom Penh far faster than expected and the authorities at S-21 barely had time to execute the last prisoners before fleeing. The first row of cells on the left as you enter the school have been left largely as found by the Vietnamese, including photos of the remains that were found in each cell. At the time, the Vietnamese kept S-21 largely as it was as a means to justify their invasion.

While it makes for a rather grim couple of hours, a visit to S-21 is an integral part of understanding what happened during the Khmer Rouge period.

Open: 7-11.30am & 2-5.30pm. Admission: $2.

2 more images

In the years before 1975, Toul Sleng was a high school in Phnom Penh, but when the Khmer Rouge came to power it was converted into the notorious prison known as S-21.

During the Khmer Rouge regime, around 20000 people were kept in prison here, and tortured to confess their ‘anti-revolutionary’ behaviour. Some died under the torture and were buried in a shallow mass grave on the prison ground, but most prisoners were executed at the Killing Fields (read my other tips). Only 7 inmates survived the Toul Sleng prison…

Toul Sleng is now a museum and a memorial and many things are left in the state it was when the Khmer Rouge abandoned it in January 1979. You can walk around in the prison cells (the old classrooms) and the courtyard, and see exhibitions of torture instruments and hundreds of photographs of former prisoners.

A visit to Toul Sleng is a very depressing experience, but still a must-do in Phnom Penh. It serves as an opportunity to honour the victims and to remember… Remember the terror so that it's not repeated!

I would like to start this tip by saying that my intention is not to distress anyone writing a tip about what is an essentially heartbreaking subject. I will construct a seperate travelogue with a suitable advisory and further details and content myself with one of the less graphic images here. Should you wish to know more, have a look at the travelogue.

I am not normally a sensitive soul. My time in the forces exposed me to things that were less than pleasant and I have learned to deal with that. I first visited the Tuol Sleng (S21) Genocide Museum nine years ago, and lef the place in a state of physical shock. It had a profound effect on me, and I had thought that I would be slightly immune to it the second time round. Wrong. As the title suggests nothing, not even previous exposure, can prepare you for the sheer calculated evil and brutality that it represents within (my) living memory.

For readers not aware of the history, let me give you a brief outline. After the French colonial power had been ousted in the late 1950's and a period of various political changes, in 1975 the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer), led by a card-carrying psychotic called Pol Pot took over the country and began a regime lasting nearly five years in which up to 25% of the populace were killed in a search for a socialist agrarian utopia, the results of which are still crippling the country to this day. Naturally, Pol Pot was not his real name, that was Saloth Sar or Blood Brother #1. Blood being the operative word. All the professonal classes were slaughtered purely by virtue of the fact they were the professional classes and therefore, by some perverted logic, against the people. Everyone else was worked literally to death producing rice, much of which was exported whilst the poeple starved.

Imagine, if you can, a country where you could be tortured to death for wearing spectacles. Ridiculous as it sounds, that was the case. If you had spectacles it meant you read too much, therefore were one of the intelligentsia and therefore guilty of some sort of crime against the working people. The hypocrisy is interesting as most of the leaders were not themselves workers and were all pretty well-educated. Many of the high officials themselves were not even Cambodian but from neighoburing Vietnam.

What followed for about five years has been well-documented and by people much better equipped than I, including many who were there. There are many books on the subject and I would urge you to read them. I have read many of the VT pages on the subject, and would not hope to equal them, I recommend you read them yourselves.

This was a regime that surpassed anything the Nazis ever did and managed to reduce an already poor country to a state of ruin not often equalled in the modern world. What, for me, makes it even more disturbing is that, unlike the Nazis, it was not done in pursuit of some imperialist ideal, world domination was never Pol Pot's thing. He concentrated his evil on his own people. And evil it certainly was.

Central to the Khmer Rouge apparatus was a system of Security Centres, of which this was number 21. What is shocking is the sheer ordanariness of the place. It was a converted school building in the Southern suburbs of Phnom Penh, and that is still what it looks like, save for the (once-electrified) barbed wire fences outside and the further barbed wire on the balconies, put there to stop inmates jumping to their death to avoid the horrors of the place. To visit today is like walking into a school complex, at least until you enter the first room. Then it becomes a place of nightmares.

I shall leave the narrative here, and continue it on the travelogue. As I said, I have no wish to offend and the descriptions and images are beyond horrific.

My advice? I think everyone should see this although if you are sensitive, perhaps it is best left alone. Open except Monday from 0800 - 1700, admission and the (recommended) film show is in Block D, top floor at 1000 and 1500.

4 more images

I visited Toul Sleng on my way back from the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and I can't begin to describe the exteme contast of emotions that I went through. I had experienced unexpected feelings of peacefulness at Choeung Ek, but here the real horrors of what went on hit me with full force. Why? I still honestly don't know - was it because formerly S.21 had been a primary school, was it because of the hundreds of photographs of the prisoners who passed through here? I think that it was the sheer ordinariness of the place that hit me, it was a school in a suburban setting, "monkey bars", where children had previously played, were used as instruments of torture, classrooms had been converted into cells, barbed wire was strung up on the walkways of the upper floors to prevent prisoners committing suicide by jumping to their deaths.

The figures are startling: over 14,000 prisoners passed through Toul Sleng being tortured here before being sent out to Choeung Ek to be exterminated. This number included children and babies to conform to the theory, "To dig up the grass, one must dig up the roots". There is room after room of harrowing black and white photographs of prisoners. Only seven prisoners survived, they had skills that were useful to the regime - carpenter, electrical engineer, painter, photographer. The corpses of fourteen prisoners who were found by Vietnamese troops are buried in the courtyard.

Overall, I was glad to leave. I think that it is one of those places that you need to see in order to realise how cruel man can be. I will go back to Phnom Penh again in the future, but here never.

3 more images

Prior to 1975, Toul Sleng was a high school. When the Khmer Rouge came into power, it was converted into the S-21 prison and interrogation facility.

Inmates at this prison were held in tiny brick cubicles and systematically tortured, sometimes over a period of months, to extract the desired ‘confessions,’ after which the victim was executed at the killing field of Choeung Ek just outside the city.
S-21 processed over 17,000 people, only less than a dozen survived.

Much has been left as it was, when the Khmer Rouge abandoned it in January 1979.
The prison kept extensive records, leaving thousands of photos of their victims, lots of these are displayed as well as paintings of torture at the prison done by a survivor of Toul Sleng.

The Tuol Sleng compound is now a museum, a memorial, a place to wander around and wonder how people could be so cruel to another human life!
It certainly is full of sad memories. Take your time to wander through the buildings and to look at the exhibits and reminisce.

Tuol Sleng in Khmer means "HILL OF THE POISONOUS TREES" or "STRYCHNINE HILL".
It was NOT a real long time ago that this all happpened...

ADMISSION IN 2008 was $2.00 per person.
OPEN 8AM-5PM -daily Closed for lunch

2 more images

Tuol sleng is what used to be the torture chambers of the khmer rouge.
They are located in a former school in Phnom Penh and is as grueling to watch as the KZ camps from the second world war.
People who were considerd a threat to the regime were tortured and forced to sign papers saying they were guilty of crimes against the nation and then they were taken to the killing fields for execution.
In many of the rooms you have a photos of the people who went through Tuol slenf before execution and you will see that it was not just grown men who was totured to death in there but several women and children too.
As i am writing this, in march 2009, the former leader of Tuol sleng "duch" is finally going to trial for ordering the torture and executions of thousands of people here.
Tuol sleng is a cruel place, but it's an absolute must in my opinion if you want to understand the modern history of Cambodia.

2 more images

Whoever who plans to visits Phnom Penh should have Toul Sleng Genocide Museum at the top of their “must places to visit” list. I have read a couple of reviews and comments about this place before I came and knew what to expect but then never have I expected that it would be that unpleasant. When you enter the school, you will have to pay USD 2 for entrance fees. All looks good from the entrance but as I walk around the school ground, I could feel my guts starting to curl like a fur ball. The first room you will visit will be the infamous class room with metal bed where Pol Pot order his prisoners to be tortured before being electrocuted till they are burned to charred remains. To make matters worst, he took a picture of everyone he killed. All these pictures were found later and is display in the school. One advice is to do this museum before your meal as I almost puke after I finish this school.

There is also a video shown everyday only on 10.00and 3.00pm. I completely missed it because I arrived there around noon. Make sure you make it for the video. I bet it will be very “interesting”.

4 more images

GOING TO TUOL SLENG MUSEUM IS NOT GOING TO MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER ABOUT THE HUMAN RACE..THIS PLACE SHOWS WHAT DEPTHS HUMAN BEINGS CAN PLUMIT TO.
TUOL SLENG OR S-21 AS IT IS BETTER KNOWN WAS USED BY THE KHMER ROUGE TO TORTURE AND KILL OVER 17.000 PEOPLE DURING ITS REIGN OF TERROR BETWEEN 1975-1978.
S-21 WAS JUST A NORMAL SCHOOL IN THE CENTRE OF PHNOM PENH BEFORE IT WAS TURNED INTO CAMBODIA'S TORTURE CENTRE.
EACH POOR SOUL THAT HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO PASS THROUGH HERE HAD HIS OR HER PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AND GIVEN A NUMBER..BEFORE BEING TORTURED.
PRISONERS WERE FORCED TO LIE IN CRAMPED CELLS AND KEPT SHACKLED TO THE WALL.
PRISONERS HELD IN THE LARGE MASS CELLS HAD ONE OR BOTH OF THEIR LEGS SHACKLED TO SHORT OR LONG PIECES OF IRON BAR. A SIX METRE BAR COULD HOLD UP TO 30 PRISONERS.
THEY ALL LAY ON THE FLOOR IN ONLY THEIR UNDERWEAR WITH NO MATS, BLANKETS OR MOSQUITO NETS.
THE VICTIMS IN THE PRISON WERE FROM ALL OVER CAMBODIA AND OF DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES WHICH INCLUDED THAI-INDIAN-VIETNAMESE-BRITISH-CANADIAN-AMERICAN-NEW ZEALANDERS AND FRENCH, BUT THE VAST MAJORITY WERE CAMBODIAN.
OVER 10,000 PEOPLE WERE MURDERED AT S-21 THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN KILLED AT S-21.. THIS FIGURE STANDS AT 2000.
THE REST WERE SENT TO CHOEUNG EK (THE KILLING FIELDS) FOR EXECUTION.
WHEN THE VIETNAMESE LIBERATED S-21 ONLY SEVEN PEOPLE WERE LEFT ALIVE.
WHILE VISITING TUOL SLENG MUSEUM IS A DEPRESSING EXPERIENCE I FEEL THAT EVERYONE SHOULD COME AND SEE THIS PLACE..AND LEARN.
I HAVE VISITED ALCATRAZ AND I HAVE TO SAY THAT IT IS A FUN PARK COMPARED TO THIS.
YOU CAN PAY A EXTRA $2 FOR A GUIDE TO TAKE YOU AROUND, THEY CAN HELP TELL THE STORIES BEHIND THE MANY PICTURES.
EACH DAY AT 10AM AND 3PM THEY SHOW A MOVIE ABOUT A YOUNG WOMAN AND A REGIONAL KHMER ROUGE LEADER WHO FELL IN LOVE BUT PAID FOR THEIR CRIME WITH DEATH AT S-21.
ALL IN ALL A VERY VERY MOVING PLACE, BUT ONE YOU MUST SEE. THE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS OF ITS VICTIMS WILL HAUNT YOU.
OPEN FROM 8AM-11.30 AND 2-5.30 PRICE $2US $5 FOR VIDEO CAMERA.