Experience: the Killing Fields, and the Tuol Sleng (S-21) Prison

Choeung Ek Killing Fields

This was arguably the hardest day of my trip, emotionally. Indeed, being lost among the marvels of Cambodia’s ancient past in the temples of Angkor Wat, or dealing with ever-smiling Cambodians can never prepare your heart to relate to the horror of the country’s recent events. So, before starting my tale, let me (very briefly) introduce you to this particular little bit of history.

During the course of the Vietnam War, fought between South and North Vietnam and with extensive involvement of foreign allies on both sides, conflict and fighting (and bombing) spread to the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia, leading to the creation, in the latter, of the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer) – a communist radical insurgency group. Khmers are the majority ethnic group in Cambodia. Led by the revolutionary leader Pol Pot, this group fought a gradual guerrilla war against the government forces, being backed up by communist forces of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. The Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia after seizing the capital, Phnom Penh, in 1975.

Pol Pot wished to create a pure agrarian communist state in the country. Being suspicious of city-dwellers (regarded as parasites and lackeys of capitalism), he ordered the immediate evacuation of cities. In three days, the entire population of Phnom Penh (between 2 and 3 million) was ordered to move out and assigned to 12-hour-a-day forced labor in farm fields. As Pol Pot’s regime developed, violence against perceived “traitors of the revolution” escalated, leading to the creation of prisons, torture chambers and, ultimately, killing fields all over the country. An estimated 3 million people (out of a former population of 8 million) died under the rule of the Khmer Rouge.

For more information, I recommend the good Wikipedia articles on Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, and Democratic Kampuchea. I also highly recommend watching the 1984 movie The Killing Fields. So, upon arriving in Phnom Penh, I decided to visit one of the killing fields and the most famous political prison, to have a deeper understanding of that sad bit of human history.

The Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, created upon one of the killing fields in the outskirts of Phnom Penh, first impressed me by how lovely the place is. It was a sunny day, the place is clean, verdant and pleasant, and not at all what one would expect of such a location. On the front, there is a high memorial stupa. This quickly brings you back to reality – the stupa houses an incredibly high pile of more than 5,000 human skulls, part of the over 9,000 bodies found in that field alone. More on that later.

The memorial stupa

Choeung Ek wasn’t a concentration camp, as there was no forced labor here. One entered the place either to kill, or to die. The aim was to eliminate prisoners as quickly and efficiently as possible. The method was mainly bludgeoning, since the Khmer Rouge wouldn’t spend precious bullets for such a job. Executions were conducted only at night, to avoid raising suspicion of people and workers nearby. Prisoners would be walked to previously dug collective pits, killed on the spot, and thrown in the pit, much in the way illustrated below.

There are signs marking the places where the buildings (later destroyed by the Vietnamese) were. Two of them are particularly touching. During the height of its activity, more than 300 prisoners were executed every day here, more than the guards could handle. So a small prison, dubbed “the Dark and Gloomy Prison” was erected – just a windowless depot for storing human cargo to be executed during the next night. There was also a storage room for chemicals – those helped cover up the unbearable stench, and also served to kill any half-dead prisoners thrown in the pits while still alive.

Perhaps the best image of the Khmer Rouge’s utter disregard for life is provided by their own famous saying, aimed at the traitors: “To destroy you is no loss. To preserve you is no gain.”

There are many, many depressions in the soil around the site. These mark the former pits. The bodies were exhumed and moved to proper burial sites. However, during every rainy season the waters and erosion bring up fragments of bones, teeth, and cloth rags. Indeed, you can see many of them in the ground around your feet, one of the gloomiest visions I ever had. It’s almost as if the place itself will not let anyone forget the horror that happened here.

There is also a very good audio tour provided along with the entrance ticket. You can hear explanations about each part of the place, as well as stories from survivors of the Khmer Rouge’s prisons and camps. There are no survivors from Choeung Ek. It’s impossible not to be moved by the stories, or to to fight the tears as you try to imagine what it must have felt like to go through all of this. Suddenly, all your problems, suffering, and everything you ever thought hard or painful in your life seem small and insignificant – and they really are.

Bones collected from the ground

On this tree a huge loudspeaker was hanged every night, playing political songs, so as to disguise the place as a Khmer Rouge political meeting, and muffle the screams of the victims.

One of the most terrifying visions was the tree below. Here, the children and little babies of prisoners were killed. Standard procedure was to hold the child by the ankles, and then smash his/her head against the tree. The horror is simply unspeakable.

By the end of the circuit, you can visit the memorial stupa. Here, layers upon layers of skulls retrieved from the pits are kept. This is truly a terrifying vision. The skulls are just there, each of them belonging to a person who was once just like you and me – good and bad, loving and selfish, generous and greedy, all of them stripped from the greatest gift of them all. They are all just there, looking back at you, as if demanding answers for the horrible crimes committed against them.

So after all this, deeply upset and lost in thoughts, I decided to look for a restroom. Found one near the museum bordering the walls. After getting out, I heard a lot of laughter and happy, playful sounds. I looked over the wall:

Just beside the memorial there is a school for small children. There they were, doing that wonderful mess children do, completely oblivious to the terrible deeds that happened next door. Probably some of their relatives even were here. I found new hope upon seeing the school – there is the future of Cambodia, and I pray those children can build up a society that learns, and remembers.

Tuol Sleng (S-21) Prison

Most of the prisoners executed at the Choeung Ek killing fields were first detained at the S-21 Prison. This place was a high school before the Khmer Rouge took power. After that, all schools in the country were simply closed, as Pol Pot believed education was useless to the revolution, and corrupted the purity of the “old people”, the pure, agrarian peasant lifestyle. The building was renamed Security Prison 21, and turned into a prison and execution center for political targets, right in the middle of Phnom Penh.

Right in the front of the main courtyard, that looks just any other school grounds in the world – classroom buildings surrounding big playing fields – are the tombs of the 14 last victims of the center, the ones whose corpses were found there when the place was liberated by the Vietnamese. Between 17,000 and 20,000 people were imprisoned in Tuol Sleng, and out of those there are only 7 survivors, all of whom had some skill useful to their captors, such as painting or photography. Right there is also a big sign stating the code of conduct of the center.

One of the buildings was used as a detention unit, with wooden and brick cells adapted within the former classrooms.

In the detention building there is barbed wire in every open-air corridor. This was to prevent prisoners from committing suicide by jumping down.

The other building was used as an interrogation facility. Prisoners would be extensively tortured to reveal names and locations of friends and family, who would in their turn be arrested, tortured and sent to the killing fields.

Looks like a regular school...

One of the interrogation rooms, and a picture of how it was found

These poles were used by students for exercise, but the KR adapted them for torturing people by hanging them upside down into water containers

The torture tools

The Khmer Rouge, in an upsetting similarity with the Nazis, were extremely meticulous in recording all their activities. Prisoners were measured, photographed, given identification numbers and photographed again after torture and death. Lists would be checked and rechecked everyday to ensure that nobody escaped. Confessions, completely made-up and gotten under extreme torture, were written down and signed by the prisoners, who were then signing their own death sentence.

One of the prisoners actually smiled for the photo. I'm still wondering about what caused that smile.

Can you see the traitorous look of these children? Such a threat to the revolution.

Some of the prisoner profiles and confessions

There are plenty of photos of the bodies after torture in the Khmer Rouge’s archives, but I really couldn’t bring myself to photograph them.

I left S-21 with a bleak feeling about humanity. Perhaps the best question was one I’ve found on the walls of one of the cells in the detention building. Some previous tourist, doubtlessly assaulted by the same feelings I was experiencing then, wrote:

“Will we ever learn?”