Today, I'm taking you to a place steeped in history in Phnom Penh. And a very sad history, unfortunately, as it touches on the heart of all the barbarity for which the Khmer Rouge were notorious.
While visiting the Cambodian capital, I visited one of the city's must-see attractions, the Tuol Sleng prison, which, before being temporarily converted, was a high school…
S-21: The Prison of Horror
S-21 was one of several prisons used to interrogate and torture prisoners of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Tuol Sleng means “the poisoned hill”, not hard to see why…
We are immediately put into the atmosphere by seeing the graves of the last 14 corpses found on site when the Vietnamese army liberated Phnom Penh and searched the premises.
There is also a sign there displaying the regulations in force at the time of this hell, it is just edifying.
A museum, a memory
Today converted into a museum for bear witness to the horror of the genocide committed within these walls and throughout the country, I walk silently through the corridors, gaze in religious silence at the metal beds and think of those who did not come out alive, including the 14 people whose photos can be seen in these rooms, illustrating in stark terms what the Vietnamese found.
It is estimated that between 15 000 and 20 000 people would have entered here (including 79 foreigners, most of them were just tourists intercepted off the southern coast of the country while they were passing through on a cruise…), only 200 people are said to have escaped alive 7 of whom were present at the time of the discovery of the premises...
What impresses me the most are not these empty rooms, once loaded with more than 70 people lying like animals on the ground, it is not these instruments and torture techniques exhibited there, nor even the skulls, the hanging post or these small individual cells improvised in brick or wood, barely 1,50 m long and less than 1 m wide, no, (that makes a long sentence, sorry), what touched me the most, I think, were these succession of portraits, the victims.
A silent visit
Each prisoner was meticulously listed in a file, including a photo. Among all these exposed eyes staring at us, we see everything, young, old, men, women, even children, no one was spared, sometimes, we can even see a smile, hardly believable…
I visited all the rooms, looked at each portrait as a kind of "homage" in my own way, at least in mark of respect.
I will spend about 2 hours there, in silence.
In some rooms, there is information about the executioners and masters of this painful episode of Cambodian history. Some photos are scratched and have not resisted the anger of the many Cambodians who have gone and still go to Tuaol Sleng to look for the photo of a missing family member.
As I was walking back towards the exit, I was stopped by an old man, one of the survivors who comes here every day to sell his book. Chum Mey, his name, survived thanks to his skills as a mechanic (another survived thanks to his talent for drawing).
I can't imagine what these people had to endure, just as the place seems so calm today, so "clean", and maybe in the end the horror was such that it is ultimately beyond our imagination.
Have you visited this site? What did you feel?
