SIMPLY (t)RAVELLING

Tears at Tuol Sleng

 

Day 1 : Phnom Penh

We settled with our accomodation and were allowed early check-in,  and soon found ourselves on the road to our first destination in Cambodia; the notorious Tuol Sleng. Earlier we had a deal with the tuk tuk driver to charter his service for one day at USD15.

 

We cruised along the Sisowath Quay on our way to Tuol Sleng detention center, now museum in central Phnom Penh.

 

From the hustle and bustle of the city, we arrived to a quite and desolate housing area 10 minutes later. The place did not indicate anything like a tourist spot, except for a row of parked red tuk-tuks. Seeing us in complete lost, our tuk-tuk driver pointed us the direction. We obediently followed his course without knowing what to expect.

 

At the end of the street, stand gloomily a worn-out building  with the name reflected on the gate. True, we have arrived at the right place. The first feeling that hit us: it doesn’t look anything like a museum at all, at least not your typical museum. But the fact is, it is not typical, and not recommended for the faint hearted. Aware of its dark past, we held our breath, braved ourselves and entered the compound.

 

Codenamed by Khmer Rouge as Security Prison 21 (S-21), the site comprises of four major blocks of alphabetical order. The complex was actually an ordinary school converted into detention and interogation center by the infamous communist regime in August 1975, four months after the country’s coup d’etat. An estimate of 20,000 people have been brought to the prison during the 4 years of the regime genocidal rule; they were mostly civil servants, soldiers, academics and professionals identified as a potential threat to the party and their ideology. All these people and their families eventually met their horrible fate - repeatedly and brutally tortured at the hand of the regimes, mostly just for a piece of fabricated information or confession before being sent to Cheoung Ek Commune, 12km outskirt the city to be executed.

  

All the prisoners that were brought to the camp was made known of these ten crazy rules. 

 

We entered the first block with a certain level of apprehension, and these were the things we saw. There, in the middle of an empty used-to-be classroom, a bare structure of a rusty metal bedframe stood in silence. Scattered on the bedframe is the iron shackle that was used to chain the victim, next to an army ammunition box served as the prisoner’s latrine. Hung against the wall was an engrossed photo of the same room and the very same items - with heavily multilated human body being chained to the bed, photographed by a local photographer exactly as he first found it 30 years ago. The guards, upon Khmer Rouge surrender to the invading Vietnamese army, fled the scene  and left the corpses behind.

 

We checked out one room to another, and the same arrangements were found – an empty space illuminated only by the curtainless window, a rusty  bedframe on a blood-stained checkered floor, the ammo-converted-latrine box, iron shackles, a torn pillow and a ghastly photo of the last soul that ever slept in it. It was dimmed and cold inside; the grim ambience sort of telling us the horror truth the place behold.

 

We traipsed the quiet corridor of Block A, trying to figure out how it was like during the evil days. None of us in the mood of talking. With my hands on the cold wall, I closed my eyes and was transported back in time. I know it was only happening in my mind, but through it I saw a very thin and weak man being dragged by two heartless young guards – too young actually – and his chained feet made an irritating clanking noise everytime it came in contact with the floor. Blood was dripping from his broken face, and his eyes wept a tearless cries. His weak cry of agony was muted by the loud sounds of revolutionary songs playing at the back, which volume intesified by the nearby loud-speaker. I felt somebody touched me on the shoulder, and immediately awaken of my daydream. It was DH, and he gestured for us to leave.

 

All the rooms were empty at the third floor,  except for a waned green chalkboard. An obscure writing in French was still visible though; perhaps the last lesson the school ever taught.

 

 Unlatched wooden door, tied with a wire leaving a small opening for a peek inside the room.

 

 Courtyard of graves, of the last victims found on the spot, when Vietnamese army discovered the place in 1979.

 

A visitor  deeply preoccupied with the excerpt written on the information signage. Not a single thing in the school compound was under utilized. Prisoners were hung upside down from a once gymnastic bar, with their heads totally submerged in the fetid water down below. Almost drown, they were uplifted but only to be dunked again repetitiously until they provide the info or became totally unconcious.  

 

We moved to Block C;  it was enclosed with a mesh of barbed wires as to prevent escapes and suicide attempts by the fellow inmates.

 

Unlike the detention room in Block A, the rooms here were divided into several unit cells, tiny enough to fit one person.

 

 The detainee was chained to the floor, and equipped only with the metal ammo-box for feces.

 

 Gaps were drilled on the walls, which later served as doors.

 

 Cell numbers written on the wall to indicate occupying prisoner still visible to this date.

 

 A grilled opening that symbolicly divides the dark past and the bright future.

 

 

Shackles attached to a long piece of iron bar, used to chained a number of inmates on display at Block D, together with other instruments of torture.

 

Memorabilia of a young victim, whose fate unknown. 

 

Perhaps this was how she met her fate, as shown by the heart-wrenching illustration in Block B. Life was treated like it has no value at all. As if the killing was not bad enough, they have to do it with ultimate savage.

 

Photos of the young victims line the wall in Block B. Who would in their right mind harm these helpless and innocent children? 

 

Some of the family members of the prisoners especially the kids were taken to do hard labour and grew the food. The last boy in the photo was about my beloved son’s age.  I’m a mother, and I bet no mother in this world could have endured looking into all these disturbing images.

 

Out of the 20,000 people brought to the camp, only 7 survived the ordeals and able to tell the tale. They were spared due to certain skillset that they possessed which the regime thought to be useful. Everybody else was murdered, including all the kids in the photo above. Reason is simple; Khmer Rouge would not risk these young kids turn into rebels and revenge once they grow up. With this notion, a faint stream of tears trickling down my face.

 

 Barbed wires surrounding the compound.

 

 

Mugshots of the S-21 guards. Some of them were recruited at a very young age, brainwashed to the communism radical ideology. Like the prisoners, they were to abide by strict rules, of which failure to comply might lead them the fate of the prisoners themselves. Fear has its own devise ; to kill or be killed. People would do anything in the name of survival, and  hardships can hardened a man’s heart. When that happen, it is difficult for a person to distinguish the right and the wrong.

 

Polpot and Duch, the two main person behind the torture and the killings, whose hands covered in blood of over thousands of people. Prior to the Khmer Rouge rise in power they were respected school teachers. The world has a mystery of its own, and how these two men with such noble profession ended up a psychotic, cold-blooded mass murderer is indeed a mystery I could not fathom.