Showing posts with label Tuol Sleng museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tuol Sleng museum. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Museum Commission To Safeguard Tuol Sleng
By Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
18 September 2009
Original report from Phnom Penh
18 September 2009
The government is planning to set up a national commission following the July listing of the Tuol Sleng museum as a Unesco Memory of the World.
Tuol Sleng, a former high school, was a Khmer Rouge torture center run by Duch, who is currently on trial at the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal.
It has been a museum since the Vietnamese ousted the Khmer Rouge in 1979. The government needs to establish a commission in order to preserve the museum under its new status.
The government has submitted thousands of archives, including 4,186 confessions, 6,226 prisoner biographies, and 6,147 photographic prints and negatives of prisoners.
“This national commission will be charged with oversight of all patrimonial documents in the country,” said Hak Touch, director of museums for the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.
Unesco will provide financial and technical assistance to preserve Tuol Sleng’s archives, he said.
Yos Eang, deputy director-general of Cambodia’s national commission to Unesco, said the establishment of the commission will take time.
Tuol Sleng, a former high school, was a Khmer Rouge torture center run by Duch, who is currently on trial at the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal.
It has been a museum since the Vietnamese ousted the Khmer Rouge in 1979. The government needs to establish a commission in order to preserve the museum under its new status.
The government has submitted thousands of archives, including 4,186 confessions, 6,226 prisoner biographies, and 6,147 photographic prints and negatives of prisoners.
“This national commission will be charged with oversight of all patrimonial documents in the country,” said Hak Touch, director of museums for the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.
Unesco will provide financial and technical assistance to preserve Tuol Sleng’s archives, he said.
Yos Eang, deputy director-general of Cambodia’s national commission to Unesco, said the establishment of the commission will take time.
Monday, September 14, 2009
UN agency names Cambodian genocide museum a key historical archive
Monday, September 14, 2009
By Sopheng Cheang
AP
By Sopheng Cheang
AP
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia's Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly a prison and torture centre operated by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, has been declared by the U.N. to be an archive of worldwide significance for its historical documents.
The Cambodian government and U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - UNESCO - opened a meeting Monday to establish a national committee to oversee the museum's operation as a newly designated "Memory of the World" site.
A UNESCO meeting at the end of July in Bridgetown, Barbados, named the museum as one of 35 archives worldwide added to a list of almost 200 that are exceptional historical repositories.
The museum, formerly a high school in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, was turned into S-21 prison after the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. Of the estimated 16,000 men, women and children who passed through its gates, only a handful survived. An estimated 1.7 million people died as a result of the communist Khmer Rouge's radical policies from 1975 to 1979.
The museum's archive includes 4,186 confessions - often falsely given by prisoners under torture - 6,226 biographies of prisoners, 6,147 photographic prints and negatives of prisoners and other items.
The prison was headed by Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who is currently being tried by Cambodia's U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
About 30 people attended the workshop, including officials from Tuol Sleng, the National Museum and the Culture Ministry, government advisers and UNESCO officials.
Helen Jarvis, a government adviser, told the workshop that the archive constitutes the most complete extant documentary picture of the Khmer Rouge regime and an essential part of Cambodia's recent history. It is also being used to provide pivotal evidence at the Khmer Rouge tribunal, she said.
Some aspects of the Memory of the World project deal with man's inhumanity to man, and the Tuol Sleng museum has "documentation of one of the most extreme examples of crimes against humanity in the 20th century with a major impact on world history," Jarvis said.
UNESCO established the Memory of the World Program in 1992 to respond to the growing awareness of the problems of preservation of, and access to, documentary heritage in various parts of the world.
Its guidelines state that the world's documentary heritage should be preserved, protected and made permanently accessible to the public.
The Cambodian government and U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - UNESCO - opened a meeting Monday to establish a national committee to oversee the museum's operation as a newly designated "Memory of the World" site.
A UNESCO meeting at the end of July in Bridgetown, Barbados, named the museum as one of 35 archives worldwide added to a list of almost 200 that are exceptional historical repositories.
The museum, formerly a high school in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, was turned into S-21 prison after the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. Of the estimated 16,000 men, women and children who passed through its gates, only a handful survived. An estimated 1.7 million people died as a result of the communist Khmer Rouge's radical policies from 1975 to 1979.
The museum's archive includes 4,186 confessions - often falsely given by prisoners under torture - 6,226 biographies of prisoners, 6,147 photographic prints and negatives of prisoners and other items.
The prison was headed by Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who is currently being tried by Cambodia's U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
About 30 people attended the workshop, including officials from Tuol Sleng, the National Museum and the Culture Ministry, government advisers and UNESCO officials.
Helen Jarvis, a government adviser, told the workshop that the archive constitutes the most complete extant documentary picture of the Khmer Rouge regime and an essential part of Cambodia's recent history. It is also being used to provide pivotal evidence at the Khmer Rouge tribunal, she said.
Some aspects of the Memory of the World project deal with man's inhumanity to man, and the Tuol Sleng museum has "documentation of one of the most extreme examples of crimes against humanity in the 20th century with a major impact on world history," Jarvis said.
UNESCO established the Memory of the World Program in 1992 to respond to the growing awareness of the problems of preservation of, and access to, documentary heritage in various parts of the world.
Its guidelines state that the world's documentary heritage should be preserved, protected and made permanently accessible to the public.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
