By KEVIN SITES
http://hotzone.yahoo.com
July 16, 2006
By the sheer number of photographs now displayed at the former prison known as S-21, it is clear the Khmer Rouge was very good at two things: killing people and documenting the lives of its victims.
Here, in what is now a museum called Tuol Sleng ("poisonous hill" in English), the faces of the Cambodian genocide are much more than memories.
Visitors walking through the hallways of this former-high-school-turned-prison must confront the pain, uncertainty and fear of thousands of victims looking back at them from the black-and-white photographs taken by prison guards.
It was a methodical process. The victims were positioned in a specially constructed chair with a boom arm that steadied their heads before the photograph was taken.
Detailed histories were written for each prisoner, covering their lives from childhood up until their arrest. They were stripped of all their possessions and most of their clothes, leaving them with only their underwear.
Some were chained to the floor in tiny individual cells, forced to defecate in ammunition cans. Others were held in groups in open classrooms with one or both legs shackled to iron bars on the floor, similar to the method used to immobilize captives on slave ships sailing to the Americas from Africa.
But this wasn't a killing factory. It was a holding area and a place to extract confessions.
True to the Khmer Rouge's communist utopian vision of beating the nation back into a purely peasant agrarian society, the killings took place in the countryside: extermination camps or "killing fields" like Choeung Ek just outside the capital of Phnom Penh.
It's estimated that as many as 2 million people were killed during the reign of the enigmatic Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, "Brother Number One." His regime lasted - as so many Cambodians know by heart - three years, eight months and 21 days, until the Vietnamese army invaded, forcing the Khmer Rouge back into the jungle where it first began.
The term "S-21" is short for "Security Office 21," one of the most secret departments of the Khmer Rouge regime. It had several branches, including the current Tuol Sleng location, where the primary purpose was the detention, interrogation and eventual extermination of suspected counterrevolutionary elements.
Most of the 17,000 processed through this particular facility were killed. But those who perished on-site died from torture, sickness or disease. Those who lived long enough to "confess" were sent elsewhere to be murdered.
The people held at the center were Cambodians of all ages, from all walks of life. Because families were arrested all together, this included children and even babies.
Foreigners were also imprisoned, including Vietnamese, Laotians, Indians, Pakistanis, British, Americans, New Zealanders and Australians.
Like most Cambodians, 48-year-old Pen Palla, a guide at the museum (not her real name; she says she still fears Khmer Rouge elements in the government), had family members killed by the Khmer Rouge.
The litany of her personal loss is staggering. She says her husband was killed by a bamboo stake driven through his head; her infant daughter died from starvation, her infant son from illness; her brothers were executed in the killing fields of Choeung Ek.
The burden of death still weighs on her heavily. In the strangely serene grassy courtyard of the museum, she rubs her face with her hands. Looking into the darkness, the sadness of the past, she still finds little relief all these years later.
She says she began working at the museum as a cleaning woman in 1980 when it first opened, because her sister, then the director of historical documents at Tuol Sleng, asked her to.
"I told her," she says, shaking her head, "'I don't want to work here, it makes me too sad.' "
But she says she finally relented because, in the wake of the conflict, having no husband and no means of support, she needed the work.
"I cried every day for the first eight months I worked here," she says, "remembering my daughter and my son."
As she began to learn English, Pen Palla says she transitioned into the role of a guide at Tuol Sleng, now making the cycle from the interrogations rooms to the holding cells, and past the faces of the victims over and over again. Tours cost $2 to $8, depending on the size of the group.
It is a sobering experience for the 50 or so visitors that come to the museum each day. Many that I spoke to said they didn't know much about the genocide, but felt it would be wrong to visit Cambodia without paying respect to its tragic history and the victims of its genocide. For some, it also raises questions both about the past and the present.
"When this was going on," says 23-year-old Canadian Aaron Johnson, "it makes you wonder why the world wasn't more motivated for some kind of humanitarian intervention."
"And the question of genocide seems to keep coming up," adds Gabrielle Donnelly, 23, also of Canada. "What about places like Darfur? After World War II, we said we wouldn't let genocide happen again, but it seems like it's still with us."
And like other genocides, the question of how this could happen still hangs over Cambodia. Although there are few clear answers, there are some clues provided by S-21.
Many of the prison guards here were just children themselves, usually between the ages of 10 and 15, sometimes picked out from other camps. Literature from Tuol Sleng says the children usually started out quite normal, but increased in their remorseless cruelty toward those they were charged with minding. Eventually these children were often killed themselves by other children who replaced them.
Prisoners had to ask permission to do anything - from going to the bathroom to even moving their bodies. Failure to obey immediately would result in savage beatings with electrical wire or electric shock. The regulations were posted in each cell, some of them even detailing how prisoners should behave during torture. For example:
"Rule #6 - While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all."
And torture took all forms.
"Sometimes victims would be shackled to the floor," says guide K. Eolundi, pointing to a painting by Vann Nath depicting the torture. Nath was a former prisoner at S-21 and one of the few survivors. "The guards would cut off their nipples with these clamps."
Nineteen-year-old Megan Sanders, from the United Kingdom, winces at the description.
On the grounds outside there is what looks like a large wooden goalpost with pulleys on the crossbeam. Here, the guide says, prisoners were hoisted up by the back of their arms, which caused excruciating pain, often dislocating the shoulders.
According to the placard beside it, if prisoners still refused to talk, the guards would force their heads into a large clay urn filled with animal excrement.
At the end of the tour, Sanders says she's shocked by what she's seen. Her traveling companions agree.
"We didn't really learn about this in school," says Lisa Frost, 18, also of the U.K. "What little I did know mostly came from seeing the film 'The Killing Fields.' "
The young women said they had read about Tuol Sleng in Cambodian guidebooks, but the primary reason they came was because other travelers had told them about it.
With the thorough documentation of its victims, the Khmer Rouge itself ironically helped to put a human face on the atrocities perpetrated. But now time itself has become an enemy.
Without proper chemicals and temperature-controlled storage, many of the documents pertaining to - and photographs of - those who passed through the center are beginning to yellow and fade. Museum directors say they fear that without adequate funding to preserve them they could eventually be lost - and the history with them.
The museum is seeking international support to refurbish the decaying buildings and preserve the historical documents it contains.
While the memories of the Cambodian genocide have been burned deeply into the minds of those who lived through it, like Pen Palla, many here feel that future generations will need a reminder: unforgettable images like those at Tuol Sleng, faces of victims captured by their killers, reflecting the horror of their time.
For more information or to learn how to help, visit the Documentation Center of Cambodia's Web site at http://www.dccam.org/.
(Find more reporting from "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" at http://hotzone.yahoo.com.)
http://hotzone.yahoo.com
July 16, 2006
By the sheer number of photographs now displayed at the former prison known as S-21, it is clear the Khmer Rouge was very good at two things: killing people and documenting the lives of its victims.
Here, in what is now a museum called Tuol Sleng ("poisonous hill" in English), the faces of the Cambodian genocide are much more than memories.
Visitors walking through the hallways of this former-high-school-turned-prison must confront the pain, uncertainty and fear of thousands of victims looking back at them from the black-and-white photographs taken by prison guards.
It was a methodical process. The victims were positioned in a specially constructed chair with a boom arm that steadied their heads before the photograph was taken.
Detailed histories were written for each prisoner, covering their lives from childhood up until their arrest. They were stripped of all their possessions and most of their clothes, leaving them with only their underwear.
Some were chained to the floor in tiny individual cells, forced to defecate in ammunition cans. Others were held in groups in open classrooms with one or both legs shackled to iron bars on the floor, similar to the method used to immobilize captives on slave ships sailing to the Americas from Africa.
But this wasn't a killing factory. It was a holding area and a place to extract confessions.
True to the Khmer Rouge's communist utopian vision of beating the nation back into a purely peasant agrarian society, the killings took place in the countryside: extermination camps or "killing fields" like Choeung Ek just outside the capital of Phnom Penh.
It's estimated that as many as 2 million people were killed during the reign of the enigmatic Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, "Brother Number One." His regime lasted - as so many Cambodians know by heart - three years, eight months and 21 days, until the Vietnamese army invaded, forcing the Khmer Rouge back into the jungle where it first began.
The term "S-21" is short for "Security Office 21," one of the most secret departments of the Khmer Rouge regime. It had several branches, including the current Tuol Sleng location, where the primary purpose was the detention, interrogation and eventual extermination of suspected counterrevolutionary elements.
Most of the 17,000 processed through this particular facility were killed. But those who perished on-site died from torture, sickness or disease. Those who lived long enough to "confess" were sent elsewhere to be murdered.
The people held at the center were Cambodians of all ages, from all walks of life. Because families were arrested all together, this included children and even babies.
Foreigners were also imprisoned, including Vietnamese, Laotians, Indians, Pakistanis, British, Americans, New Zealanders and Australians.
Like most Cambodians, 48-year-old Pen Palla, a guide at the museum (not her real name; she says she still fears Khmer Rouge elements in the government), had family members killed by the Khmer Rouge.
The litany of her personal loss is staggering. She says her husband was killed by a bamboo stake driven through his head; her infant daughter died from starvation, her infant son from illness; her brothers were executed in the killing fields of Choeung Ek.
The burden of death still weighs on her heavily. In the strangely serene grassy courtyard of the museum, she rubs her face with her hands. Looking into the darkness, the sadness of the past, she still finds little relief all these years later.
She says she began working at the museum as a cleaning woman in 1980 when it first opened, because her sister, then the director of historical documents at Tuol Sleng, asked her to.
"I told her," she says, shaking her head, "'I don't want to work here, it makes me too sad.' "
But she says she finally relented because, in the wake of the conflict, having no husband and no means of support, she needed the work.
"I cried every day for the first eight months I worked here," she says, "remembering my daughter and my son."
As she began to learn English, Pen Palla says she transitioned into the role of a guide at Tuol Sleng, now making the cycle from the interrogations rooms to the holding cells, and past the faces of the victims over and over again. Tours cost $2 to $8, depending on the size of the group.
It is a sobering experience for the 50 or so visitors that come to the museum each day. Many that I spoke to said they didn't know much about the genocide, but felt it would be wrong to visit Cambodia without paying respect to its tragic history and the victims of its genocide. For some, it also raises questions both about the past and the present.
"When this was going on," says 23-year-old Canadian Aaron Johnson, "it makes you wonder why the world wasn't more motivated for some kind of humanitarian intervention."
"And the question of genocide seems to keep coming up," adds Gabrielle Donnelly, 23, also of Canada. "What about places like Darfur? After World War II, we said we wouldn't let genocide happen again, but it seems like it's still with us."
And like other genocides, the question of how this could happen still hangs over Cambodia. Although there are few clear answers, there are some clues provided by S-21.
Many of the prison guards here were just children themselves, usually between the ages of 10 and 15, sometimes picked out from other camps. Literature from Tuol Sleng says the children usually started out quite normal, but increased in their remorseless cruelty toward those they were charged with minding. Eventually these children were often killed themselves by other children who replaced them.
Prisoners had to ask permission to do anything - from going to the bathroom to even moving their bodies. Failure to obey immediately would result in savage beatings with electrical wire or electric shock. The regulations were posted in each cell, some of them even detailing how prisoners should behave during torture. For example:
"Rule #6 - While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all."
And torture took all forms.
"Sometimes victims would be shackled to the floor," says guide K. Eolundi, pointing to a painting by Vann Nath depicting the torture. Nath was a former prisoner at S-21 and one of the few survivors. "The guards would cut off their nipples with these clamps."
Nineteen-year-old Megan Sanders, from the United Kingdom, winces at the description.
On the grounds outside there is what looks like a large wooden goalpost with pulleys on the crossbeam. Here, the guide says, prisoners were hoisted up by the back of their arms, which caused excruciating pain, often dislocating the shoulders.
According to the placard beside it, if prisoners still refused to talk, the guards would force their heads into a large clay urn filled with animal excrement.
At the end of the tour, Sanders says she's shocked by what she's seen. Her traveling companions agree.
"We didn't really learn about this in school," says Lisa Frost, 18, also of the U.K. "What little I did know mostly came from seeing the film 'The Killing Fields.' "
The young women said they had read about Tuol Sleng in Cambodian guidebooks, but the primary reason they came was because other travelers had told them about it.
With the thorough documentation of its victims, the Khmer Rouge itself ironically helped to put a human face on the atrocities perpetrated. But now time itself has become an enemy.
Without proper chemicals and temperature-controlled storage, many of the documents pertaining to - and photographs of - those who passed through the center are beginning to yellow and fade. Museum directors say they fear that without adequate funding to preserve them they could eventually be lost - and the history with them.
The museum is seeking international support to refurbish the decaying buildings and preserve the historical documents it contains.
While the memories of the Cambodian genocide have been burned deeply into the minds of those who lived through it, like Pen Palla, many here feel that future generations will need a reminder: unforgettable images like those at Tuol Sleng, faces of victims captured by their killers, reflecting the horror of their time.
For more information or to learn how to help, visit the Documentation Center of Cambodia's Web site at http://www.dccam.org/.
(Find more reporting from "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" at http://hotzone.yahoo.com.)
2 comments:
The paragraph below excertped from Nic Dunlop (2005): The Lost Executioner - A Journey to the Heart of the Killing Fields.
. . . There were plans to begin one, hence by Van Tay. Cambodians had only known the leadership as the Organization and not who was behind it; most knew nothing beyond their cooperatives. Ironically it was the Vietnamese, one of the sworn enemies of the Khmer Rouge, who personalized the regime. Democratic Kampuchea became ‘the Pol Pot time’.
By drawing on the parallels with the Nazi death camps, the Tuol Sleng museum was organized as a deliberate attempt to distance the Vietnamese from their former allies the Khmer Rouge. They wanted to vilify the Khmer Rouge and its leaders still further as part of a propaganda war to justify their invasion. Visitors to the museum were encouraged to think of the Vietnamese as akin to the liberators of Europe’s concentration camps.
There was no text narrating progress from room to room. Visitors viewed the museum through a series of images and objects. The intention was to provoke outrage through a primarily sensory experience rather than to enlighten. The Cold War was at its height and, for many in the West, Tuol Sleng was a propaganda tool for a regime that had seized power through an illegal invasion.
All museums are manipulations. Apart from the map made of skulls created by the Vietnamese, the raw displays were graphic and chilling and, although inaccurate in form, were real in substance. The atrocitious nature of the place itself was hard to contrive. The fact that visitors were being manipulated and that the information on display was there to serve a political purpose seemed to pale in comparison when faced with such overwhelming viciousness. . .
Yep, I also read, "Voices From S-21 - Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison" by David P. Chandler. Below is a paragraph taken out straight from the book, word by word:
. . . Sensing the historical importance and the propaganda value of their discovery, the Vietnamese closed off the site, cleaned it up, and began, with Cambodian help, to examine its voluminous archive.
A Cambodian survivor of S-21, Ung Pech, became the director of the museum when it opened in 1980. He held the position for several years and traveled with Mai Lam to France, the USSR, and Eastern Europe in the early 1980s to visit museums and exhibits memorializing the Holocaust. Although Mai Lam remained in Cambodia until 1988, working at Tuol Sleng much of the time, he concealed his “specialist-consultant” role from outsiders, creating the impression that the initiatives for the museum and its design had come from the Cambodian victims rather than from the Vietnamese—an impression that he was eager to correct in his interviews in the 1990’s.
In February or March 1979, Mai Lam, a Vietnamese colonel who was fluent in Khmer and had extensive experience in legal studies and museology, arrived in Phnom Penh. He was given the task of organizing the documents found at S-21 into an archive and transforming the facility into what David Hawk has called “a museum of the Cambodian nightmare.” The first aspect of Mai Lam’s work was more urgent than the second. It was hoped that documents found at the prison could be introduced as evidence in the trials of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, DK’s minister of foreign affairs, on charges of genocide. These took place in Phnom Penh in August 1979. Although valuable information about S-21 was produced at the trials, none of the documents in the archive provided the smoking gun that the Vietnamese and PRK officials probably hoped to fine. No document linking either Pol Pot or Ieng Sary directly with orders to eliminate people at S-21 has ever been discovered, although the lines of authority linking S-21 with the Party Center (mochhim pak) have been established beyond doubt.
It is a piece of important information that they can use for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
Don't you think so?
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