Phnom Penh - Tuel Sleng (S-21)

Updated 13-06-06 by Em

Head back from The Killing Fields back into Phnom Penh city, driver takes us to Tuel Sleng - (S-21), which is right in the middle of town down a busy little street.

Tuel Sleng aka (S-21) premises used to be a school before Pol Pot & the Khmer Rouge overtook it as their headquarters.

As we enter the gates and pay our admission fee. You can feel an eerie vibe. Apart from the tourists, locals and few buddist monks roaming around, the place has that creepy abandoned feel to it.
We walk along one of the path to a block of small rooms. In each room is a metal bed with a large, heavy chain attached to the foot of the bed, nothing else in the room, except for a metal box, which prisoners were expected to use for excretement and then there are the photos.
Large blown up black and white photos of the dead prisoners hang ominously on the wall in front of the bed. There are about 7 of these rooms in the block and they were preserved for higher ranking government officials as torture chambers, where the Khmer Rouge tortured them to death. Most of the photos they had been shot in the head, and the black coloured blood covers them and rests in a pool on the floor.

S-21 was discovered by accident by 2 Vietnamese photographers who stumbled across this gruesome facility, the photographs in these torture chambers are their inital pictures.

We walk around to the next block which is 3 storeys high. The first room we walk into contains hundreds and hundreds of black and white "mugshots" of the prisoners holding their prison number. The photos are heartbreaking, knowing that all these people are dead - men, women, children all with the same solemn look on their face and fear in their eyes. There are just so many, room after room of silent eyes staring back at you.

Prisoners were tortured in various dispicable ways into giving false confessions as to plotting against the Khmer Rouge.

The ground floor was used to keep the "general" prisoners, this was very hard to take.
Imagine one long room, then along each wall brick walls built up into tiny cells, approx 1m wide (I kid you not!) Dark, dank cells with a chain in the ground, no natural light. I imagine many of the prisoners would have literally lost their minds.
Coming from NZ and being fairly naive to the extent of how cruel humans can be to other humans, this was a really really sobering experience for Tere and myself.
These people were treated less humanely than we would treat our pets. Even outdoor pig-pens that we've seen on our travels were bigger than these cells. A lot of the prisoners died of starvation and disease from the appalling conditions.

Upstairs were more empty rooms. On the top floor there was a photography exhibition - showing photos of Khmer people who had gone missing (presumably they died under the Khmer Rouge regime) with a written comment by surviving family members.

The 3rd and final block contained paintings of various torture methods conducted by the Khmer Rouge. Very graphic portrayals. Unbelivably cruel.
The paintings were done by some of the prisoners who were "employed" by the Khmer Rouge, unbelievable fact that of the thousands and thousands of Khmer locals who past through and perished at S-21. The only people that survived where 7 men who were employed to do the paintings.
We stayed at Tuel Sleng for about 2.5 hours, slowly making our way through each block. In some of the stairwells of the buildings tiny bats hung high up on the ceilings, sleeping.

There is a documentery DVD called S-21, with some of the artists who come back to the prison and talk to some of the original S-21 guards, about the cruelty, apparently their are mixed emotions from the various guards about what they remember. Would be interesting to watch.


Understandably neither The Killing Fields or Tuel Sleng are the happiest of places to visit, it is an incredibly emotional experience to see fellow human beings being treated like this.
But I think it is really good and very important that the Cambodian people have these memorials & "museums" as reminders so that they never allow it never to happen again.
Both places are a must to visit if you plan on visiting Phnom Penh.

What I find the most amazing though, is even though Cambodia's violent history is still relatively fresh, the people are so resiliant. In terms of seeing 3rd world poverty up-close, Tere & I agreed it's been the most extreme in Cambodia, particularly Phnom Penh. But we were amazed and inspired by the Cambodian people who are so happy, warm and friendly. True fighting spirits, we hope that they have a brighter future to look forward to.