Phnom Penh
(Sorry for the lack of images - when I'm in a place with a faster internet connection, I'll repost the pics! Please, please, please mind when I do repost that they will be a grisly and disturbing set of images - yet they are really important to see ...)
___________If you are not yet aquainted with the history of Cambodia and you want to get to the heart of the cateclysm of the past 30+ years of Cambodian history, please visit Tuol Sleng. It is the Cambodian people's museum that retains the living memory of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge some 30 years ago.
Most of my Khmer friends call what happened the 'genocide' and I think I never understood the word so well as after my visit. There's nothing that can prepare one for a visit there, but it's important to me that I was given an opportunity to smell, feel, and taste the oblivion that occured there. Here is a brief pictoral tour:
Tuol Sleng began as a school. The Khmer Rouge took over the small campus and adapted the school buildings to detain, interrogate, torture and execute prisoners. At some point after the Khmer Rouge regime ended, the Cambodian people took care to preserve the records and physical evidence of what took place.
The campus is a rectangle that contains about 6 buildings surrounded by a high wall. The central building is a small gathering place for visitors. The grounds in the center have places for meditation as well as relics, grave markers, gymnastics equipment, and crumbling pavement.
Visitors from other countries as well as Cambodian citizens visit the museum to view the campus. Rooms have been created to display the different restraints, torture implements, and holding cells.
Meticulous records detailing the lives of the victims were retained, and one of the buildings features rooms with perhaps thousands of pictures. Part of the significance of the event hits home as you consider that hundreds of youths male and female, kids, infants and elders were held. One of the most disturbed things about the sheer efficiency of the place I learned later is the way in which biographical records were kept concerning almost every prisoner.
Out of the many prisoners detained and killed at Toul Sleng only 7 survived. Artist Vann Nath (sic) was one of the seven, and his works depicting the atrocities are on display.
Being invited to reflect on such a terrible chapter of a people's history is powerful. I'm haunted by the experience but thankful for the visit, as many elements of the human rights situation in Cambodia are bound to the events propelled by the Khmer Rouge's regime and to the history of civil war and genocide.
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