Description of the attraction
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a campus and public school buildings rebuilt into the notorious "Security Prison 21" or (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge. "Tuol Sleng" translated from Khmer means "Mountain of the Poisoned Forest" or "Mountain of Strychnine". Tuol Sleng was one of at least 150 execution and torture centers established by the Khmer Rouge and, according to research, more than twenty thousand prisoners were tortured on the territory of this institution from 1975 to 1979.
In 1975, the regular Tuol Holy Prey school was converted into a prison by Pol Pot's troops. All the prisoners thrown into the S-21 were filmed before and after the torture. The exhibits in the museum halls are rows of rooms with black and white photographs of children, men and women who were later killed, with wooden plaques on their chests with the number and date of the shooting, who were later killed. In addition to local residents, S-21 also contained foreigners from Australia, New Zealand and the United States, none of them survived.
When the Khmer Rouge revolution reached the extreme point of insanity, it began to destroy itself. Generations of torturers and executioners who worked in the prison were in turn killed by their successors. In early 1977, when the party cleansing of the Eastern Zone personnel began, about 100 people died every day in S-21.
At the time of the liberation of Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese army in early 1979, only seven living prisoners were found in S-21, and the bodies of fourteen people tortured to death were found in the courtyard and interior. Their burials in the courtyard are also part of the exhibition. Two of the miraculous survivors, Chum Mei and Bo Meng, are still alive and often spend time in S-21, telling visitors about their time in the prison.
A visit to the Tuol Sleng Museum, established in 1980, is not for the faint of heart; a quiet suburb, simple school buildings, and a children's playground are juxtaposed with tiers of rusty beds, instruments of torture, and rows of portraits of prisoners.
