Unfortunately Poonam forgot to put our day out to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields up so I am going to write it. It's not nice but I think needs to be told. We were really sad that day...
First we visited the Tuol Sleng Museum which used to be a school but was converted by the Khmer Rouge in 1976 into a torture, interrogation and execution center. It was pretty horrifying to see. They have kept the place pretty much as it was in 1977. The bottom floor rooms had just a bed in them, and some had photographs of the prisoners laying dead on their beds or on the floor as they were found by two Vietnamese photojournalists who first discovered S-21 in January of 1979.
There were also pictures of all the new prisoners in other parts of the building, some of them were smiling because they did not realise what was going to happen to them. The people who were kidnapped were accused of crimes against the regime, they were tourted in all manner of ways I won't go into because its pretty disturbing. There were also really small cells which were created inside the old classrooms with a bed and bucket and thats it. They put glass in the windows to minamise the screeming people could hear on the outside when they were tourturing people.
Well as you can imagine it wasn't a happy trip and walking around that place I felt really upset and emotional., it really brings it home standing in the same place as so many people were treated so terribly. I couldn't see it all, there was a film and another part of the building but it got to a point where I just wanted to leave so I sat outside on a bench for a while and waited for Poonam (we lost each other so saw most of it by ourselves)
I told you it's not nice! Anyway the second part was visiting the killing fields which is where they brought a lot of the prisoners to be killed and burried. There were about 20,000 mass graves with hundrads of people in each grave. The people in the graves were male and female, children, adults, high and low class. There was a video and a little museum with loads of information about S-21.
There was also a memorial to the dead, a building with all the bones which were found in the mass graves, in the buddhest tradition it is respectful to put the dead somewhere nice to be rested. It is on display to remind people of what happened and to have somewhere to pay their respects to the dead...it was not so long ago so many people have known someone to die in that time.
We were personaly shocked because to be honest we knew nothing aboout what happened until we came to Cambodia, and it was such recent history. It should not be forgotten so that it never ever happens again.
Love Saskia and Poonam
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