Lunch and Genocide

Some of the other volunteers had been to a lovely cafe, the Boddhi Tree, which was, I remembered, recommended in the lonely planet. It sold western food, so was pricier than the the cambodian street cafe, but very pleasant surroundings with bourgainvillier and orchids hanging down . Very very pleasant and tranquil.


But as with much in Cambodia, just behind the beauty and tranquility there was something heartwrenching. It was opposite the Tuol Sleng Museum also known as the Genocide museum. The Cambodians I've met seem to talk often of the genocide, certainly to us tourists and so perhaps it has in some way lost some of the ferocity of impact - the more you talk about something the easier it gets to accept. Just their honesty and frankness on the subject makes me wince. This museum is the site of S-21, the place where 20,000 Khmers were detained, tortured and murdered by Pol pot and the Khmer Rouge in the name of their revolution. Just 7 people of those 20,000 survived.



To me it seems awful to have a museum of this, especially as it only happened 30 years ago, and is still so raw but to the Cambodian people it is perhaps there to ensure this never happens again.



There is also a souvenir shop.

The building had originally been a high school, but was turned into a "Security Centre"as they called the places where they carried out these attrocities, as all the educated "new" people, anyone seen as intellectual were rounded up as enemies of the revolution.

Some of the class rooms became areas where victims were tortured until they admitted to the false crimes of which they were accused, Confessions that were recorded on tape to proove to the UN that they were spies and traitors executed justifiably. Evidence of these were still there, including leg irons in which all inmates were constantly restrained and so much equipment used to torture and mutilate. Blood spatters can still be seen on the walls and floors of these rooms (They also used waterboarding....)


The rest of the classrooms became cells, each about the size of a toilet cubicles either of brick or wood, with holes hacked through the walls so that they were more easily patrolled.














The Walkways and all but one entrance were hemmed in with barbed wire to prevent inmates from committing suicide if ever they were able to get out of their cells. The rules of this place are now set out in the courtyard so it is even more possible to glimpse the hopeless situation the inmates were in; they were already guilty:

However the most dreadful part of this tour was the last building. Through the barred windows you could see them, row upon row, room after room, the pictures of the victims; men women and most disturbingly of all, children, all staring out.

Each had been brought to this place, most of them tortured until they confessed to fictional crimes, where upon they, their wives or husbands and children would be murdered and thrown in the mass graves outside.



I just sat down and sobbed until I couldnt any more.