Tuol Sleng S21 – A Story Of Torture

With waterboarding and other torture methods once again in the news this past week, and the 34th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge having just passed, it’s timely to take a look at Tuol Sleng, or S-21. In the months following the 1975 Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia, they established a number of security prisons throughout the country where torture and executions were routinely carried out.

Warning – Graphic, disturbing content follows. Click at own risk.

Tuol Svay Prey High School was one such location. Renamed as Security Prison 21 (S-21), the prison was set up Comrade Duch, currently on trial for crimes committed while serving as director of the prison. The five buildings at the school were converted into a prison, torture and interrogation center in August 1975. Classrooms were converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, the windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire and the buildings were enclosed with an electrified barbed wire fence.

Between 1975 and 1979, approximately 17000 people were held at Tuol Sleng, with between 1000 and 1500 imprisoned at any one time. Of these 17000, only 12 survived. At first, the prisoners at S-21 were mainly from the previous Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks and engineers. Upon arrival, each victim was photographed and made to give a detailed autobiography starting from childhood. On average, prisoners were kept in the prison for up to 3 months, after which they were taken for execution.

During their time in Tuol Sleng, the prisoners were subjected to a number of “rules”. Failure to abide by these would result in severe beatings. The ten regulations were

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.

2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.

9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

The interrogation system was one of torture, designed to elicit confessions to whatever crimes the confessors accused people of. The vast majority of prisoners were innocent of the crimes but confessed due to the torture methods they were subjected to. Prisoners were routinely beaten and tortured with electric shocks, searing hot metal instruments and hanging. Sleep deprivation, starvation diets, waterboarding, rape, cutting with knives, suffocating with plastic bags, pulling out fingernails while pouring alcohol on the wounds and holding prisoners’ heads under water were all used to extract the confessions.

Confessions could run to thousands of words, with hundreds of names of family, friends and colleagues being listed. These people were then arrested and brought in for interrogation. The confessions were typically a mixture of real and imaginary events. Following confession, the prisoners were taken outside and killed. For the first year, the killings took place at the prison, but once there was no longer any burial space left, they were taken to Choeung Ek, a killing field 15km away. There, they were killed by being battered with iron bars, pickaxes, machetes and other makeshift weapons and buried in mass graves.

Today, Tuol Sleng is a genocide museum. It has been left the way it was found when the Khmer Rouge fled Phnom Penh. Thanks to the detailed biographies and photograph the jailers demanded, several rooms are now lined with black and white photographs of the victims. Prior to 2002, a skull map was also on display, however it has now been dismantled. The Choeung Ek killing field is also preserved as a memorial, and both locations are important reminders to humanity of the horrors of war and genocide.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 06:00. It is filed under Documentary and tagged with Cambodia, Tuol Sleng. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.