Phnom Penh Past and Present

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Phnom Penh is the modern capital of Cambodia and is home to the Royal Palace, National Museum and the sites of some of the worst atrocities carried out during the Khmer Rouge Regime.

Tuol Sleng started off as a high school. It was converted to the notorious S-21 Prison. Between 1976-79, 14,000 prisoners were taken to the prison. The several buildings, 3 storeys high were used as holding cells and torture centres to obtain information and confessions from politically sensitive prisoners. The first floor held the individual cells, 0.8 x 2m big. The second floor held women prisoners, rooms 8m x 6m holding as many people as you could lay side by side. the top floor was also mass holding cells. At any one time the prison held 1500 prisoners. They were taken away for mass extermination to what is known today as the Killing Fields.

Today Tuol Sleng is a historical museum of genocide, displaying some of the thousands of pictures taken of prisoners upon arrival at S-21, room after room, row after row, men, women, children, and babies. Some showing the battered and bloodied bodies discovered on the day of the prisons "liberation".

Only 7 prisoners ever survived S-21.

It was a moving and quickly numbing experience, seeing the raw emotion in the eyes of the prisoners, the tear tracks still wet, the bruises still coming up, the defiance in some and the outright fear in others.

From there we visited Choeng Ek Killing Fields. In 1980, around half of the 129 mass graves were exhumed and about 8000 skulls now bear testiment to the atrocities. Many of the skulls showed the brutal execution methods where they were bludgeoned before having their throat cut.

We were offered the chance to go to the shooting range, apparently a popular choice with other travellers, where once cows could be bought but now chickens have to make do as targets for the AK47s. Are people that cold? It turned out to be yet another thing we couldn't understand that day. In one of the stairwells at S-21 there was a lot of graffiti carrying the sentiment we must never let this happen again. Peoples differing reaction to visiting Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields show how difficult this proves.

We've heard a lot about how tricky travel here is, but have been very lucky in that the majority of Cambodians are really friendly and always quick to have a good hearted chuckle, either with us or at us, it's all good, or whether it's at the karoake on the long distance bus journeys any reason seems enough. The only bad thing has been the 70 bed bug bites in 1 night and a nasty bout of food poisoning for both of us that has only just settled down.

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Comments

[Hannah]

Moved
Guys, the emotion of your experience is really clear in that post - moving stuff...