Cambodian Genocide: Kymer Rouge S-21 Security Prison (1975-79)

Kymer Rouge S-21 Security Prison
Figure 1.--The Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia operted the dreadful S-21 Prison between 1975 and 1979. This photo was taken by a Vietnamese combat photographer on January 10, 1979 (a day after the Vietnamese Army arrived in Phnom Penh). We see the infamous Security Prison S-21 at Tuol Sleng. From 1975 to 1979, 17,000 people were imprisoned and killed at Tuol Sleng. We believe the children here are the durviving damily members of parents who had been killed. One of the children, probably the older boy in the middle, is Norng Chan Phal who survived at S-21.

After the Kymer Rouge cleared the cities, men and women suspected of serious crimes and accused of treason were brought from the countryside and imprisoned in secrecy at the infamous S-21 prison. S-21 was originally a secondary school. The Kymer Rouge had not need for schools. They did need a torture and interigation center. It was conveniently located in the center of Phnom Penh. They converted the classrooms into torture and interrogation chambers. The prisoners were also tortured while not being interogated. Gym equipment was set up to strap up prisoners in stressfulm positions until they passed out. There heads were then emersed in sewage to wake them up for more torture or interrogation. There were also children executed at S-21. One of these tragic children is pictured on the previous page. We do not know what he was accused of. Perhaps his father was arrested and the whole family brought to S-21. We are not sure atwhat age the children were allowed to live. Many of the dossiers containing the confessions forced from these people under torture were found. We do not know if this boy's dossier was found. A chilling portrait of a Khmer Rouge prison commander exists. "This terriblke man was not duplicitous; all he had were principles and convictions." One of his prisoners, a Frenchman, describes a "brutal executioner" and a "man of faith" whose supperiors employed as "a cog in a vast timepiece beyond his comprehension". [Bizot] The horrors at S-21 did not end until the Vietnamese Army reached Phnom Penh (January 1979).

Sources

Bizot, François. The Gate (Knopf), 278p.






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Created: 8:06 AM 11/13/2009
6:49 PM 11/13/20098:06 AM 11/13/2009