The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum - My writing for the weekend

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is located in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, in remembrance of the Cambodian genocide perpetrated by the Pol Pot regime. This chocking place was a high school that was used as the Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979.

Tuol Sleng means "Hill of the Poisonous Trees". The place was one of at least 150 execution centers established by the Khmer Rouge. Only seven of the twenty thousand Tuol Sleng prisoners escaped from being executed.

Upon arrival at the prison, prisoners, including children, were photographed and required to give detailed autobiographies, beginning with their childhood and ending with their arrest. The prisoners were then taken to their cells.

Those taken to the smaller cells were shackled to the walls or the concrete floor. Those who were held in the large mass cells were collectively shackled to long pieces of iron bar. The shackles were fixed to alternating bars; the prisoners slept with their heads in opposite directions.

Within two or three days after they were brought to S-21, all prisoners were taken for interrogation. The torture system at Tuol Sleng was designed to make prisoners confess to whatever crimes they were charged with by their captors. Prisoners were routinely beaten and tortured with electric shocks, searing hot metal instruments and hanging, as well as through the use of various other devices.

Some prisoners were cut with knives or suffocated with plastic bags. Other methods for generating confessions included pulling out fingernails while pouring alcohol on the wounds, holding prisoners’ heads under water.

Lest not forget!

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng_Genocide_Museum)

Isabel
www.isabelnolasco.com

Photos taken with my Canon EOS 5D MKIII, edited with Lightroom.

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