Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

I wanted to see the Tuol Sleng genocide museum (Prison S21). It is one of 196 genocide prison sites that occurred under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge's totalitarian regime (1975–79). Chris wanted to chill at the hotel. At this site, over 18,000 were killed. I took a self guided tour with audio, which explained the site as I walked through. The torturing and suffering that occurred here was unbelievable. After the Americans dropped more bombs in Cambodia during the Vietnam War than in all of WWII, a lot of Cambodians moved to urban centers. Pol Pot's revolutionary army moved into the urban centers, and many people were initially happy as they saw it as a save from what they just experienced. But his goal was to kill all educated people, politicians, monks - who he deemed as "new" people. He moved these people into the prisons where they were tortured until they admitted that they were basically against the movement and they were killed. An estimated 2 million Cambodians were killed (1 in 4 Cambodians) during these short years. S21 was a school that was turned into a secret torturing prison where no one left alive, except 12 people at the end when Pol was defeated. Prisoners were shackled together laying down in a room, some were in small rooms with an old ammunition tin for their toilet and if they overfilled it they had to lick the floor clean, the old school swing was converted into a gallows where people were hung for torture and then lowered into a big pot of urine and feces. The rules for obeying until death were posted. It was a surreal experience that must have been so horrific.Read more