Detention

Tuol Slang detention center, also known as S-21 (Security Office 21). Now converted to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, it was here that the Khmer Rouge sent all of the educated citizens of Cambodia for interrogations and torture before being sent on to the Killing Fields. Tuol Sleng was originally a high school and was converted by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. All of the classrooms were converted to prison cells, the windows sealed and covered with tangled barbed wire to prevent possible escape by prisoners. Our guide walked us across the grounds, through a peaceful courtyard within the confines of non-descript 60’s style buildings. The buildings remain very much the way they were during the Khmer Rouge reign, and the empty rooms still contain steel beds on which prisoners were detained and tortured. The rooms are stark and cold with chilling photos of dead prisoners hanging on the walls showing them as they were found here when the prison was finally liberated by the Vietnamese forces in 1978. The Khmer Rouge took photographs and kept detailed records on each prisoner, and many of these mug shots are on display within the buildings.