I wasn't sure if I should post these pics but decided I would because I want to share the experience with others (maybe like me), who didn't know about what happened in Cambodia in the 1970s. To simplify in the extreme, there was a dictatorship of the country which resulted in mass genocide, among other things. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum was a prison camp where thousands were killed and only a handful survived. Survivors come to the museum daily to tell their stories and educate the public.
The grounds of the prison camp are virtually unchanged. After the camp was liberated, it was immediately made into a museum so that what happened there would not be forgotten.
Visitors are instructed not to talk. It is a self-guided tour through rooms and rooms of what were prison-cells. Photographs are on the walls showing images of prisoners who were tortured and died in the rooms.
There are not words to describe the still emptiness of those rooms and the evil that I felt around me. I am not a superstitious person, but I do believe in evil, and I felt urged to pray for those who died in and those who live around this place. The museum is in the middle of a neigborhood, and looking out of the prison widows, you can see normal people doing normal tasks. The contrast is confusing and upsetting.
More upsetting to me, though, was that the dictator responsible for these killings - Pol Pot - lived a free life until his death in 1998. It seems the equivalent of letting Hitler go free. And while I have heard much about the Holocaust in Europe during World War II, and Holocaust survivors' deaths are in the news recently (there are fewer and fewer remaining), the whole of Cambodia has been touched by this genocide - you would be pressed to find one family who did not lose a family member or a friend (nearly 25% of the population was killed), but I didn't even know about it. I'm sure there are many others of my generation and background who are the same.
The horrifying rules that prisoners had to obey.
The prison, before being converted to a prison, was a high school. It reminded me of the campus where my conference was held, to tell the truth.
Each prisoner was photographed upon arrival. There are rooms and rooms of the photographs - men, women, and children. Some have fear in their eyes, others a blank, hopeless look. Most disturbing to me were images of mothers with their babies in arms and infants less than a year old.
I don't mean disrespect by taking and posting these pictures - just to inform. You can read more about what happened in Cambodia in the 1970s here:
I watched this documentary before I went:
This prisoner was not at the museum the day I went, but I did see several of his paintings.
And recently, NPR had an article about a new film made by a Cambodian director:
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