| Tuol
Sleng Genocide Center (late 1970s)
other
sites in Phnom Penh |
Phnom Pehn, Cambodia |
Click on an image to enlarge
Architecture is often an expression of a society's deepest values. Is this what Tuol Sleng represents for the Pol Pot era?
Robert D. Fiala writes:
"Tuol Sleng was earlier a primary school and a lycee (Tuol Svay Prey) and became, during the regime of Pol Pot, a major place of torture and death. Classrooms and offices became sites of unspeakable brutalities to the perhaps 20,000 prisoners who passed through its gates; it was one of the most significant centers of the Khmer Rouge system of terror. Many of the victims had actually been members of the Khmer Rouge, but were purged from its ranks for a variety of reasons. The photographs of the prisoners on display are most sobering and unsettling and remind me of similar visits to Auschwitz and Dachau of the Nazi era in Europe. It should be remembered, though, that there were many Tuol Slengs and Cheoung Eks throughout Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime; both stand as memorials to the countless victims of unspeakable cruelties."
Bibliography
All images copyright 2000 Professor Robert D. Fiala of Concordia University, Nebraska, USA
Nick Ray, Cambodia, 3rd ed. Lonely Planet Publications, 2000.
National Geographic, May 1982,
which features both Angkor and the trauma
of Cambodia
with photographs of mass graves
"When the War war Over: Cambodia
and the Khmer Rouge Revolution."
New York: Public
Affairs, 1998.
Additional information from signposts on site.