Tuol Sleng Museum

                                          Images from the Tuol Sleng Museum


TUOL SLENG MUSEUM, once the Tuol Svey Prey High School in Phnom Penh, was re-purposed in 1975 to serve as the largest interrogation centre for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It was known as Security Prison 21 or S-21. As Phnom Penh was subject to the forced evacuation of its inhabitants to the countryside, these crimes against humanity took place within the confines of an almost deserted city. The new Pol Pot regime kept careful records and the process included taking photos of each prisoner before their demise. Some of their faces appear in the museum as a bleak and haunting testimony to this era of collective insanity. From 1975 to 1979 some 14,000 to 17,000 (depending on the source) were sent to the killing fields at Boeung Choeung Ek, just to the west of Phnom Penh.. It is estimated that nearly 2 million Cambodians (and a few foreigners too) died in these same years of starvation, disease or through violent means.