TS-21 and The Killing Fields

TS-21 is the most infamous detention center in Cambodia, used by the Khmer Rouge during the years 1975-1979. Of the more than 10,000 people who were tortured there, including women and children, only seven survived. The rest were taken to the Killing Fields about 15 km out of Phnom Penh, where there is a monument stacked with the skulls of the executed. The cracks in the skulls clearly show that bullets were considered too precious to waste.

Tuol Sleng Prison was a high school before the Khmer Rouge revolution. It's one of those monstrous buildings that were built in the '50s and '60s and looks like Soviet Bloc architecture. In places, there are still bloodstains on the floor. One part of the exhibit shows the faces of thousands of TS-21 victims-- all were photographed and documented before they were tortured and killed. If one person was considered to be a traitor to the Khmer Rouge, it was customary for that person's entire family to be killed.

There is one room that has brief bios and portraits of the Khmer Rouge leaders, including Pol Pot and Ieng Sary. The remaining portraits have been so defaced by Khmer grafitti that the faces are no longer recognizable. There is no longer even a picture of Pol Pot on the wall. Most likely it was defaced to the point of being unusable. I found the grafitti to be a small but moving testament to how the Khmer people feel about these former dictators.

Perhaps the most meaningful part of the exhibit for me was a section of pictures and bios by a Cambodian photographer. He had photographed portraits of former Khmer Rouge soldiers and security guards in their present lives. Many did not want to work for the Khmer Rouge, but knew they would be killed otherwise. Indeed, even those who ended up working for the K.R. often fell out of favor and were tortured and killed.

There is talk of putting the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders on trial. This talk has been going on for quite a while, and honestly, it's getting too late in the day for that. Pol Pot and Ieng Sary are dead. Ta Mok will be dead soon. They all lived to be old and unprosecuted in their own country, where they are responsible for the deaths of 2-3 million of their people.

Now more than half the population is under 20. There are very few who survived the Khmer Rouge, and when I see older people, I cannot help but wonder what their memories are, and which side of the fence they'd been on. Had they survived by keeping quiet, or luck, or outright support of the Khmer Rouge?