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Written 14.01.09
Killing Fields + S-21 Prison
First we stopped at the Killing Fields where most of the 17,000 detainees held at the S.21 Prison were excecuted. Butterflies were everywhere and Mike and I wondered if they represented the souls of the dead. There was a monument which contained glass bloxes staked ontop of each other with the 8,000 skulls of the victims bodies they found buried, the bottom cabinet contained all the clohtes that were found in a heap amongst the bones. It was 14km South West of Phnom Penh. We got a Tuk Tuk for 410. it showed where they dug and foudn the bodies and where the Trucks stopped off and led the victims to be shot. Everyone walked around in silence, it was a sureal time for everyone there. Entry fee $2.
Tuol Sleng Museum S-21
Was taken over by Pol Pots security forces and transformed into a prison and zone of unimaginable torment. Renamed Security Prison 21 (S-21). The classrooms were turned into torture chambers and equipped with various instruments to inflict pain, suffering and death. You can see and touch these instruments the beds are still in the rooms and dried blood smeared on teh walls andfloors. Graphic photographs of the victims as they lay dying are hung in the rooms they died in. The long corrido is a hallway of ghosts containing 1,00's of victims photographs and the date it was taken, staring eerily into the camera. It was the largest incarceration centre in the Country. At the height of its activity it killed up to 100 victims a day. A movie showing I think only 7 survivors is shown on the 3rd floor in one of the buildings. A lot of written testimonies are shown and the school looks exactly as it did. Again everyone walked aruond in silence, I dont think Mike and I spoke for 2 hours, we were there side by side reading, looking and taking in what happened here just 30 years ago. A very sad day.
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