After leaving the killing fields museum we set off in our bus. The students and teachers were quite subdued and some teary. We arrived at S21, an old high school that was reconfigured into a torture prison during the reign of Pol Pot.
The prison was a place where all of the educated were taken for interrogation before they were taken to the killing fields for execution. The inmates of S21 were teachers, doctors, professional people, preachers, monks and professors. All part of the cleansing of Khmer. To rid Cambodia of educated people and return it to its simple beginnings of farmers and village living.
The interrogation prison had a profound affect on us all. Where our imagination added pictures to the stories we had heard at the killing fields, this museum made the suffering very real through confronting pictures, clothing and torture devices.
There were row upon row of photos of each of the 20000 people who were interrogated here and as you walked along it was a journey in itself to look into the eyes of the victims. Many were defiant staring into the cameras. Some were already defeated and some were just plain terrified. The photos were of people of all ages. Some as young as 5 or 6 up to there mid forties. One of only seven survivors was there with his book to sign and to tell the stories.
No doubt a visit like this will weigh heavily on our minds for a long time and it is hopeful that our privileged youth will learn and process these atrocities with a sense of despair and also a sense of justice and protest. To be aware is to be able to ensure things like this do not happen again.