Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh is a sombre reminder of the horrors committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. It preserves the former Security Prison 21 (S-21), a place of torture and detention, both to educate Cambodian and international visitors and to commemorate the tens of thousands who were murdered here.

The museum’s displays are unflinching: rooms of torture implements, and walls lined with photographs of the victims, many identified by the professions that made them targets of the regime. Emotional imagery, paintings, photography and a film convey what took place, and visitors can walk through the makeshift cells and torture chambers, past the gallows in the courtyard where prisoners were interrogated.

Combined with a visit to the Choeung Ek Killing Fields, it is a harrowing experience, but one essential to understanding modern Cambodia. Guides - many of whom lived through the regime - are available, and their first-hand narratives form an important part of the story.

Tuol Sleng was originally a local public school. During the Khmer Rouge years (1975 to 1979) it was converted into Security Prison 21, where former classrooms were divided by brick and mortar into cells and used to torture prisoners and extract confessions, as part of the regime’s mission to build an obedient, classless society.

In all, around 30,000 people passed through the gates of S-21. They were tortured here and subsequently killed nearby at the killing fields. Only seven prisoners are known to have survived - one of them spared because of his skill at portrait painting; murals depicting the atrocities he witnessed are now displayed at the site. The prison stands today as a memorial to those who died and a reminder that genocide is not confined to the past.