The Poisonous Hill that is
TUOL SLENG
By Youk
Chhang
During
Democratic Kampuchea (DK), the genocidal period of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia
(1975-1979), the Khmer Rouge regime established a secret prison to interrogate
and ultimately exterminate suspected “enemies” of Angkar, or the DK Party Organization. This prison, known as S-21
(“Security Office 21”) or Tuol Sleng, was the most secret organ of the KR
regime. In fact, the word Tuol Sleng has ominous connotations in Khmer, the
Cambodian language: in the context of DK, Tuol Sleng literally referred to a poisonous hill on which those bearing
guilt (or poison) [toward Angkar]
were held.[1]
Located in Tuol Svay Prey
sub-district, south of Phnom Penh, S-21 covers an area of 600 x 400 meters.
Historically, the buildings at S-21 had been part of a high school that was
built in 1962 and renamed Tuol Svay Prey High School during the early 1970s.
Behind the school fence, there were two wooden buildings with thatched roofs,
constructed before 1970 as a primary school. Today all of these buildings are
called “Tuol Sleng” and form part of the museum of genocidal crimes.
During the KR regime, Tuol Sleng was enclosed by two
folds of corrugated iron sheets, all covered with dense, electrified barbed
wire to prevent escape attempts. Houses around the four school buildings were
used as administration, interrogation and torture offices, while the high
school classrooms were converted into prison cells. The classrooms on the
ground floor were divided into small cells, 0.8 x 2 meters each, designed for a
single prisoner. The rooms on the top floors of the four buildings, each
measuring 8 x 6 meters, were used as mass prison cells. On the middle floors of
these buildings, cells were built to hold female prisoners. All of the windows
were grated with iron bars and covered with tangled barbed wire.
Initially, the interrogations were
conducted in the houses around the prison. However, because women taken to the
interrogation rooms were often raped by the interrogators, in 1978 the chief of
the S-21, a former teacher named Kang Kek Ieu (alias comrade Duch) decided to
convert Building B into an interrogation office, since this made it easier to
control the interrogation process. There were two management offices: one was
Duch’s office and the other an office for interrogation, documentation, and
general administration.
The
Security Office and its branches were under the authority of the DK Central
Committee and the its Minister of Defense, Comrade Son Sen (alias Khieu), who appointed
Comrade Duch to head the S-21 system. Comrade
Duch was born as Kang Kek Ieu in Cho Yok village, Chine Thbong sub-district,
Kampong Thom province. He had been a mathematics teacher prior to joining the
Khmer Rouge.[2]
The
Research Committee on Genocide of the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), the
regime that succeeded the Khmer Rouge, reported in 1983 that, in order to
maintain security and manage all the activities in S-21 prison and its
branches, in 1976 the KR regime employed a large staff divided into 4 units
responsible for S-21 and its branches.[3]
The 4 units were:
B. Office personnel ............... 148 personnel
C. Interrogation units ............... 54 personnel
D. General workers .............. 1,377 personnel
The number of workers in the S-21 complex totaled
1,720 people. Most of the "general workers" were under confinement at
Prey Sar (S-21 khor).
Within each unit, there were several sub-units composed
of male and female children, ranging from 10 to 15 years of age. These young
children were trained and selected by the KR regime to work as guards at S-21.
Most of them were transformed from ordinary children into cruel cadre, who were
exceptionally brutal and disrespectful toward the prisoners, the majority of
whom were their elders.
Tinflow
and outflow of prisoners from 1975 to June 1978 were recorded on lists
discovered at Tuol Sleng. One report estimated the number of prisoners as
follows:
-
1975 154 prisoners
-
1976 2,250 prisoners
-
1977 2,330 prisoners
-
1978 5,765 prisoners
These figures, totaling 10,499
people, do not include the number of children killed by the KR regime at S-21,
which was estimated to be approximately 2,000 more individuals by the same
report. Other documents show that in 1977 and 1978, Tuol Sleng held between
1,200 and 1,500 prisoners on average. The duration of incarceration ranged from
2 to 4 months, although some important political prisoners were held for up to
6 or 7 months.
The
life of a prison was difficult. Upon their arrival, the prisoners were
photographed and required to give detailed biographical information – from
their childhood until the date of their arrest. Then they were then required to
strip to their underwear, at which point all of their possessions taken away.
After being read a list of prison regulations, the prisoners were taken to
their cells. The prisoners who were kept in the small cells were shackled with
chains fixed to the walls or the concrete floors. Those who were being held in
the large mass cells had one or both of their legs shackled to short or long
pieces of iron bar. The short iron bar was up to 1 meter long and was designed
for 4 prisoners, while the longer one was 6 meters and held 20 to 30 prisoners.
Prisoners were fixed to the iron bar on alternating sides, so they had to sleep
with their heads in opposite directions. The prisoners slept directly on the
floors without any mats, mosquito nets or blankets.
Every
morning at 4:30 am, all prisoners were told to drop their shorts to down to
their ankles for an inspection. Then they were told to “exercise” by moving
their hands and legs up and down for half an hour, even though their legs
remained restrained by the iron bars. The prison staff inspected the prisoners
four times per day, a schedule that was sometimes supplemented by a special
check by the inspection unit from the security office. During each inspection,
the prisoners had to put their arms behind their backs while raising their legs
so that the guards could check whether or not the shackles were loose. If
loose, the shackles were replaced. The prisoners had to defecate into small
iron buckets and urinate into small plastic buckets kept in their cells. They
were required to ask permission from a guard before relieving themselves;
otherwise, they were beaten or received 20 to 60 strokes with a whip as
punishment. In each cell, the following regulations were posted on small pieces
of black board:
1.
You must answer accordingly to my
questions. Do not turn them away.
2.
Do not try to hide the facts by making
pretexts of this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3.
Do not be a fool for you are a
chap who dares to thwart the revolution.
4.
You must immediately answer my
questions without wasting time to reflect.
5.
Do not tell me either about your
immoralities or the revolution.
6.
While getting lashes or
electrification you must not cry at all.
7.
Do nothing. Sit still and wait
for my orders.
If
there is no orders, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something. You must do it
right away without protesting.
8.
Do not make pretexts about
Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.
9.
If you don’t follow all the above
rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall
get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
The
prisoners were required to abide by all of the regulations. To do anything,
even to shift their positions while trying to sleep, the inmates had first to
ask permission from the prison guards. Anyone breaching these rules was severely
beaten.
Bathing was irregular. Once every
two or three days (and sometimes only once a week), the prisoners were crowded
into a room where a they were splashed with water from a hose for a short
period of time. The unhygienic living conditions caused the prisoners to become
get skin diseases, rashes, and lice, but there was no medicine or hospital
services for treatment. An injured, ill, or badly tortured prisoner might be
treated by paramedics in their cell, but these “medical personnel” were usually
untrained and mostly children.
TUOL SLENG AS A MUSEUM
In the wake of its renovation after
the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Tuol Sleng reopened in 1980 as a
historical museum memorializing the genocidal crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime.
It is open to the public and thousands of Cambodians and foreigners have
visited Tuol Sleng museum. The visits can roughly be broken down into two
phases:
· Phase 1: In the 1980s, most visitors were local people; those
foreigners who visited the museum were usually from certain socialist
countries, such as Vietnam, Soviet Union, Laos, Hungary, and Poland.
·
Phase 2: Since the 1993 election and the establishment of the Kingdom of
Cambodia, most of the visitors to Tuol Sleng museum are from Taiwan, Japan, France,
Germany, Korea, the United States, and other non-communist countries.
About
50 persons visit the museum on an average day. Once they come to the Kingdom of
Cambodia, tourists seldom miss visiting this horrifying educational site.
At
present, the museum is facing many challenges and urgent needs. These include:
1.
Building a fence of 660 meters
around the perimeter of the museum to protect the compound and preserve the
factual historical evidence it contains. Another reason for building this fence
is to prevent the now increasing number of squatters from building unauthorized
homes within the compound.
2.
Preserving and repairing all of
the buildings, which are over 40 years old now. The corrugated iron and cement
sheet roofs of the decrepit buildings have many holes, which has allow rain to
seep onto the ceilings. The dampness has resulted in enormous decay and
breakage, both in the ceilings and in the brick walls and floors of the
buildings. The museum cannot last much longer without proper attention; it
urgently needs important restorative and preventative repairs (which should be
done in a manner that preserves its original Khmer Rouge period form as much as
possible).
3.
Renovating the documentation room
so that the primary documents from the Khmer Rouge period can be properly
categorized, sorted, and stored. The current documentation room is a simple one
that is unsuitable for storing these invaluable documents that are under threat
by or have been damaged/destroyed by insects and humidity. (The Tuol Sleng
museum does not have even have pesticides.) The paper in many of these original
Khmer Rouge documents is turning yellow; typed or hand-written texts, including
a number of prisoner confessions and related documents, have become
increasingly faded to the point that many are hardly legible. Without immediate
and proper care, these irreplacible historical documents will deteriorate and
be lost to use forever, an event that is all the more devastating since the
Khmer Rouge destroyed tens of thousands of books and manuscripts.
Given these circumstances, the
historical genocide museum Tuol Sleng is seeking substantial funding and
support for refurbishment so that this museum can reach the standard of other
historical museums in the world. From 1979 until 1989, part of the national
budget was allocated to Tuol Sleng museum for its repairs and exhibitions.
Unfortunately, for the past several years, this funding has dried up and we are now dependent on external
funding.
Tuol
Sleng Genocide Museum appeals to international organizations and individuals
who condemn crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide to help us
maintain this museum and thereby preserve "S-21" as a reminder not
only of Cambodia's recent tragic past, but of the inhumanity that sometimes
overwhelms ordinary human beings throughout the world.
________________________________________________________________________
Youk Chhang, Director, The
Documentation Center of Cambodia
[1] According to the
Khmer Buddhist Dictionary (1967), the
word tuol is a noun that refers to
ground that is higher in level than that around it. Sleng, in turn, can be a noun or an adjective. As an adjective, sleng means “supplying guilt” (del aoy tos) or “bearing poison” (del noam aoy mean toas) or “enemy of
disease” (del chea sat-trov ning rok). As a noun, “Sleng” refers to two kinds of indigenous trees that are poisonous.
The first type of tree, sleng thom or
“big sleng,” has a large trunk, leaves, and fruit. The second type is sleng vour or “sleng vine,” which is
shaped somewhat like a vine with small fruit. Both are poisonous.
[2] Duch won a scholarship to
Lycee Sosiwath in the late 1950s and taught mathematics briefly in Kampong Thom
province with Comrade Mom Nay (a.k.a. Chan) before going to Pedagogique, where
he fell under the spell of some Chinese students. Kang Kek Ieu also taught
mathematics in Kampong Cham province briefly was arrested as a Communist in
1965 and seems to have gone to into the woods after being released.
[3] These affiliates were
located in and around Phnom Penh. S-21
(kor), for example, was located in Ta Khmao, a provincial town in Kandal
province just south of Phnom Penh; S-21 (khor)
was located at Prey Sar (a colonial era prison), just west of Phnom Penh,
in Dang Kor District, Kandal province. S-21 (Khor),
also known as Office 24, was used as a re-education camp not only for KR
military Division 170, but also for all kinds of people including staff members
of S-21 who had been accused of minor crimes. S-21 (khor) was responsible for producing agricultural supplies for the
S-21 complex.