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the buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes.
In the early months of S-21's existence, most of the victims were from the previous Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc. Later, the party leadership's paranoia turned on its own ranks and purges throughout the country saw thousands of party activists and their families brought to Tuol Sleng and murdered.[1]
This organization is remembered primarily for its policy of social engineering, which resulted in genocide.[1] Its attempts at agricultural reform led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, even in the supply of medicine, led to the deaths of thousands from treatable diseases (such as malaria). Brutal and arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during purges of its own ranks between 1976 and 1978, are considered to have constituted a genocide.[2]
After taking power, the Khmer Rouge leadership renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge subjected Cambodia to a radical social reform process that was aimed at creating a purely agrarian-based Communist society.[4] The city-dwellers were deported to the countryside, where they were combined with the local population and subjected to forced labour. About 2 million Cambodians are estimated to have died in waves of murder, torture, and starvation, aimed particularly at the educated and intellectual elite.
Following their leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society — a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labour projects. In terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population (est. 7.1 million people, as of 1975[6]), it was the most lethal regime of the 20th century.
In 1975, Pran and New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg stayed behind in Cambodia to cover the fall of the capital Phnom Penh to the Communist Khmer Rouge. Due to the suppression of knowledge during the genocide, he hid the fact that he was educated or that he knew Americans and pretended to be a taxi driver.[1] When Cambodians were forced to work in labor camps, Pran had to endure four years of starvation and torture before Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge in December 1978.[1] He coined the phrase "killing fields" to refer to the clusters of corpses and skeletal remains of victims he encountered during his 40-mile escape. His three brothers and one sister were killed in Cambodia.
Pran traveled back to Siem Reap, where he learned that 50 members of his family had died.[1] The Vietnamese had made him village chief but he escaped to Thailand on October 3, 1979, after fearing that they knew of his American ties.[1]
“I’m just a photographer; I don’t know anything,” he said he told the newly arrived prisoners as he removed their blindfolds and adjusted the angles of their heads. But he knew, as they did not, that every one of them would be killed. “I had my job, and I had to take care of my job,” he said in a recent interview. “Each of us had our own responsibilities. I wasn’t allowed to speak with prisoners.”
"They tortured me for three months," Chum Mey said, recalling his time as a prisoner. "They beat me. They removed my toenails. They gave me electric shocks in my ear — kup-kup-kup-kup, it sounded like a machine in my head, and my eyes were like burning with fire."
In 1979, Vann Nath escaped from S-21 as the Pol Pot regime collapsed under a Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. When the former secret prison was converted to a genocide museum, Vann Nath returned to work there for several years. The craft which saved his life would allow Vann Nath to show the world some of the brutal crimes of the Khmer Rouge. His paintings depicting scenes he witnessed in S-21 hang in the museum today, one of the few public reminders of the regime's brutality
Originally posted by muddyhoop
I visited this place a few years back, also the killing fields. I cried looking at the photos of the children that were there. Cambodians are lovely people and I made many friends there.
To think that we are still torturing people just disgusts me.
Originally posted by superwurzel666
Star and flag for OP. I was born in '75 so don't remember it from the time, but in school we learnt a little about Pol Pot and his murderous regime, though we weren't told anything in this detail. This place is right up there with the likes of Belsen in terms of the horror that occurred there. I've seen some of those collages of prisoner photos before but knew little or nothing of the true horror that went with them.
This thread has been a real educational eye-opener and I'm gonna go and look up some more stuff about the khmer rouge. We don't seem to get that much about the nature of their atrocities in our mainstream media here in the UK, which is surprising since the likes of BBC and C4 are usually quite informative on this kind of thing.
Originally posted by superwurzel666
Just been on wikipedia looking up some facts about this place. Apparently some of the prison staff themselves ended up as prisoners here for crimes such as laziness and lack of enthusiasm for their work. It also seemed to imply that some of the workers were children or family of inmates. I'm looking around for some more in depth info on Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge. We hear all the time about the Nazis and the Stalinists,etc. and rightly so, but this seems just as horrific in many ways.
BTW recently read an article in a book, about Emperor Bokassa of Central Africa in the 1970s. Now there was a nutjob. You might want to look him up too at some point if you have the time.
Originally posted by mblahnikluver
Does it really matter how old it is? The Holocaust is older yet we still hear about that.
Originally posted by mblahnikluver
I watch the news and read the news and I haven't heard anything about this which is why I made a thread on it.
Originally posted by mblahnikluver
They should be tortured right back.