Toul Sleng

Minutes away from my shophouse, I discovered Toul Sleng, a former high school taken over by the Khmer Rouge 3 decades ago. Then, it was a used as a place for prisoner torchure and interrogation. Now, it is an unsettling museum in the heart of town, surrounded my homes and apartment buildings just as it was then. It is easy to overlook and blends in with its surroundings. Then, it wouldn't have been so easy. Cries of terror, pain, and sorrow would have been easily heard by the adjoining buildings. Yet even then, it was ignored. Below are a few of the thousand pictures of those who had to go through Toul Sleng. Their end is certain--a mere 7 humans escaped alive from Toul Sleng to tell the story.





The Killing Fields are slightly farther away outside of town. We visited one of over 20,000 discovered mass graves where mostly 12- to 15-year-olds in Khmer Rouge uniform horrificly slaughtered over half of Cambodia's population. Especially harrowing is the way in which they did the killing--bullets were too expensive to use; gas was not thought of. It is beyond comparison to the Holocaust, besides the fact that it was people killing their own people.


unearthed bones are scattered about. some have been collected in small piles along with bits of tattered clothing and even teeth. more bones and clothes lay just above the surface of the walkways of dirt--the earth is full of her people's bones.