Office S-21

Before meeting our mounts for the next ten days we had a morning to 'relax' in Phnom Penh. A few of us decided to visit two infamous places associated with Cambodia's recent and brutal history: Office S-21 and the Killing Fields. The latter is perhaps well known from a Hollywood film of the same name, which I confess I have never seen, but will now try to.

Office S-21 is the rather bland name for Pot Pot's Khmer Rouge torture centre in Phnom Penh. Formerly the Tuol Sleng primary school, it had a pleasant lawn area surrounded by three storied buildings with open walkways and balconies; it looked as though it had been hastily converted into a detention centre. Door openings were knocked into the walls between classrooms and were left like an unfinished DIY project. Wooden framed cells were constructed, each less than a metre across, but at least with enough space to lie down - but that was likely to have been little comfort after a session of beating. The doors themselves looked flimsy with tiny hinges and bathroom door bolts. But one wonders who would've dared to break out knowing that layers of barbed wire awaited them and perhaps even more intense tortue. Crucially the windows were glazed in order to mute the sounds of agony that must have escaped from within. The balconies were strung with barbed wire to prevent people committing suicide - the torturers obviously wanted to be the one controlling death.

The lower floor rooms contained panel after panel showing photographs of victims held here, interspersed with gruesome post death images; graphic descriptions of the horrific torture methods were displayed alongside. The photos were of very ordinary looking people: docile, unsmiling, fear etched deep into the eyes of many. Yet others displayed a muted defiance in their expression. Men, women, children; nobody was immune from incarceration. One strikingly beautiful girl made me wonder if she had been singled out for 'special' attention, here or elsewhere. Perhaps not, as the Khmer Rouge regime seemed to be almost puritanical in its approach to everything, with emotion and lust consigned to the ways of Western decadence and not good for the cause.

From 1975-1979, intellectuals and anyone who was not an ordinary worker was ruthlessly targeted. Spectacles were associated with education and wearing made you a marked man or woman; I wonder if Cambodians now have notable better eyesight than other nations as a result?

"Duch", the man in charge of the facility, is still alive. After the regime fell he was jailed and only as recently as 2010 was sentenced to 35yrs in jail for his part in torturing 16000 people. He is the only senior leader to recognise his wrong doing and asked for forgiveness. Pol Pot himself, the architect of the disastrous Khmer Rouge social experiment - for that's surely what it was - died in 1998 certainly without the punishment he deserved.