Room After Room, Face After Face…
The stares on the faces of the people scattered throughout the small, dank room spoke the same silent message…
Room after room, face after face… A horrifically solemn place.
“How can people do that??” I later mused to my dear German friend, which in retrospect was probably a very disrespectful and badly thought out thing to say (my apologies Anja).
Face upon face lined board after board stretching from room to room, making up just one floor in one wing of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
Not a smile to be seen, not a laugh to be glanced at… Not a voice to be heard. One by one we shuffled through, staring limp-jawed at the photos of every day Cambodians.
Some of the now-deceased even had the audacity to smile subtly when their photo was taken. What a mark of bravery. What a symbol of defiance, if any such thing remains when you knowingly wait your torture and subsequent death.
Upon entering the premises, it’s not hard to fathom that Prison S.21 was previously school grounds. With the blossoms in bloom and a quiet disposition to the place, at first glance it seems rather pleasant.
Then the mood, the ‘air’, strikes you before you’ve even made it into the first of the converted classrooms.
A converted class room…
Close your eyes hard enough and you can hear the screams of the victims, strung up by their wrists with ropes (arms behind their backs) dangling meters off the ground, whipped until they pass out (if they haven’t already from their shoulders dislocating and muscles tearing), then having their heads plunged into pungent sewerage water to revive them; only for it to be repeated.
Maybe this will give some idea of the sight, the smells, the screams of the place.
Again I will ask, how can people do that?
What vital string of human decency has snapped to allow any person - leader, grunt or loved one - to actually condone and carry out such atrocities?
How do you look a child in the eyes and tell them they have - like Pol Pot had - the potential to grow up to commit genocide? How do you even explain the meaning, that a human is capable of such a thing?
A cat finds a comfortable place to rest where no one else can.
Places like Tuol Sleng remain as testaments to the lowest points of human history. They stand as a monument to remind us what we as a race, as a people, are really capable of, whether we choose to accept it, ignore it, deny it or embrace it. They remind us that we really aren’t far removed from the animal kingdom in our savagery and brutality.
If we are removed at all?
A dark stairwell, stained by the shuffling of many feet.
While sitting on the beach in Sihanoukville, I saw ten or more kids playing together, dancing, skipping, setting up and orchestrating games of who-knows-what; American kids, Australian kids, Cambodian kids, German kids. No inhibitions or pre-judgements, just kids of several races playing together.
In our darkest days, there will always be this hope.
Tags: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum photos 35mm
Wow. That was deep, dark and disturbing. You are very brave writing this. Your photos illustrate your depictions very well.
As insensitive as it may be it also bothers me ‘how’ people can participate in such acts. It is the monstrous physicality that is frightening. It demonstrates to me how easily the human can manipulate and be manipulated. Ultimately I hope that I am never tested in this way. We are truly flawed and fragile creatures. Thank you for the reminder Scott!
“While sitting on the beach in Sihanoukville, I saw ten or more kids playing together, dancing, skipping, setting up and orchestrating games of who-knows-what; American kids, Australian kids, Cambodian kids, German kids. No inhibitions or pre-judgements, just kids of several races playing together.
In our darkest days, there will always be this hope.”
One of the saddest things is that it was often kids, barely into their teens, that were often the guards and executioners for the KR, particularly in the last couple of years of the regime when the revolution started to feed on itself. Their minds are always the most malleable and easily manipulated.
…And it goes on today, in places like Darfur and the Congo. But like Kampuchea of the 70’s the world sits by and does nothing apart from offer platitudes. Maybe in 30 years time our kids will be backpacking through those parts of Africa, checking out their versions of S-21 or the Killing Fields, wondering why our generation stood by and did nothing.
For many of us, ignorance is bliss… ‘bread and circuses’ and all that
Hi, cool post. I have been wondering about this topic,so thanks for writing.