Tuol Sleng Torture Prison, Phnom Penh

The four bldgs of the former Tuol Svay Prey Secondary School became the Khmer Rouge Security Prison 21 or S21 or Tuol Sleng. Pretty much left how it was when the Vietnamese found it in 1979. The last 14 prisoners that were dead and still shackled to their beds are buried in the front courtyard. Not including the children, it is estimated that over 10,000 prisoners passed thru Tuol Sleng. Prisoners experienced gruesome torture and maltreatment. Some died but most were transported several km outside of Phmon Penh, to the killing fields. There, prisoners were ususally bludgeoned to death, with remains left to rot in a mass grave.

The Khmer Rouge, in a naziesque fashion, kept meticulous records of the prisoners. Tuol Sleng prisoners often wrote lengthy "biographies" on multiple occasions often confessing to imagined offenses against the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. Men, women, children, foreigners, loyal Khmer Rouge alike were all tortured here. As the Vietnamese invaded and the Khmer Rouge fled toward the Thai border, they destroyed much of the archive at Tuol Sleng.