Cambodia

Phnom Penh	Phnom Penh	Phnom Penh	Boeung Kak	Boeung Kak
Wat Phnom Penh	Wat Phnom Penh	Wat Phnom Penh	Wat Phnom Penh	Choeung Ek
Mosque	Choeung Ek	Choeung Ek	Choeung Ek	Choeung Ek
T-21	T-21	T-21	T-21	T-21
T-21	T-21	T-21	T-21	T-21
T-21	T-21_	T-21	T-21	T-21

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Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia . Despite its reputation as a 'rough' city, Phnom Penh is easy to get around and is a great introduction to Cambodia .

Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide in Phnom Penh

By David Chandler

S-21 was a top secret facility. Its existence was known only to prisoners, prison officials and a handful of high ranking Khmer Rouge. When suspects were arrested they were not told that they were going to S-21. Instead, they were called to study or "summ oned for consultation. To industrial workers quartered nearby the prison was known only as a place where "people went in but never come out.

Because prisoners at S-21 were often accused of plotting to overthrow DK their confessions were of interests to Pol Pot who is referred to in S-21 documents as "the organization or as brother number one" (bong timuoy), eerily recalling Big Broth er in George Orwell's futuristic anticommunist novel 1984. Copies of important confessions and summaries of related texts were routed to the minister in charge of national security Son Sen or to Pol Pot himself with comments by Duch and his associates. Pol Pot's and Son Sen's replies have not survived.

Because of Angkar's interest in S-21 the prison's operations were probably the most fully documented ones in Cambodia at the time. On arrival prisoners were tagged photographed and made to fill in autobiographical forms. According to Heng Nath o ne of only seven people known to have survived incarceration the next few days were marked by frequent scheduled beatings. Prisoners were given little food. no exercise and hardly any time to sleep. When interrogations began the prisoners were exhausted d isoriented and suggestible. Many confessed to "treasonous activities without being tortured. Others were broken by tortures so intense that several prisoners died. Still of hers committed suicide one by grabbing a sentry's gun to shoot himself and another who flung himself off the balcony that encircled the third floor of the prison.

As the confessions were prepared in multiple copies and as prisoners poured into S-21, an enormous archive of photographs, administrative materials and confessions was built up. It has come down to us almost by chance. The Vietnamese army that reached Phn om Penh on January 8, 1979 found an abandoned city. When their patrols stumbled across the prison, they discovered the bodies of a dozen recently murdered prisoners whose blood was still drying on the floor. Journalists from Communist countries were token through the prison before the month was over. By then, mass graves in the vicinity had been dug up. The journalists were sickened by what they saw and smelled. Toward the end of the year after Vietnam had installed a sympathetic Cambodian regime in Phnom Penh, S-21 was transformed with East German assistance into a Genocide Museum. Photographs, confession texts and other documents were organized into files. Places where prisoners were tortured and had slept were left undisturbed. Thousands of photographs of prisoners and selected pages of confessions were mounted on the walls. Weapons of torture, photographs of killing fields, busts of Pol Pot curved by prisoners, abandoned clothing, fetters, chains and a survivor's paintings of torture completed the gru esome exhibition.

In 1980 the archive was opened to foreign scholars. At that point, it consisted of roughly 6,000 photographs, 4,000 signed confessions covering over 200,000 typed and handwritten pages and perhaps 20,000 pages of administrative material, including noteboo ks of instructions for interrogators, entry-lists, execution lists and miscellaneous periodicals and pronouncements. The photographic archive was cleaned and cataloged by the Photo Archive Group in 1994, after the American photographers Chris Riley and Do ug Niven discovered thousands of negatives stored in a rusty file cabinet. apparently forgotten and already damaged by humidity and insects.

Hotels Half Prize Cambodia

The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields at Choeung Ek, a former orchard near Phnom Penh, was where the Khmer Rouge exterminated 17,000 people.

Today, Choeung Ek is a memorial, including a Buddhist stupa, that can be visited by the public.

Hostels in Phnom Penh (Cambodia)
Number 9 Guesthouse Lakeside, 9 Tel. 012-935-813 number9_guesthouse@hotmail.com Phnom Penh	Lakeside Guesthouse Lakeside, 10 Tel. 012-973-811 number10_lakeside@hotmail.com Phnom Penh
Narin Guesthouse Psar O Russei Tel. 012-982-554 Phnom Penh	Sunshine Hotel 253, Sisowath Quay Tel. 012-725-684 Phnom Penh

Central International of Hostel Reservation

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