Sheldon Family Adventure: Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek

Friday December 17

Today was a somber, sad, quiet, reflective day. Today we visited both the Tuol Sleng S-21 Prison and the Choeung Ek Killing Fields of the Khmer Rough's national genocide.

When Pol Pot claimed power in Cambodia in 1975 he turned the local high school into a torture prison, one of several throughout the country, for anyone who opposed his rule. However, most of those imprisoned were innocent ordinary Cambodian citizens from children to elderly. Pol Pot would accuse them of being traitors and working for the CIA or KGB when most if not all had never even heard of these organizations.

Prison S-21

Single cells. Blood stains remain on the floor.

Each prisoner was dutifully documented with numbers, photographed and wrote personal bios. It's from thorough record keeping we know today that over 17,000 prisoners were funneled through S-21. In the end only 12 survived! Everyone else was tortured to death or taken to the Killing Fields for execution and thrown into mass graves.

I struggle to write about what I saw at the prison and the Killing Fields. How do you put into words the unspeakable atrocities committed by the Khmer Rough. We were shown methods used to torture prisoners for hours every day until prisoners would either fabricate a confession to aiding the CIA or KGB in hopes of ending the horror or be killed in the process. If prisoners confessed, the torture would stop only because they would be blind folded and tied up and trucked to the Killing Fields for execution along with thousands of others.

I found myself shutting down my emotions and looking with a sterile heart just to get through the exhibits. All five of us were pushing back the tears and swallowing the lumps in our throats while asking the question, "Why, why would any one do this to another human being?" The only answer to that question - because sin exists in our world.

On the way out we met one of the surviving 12 prisoners Bou Meng. He was a gifted artist and when Pol Pot requested his portrait painted the guards chose Bou Meng. He passed the test and was transferred from his prison cell where he had tortured to near death to slightly better accommodations with 11 other skilled prisoners. Their trades and skills saved their lives. Bou Meng's wife and 5 year old daughter and 3 year old son were not so fortunate.