Toerke

The woman looks straight ahead. Her child is seated in her lap. If you look carefully, you can see a single tear halfway the woman’s cheeck. She sits unnaturally straight and cannot sit any other way. She is not allowed to move nor could she if she had wanted to. She is tied to the chair against an iron pin. This is how she has to pose for the camera. Her intuition tells her that, as soon as the picture has been taken, she will be separated from her child. Forever.

It is one image that has stayed with me. One of the many black and white photographs here at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Tuol Sleng, or S-21, was one of many prisons in the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge in the late ’70s. Over 12,000 “enemies of the state” – including all (!) family members – were held prisoner, interrogated, abused and tortured in these former school grounds. At night, truckloads of prisoners were deported to the fields of Choeng Ek, 15 km from Phnom Penh in the countryside, better known as one of many mass graves of “the killing fields”.

The barbarity of this operation in unimagineable. Babies cry, need attention and care and are thus disturbing for the daily management of such a camp. Therefore, they were often the first victims among new arrivals. Their heads were smashed into the wall, or they were thrown into the air and skewed on a bajonet. Things went slightly slower for those that needed to be interrogated and of whom the Angkar regime wanted to obtain a confession in writing. Women’s nipples were torn open and filled with scorpions that were collected in bamboo cages for this purpose. There was of course the usual pulling of the nails, after which alcohol or acid was poured into the wounds. The gym racks proved to be extremely handy for the hanging of prisoners. With arms tied to the back, the prisoners were hung on the bar thus dislocating the shoulders. If this could not move the poor souls to a false confession, there were always the buckets with faeces for a round of drink-or-sink. The wardens at S-21 were often 10 to 15 year olds who lived a prison life themselves. Their experiences in the civil war and their stay at S-21 had rendered them capable of extreme violence. To secure the secrecy of the prison’s practice, the wardens and executioners were killed and replaced.

The man who orchestrated this hell, Political Potential, aka Pol Pot or Brother No.1 never set foot on these premises. He died a natural death in neighbourghing Thailand in 1998. Some of his allies-Brothers are members of the current Cambodian government. It is not surprising that Pol Pot’s picture at the exhibit is heavily damaged. The eyes are burned out of the picture, the cheeks and mouth covered with slogans of anger and hatred. In the guestbook people are still throwing stones and pointing fingers at the west, the east and anyone. One pleas for a Cambodian tribunal, another would only trust international justice, yet another fearfully doubts whether Pol Pot is actually dead. Cambodia is not through healing yet.

What maybe struck and saddened me most this day was the offer of the friendly tuktuk driver: “Want to visit shooting range? Only four kilometers!” Apparently, just around the proverbial corner, you can empty a round of AK-47 amo on a local cow. So much for justice.

Information: Documentation Center of Cambodia