Heritage site
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (ទួលស្លែង, Tuol Sleng) in Phnom Penh preserves the former S-21 prison of the Khmer Rouge as a memorial to its victims.[1] Between 1975 and 1979, 15,000 to 20,000 people were imprisoned there, and only 12 were found alive when the regime fell.[1]
History
The buildings were a high school, Tuol Svay Prey, built in 1962 on a parcel of about 600 by 400 meters (660 by 440 yards).[1] Under Democratic Kampuchea (1975 to 1979), the Khmer Rouge turned the school into Security Office 21, known as S-21. Classrooms became cells and torture chambers, and the compound was enclosed in electrified barbed wire.[1] The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) identified 196 prisons across the country under the Khmer Rouge, and S-21 was the center of that system.[2][1]
Prisoners were brought from every part of Cambodia, among them members of the Khmer Rouge whom the regime considered traitors.[1] The museum puts their number at 15,000 to 20,000, and very few were ever released.[1] S-21 was run by the Ministry of Defense under Son Sen. Its first chief, In Lun (alias Nath), was followed in 1976 by Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch.[1] As Phnom Penh fell in early 1979, Duch fled after ordering that all remaining prisoners be killed. When the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea and Vietnamese troops entered the city, they found 12 survivors at S-21, four of them children.[1]
The prison was part of a far larger loss. The Memorias Situadas project of UNESCO's CIPDH puts the toll at no fewer than 1.5 million, about a quarter of the population.[3]
The site opened as a museum, inaugurated on April 17, 1980.[3] Kaing Guek Eav was convicted by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in 2010 of crimes against humanity and war crimes. He died in 2020 while serving a life sentence.[1][4]
Architecture and layout
The four school buildings form an open rectangle around a tree-lined courtyard.[1] Building A held rooms used for torture. Buildings B, C and D held prisoner cells and larger rooms for groups of detainees.[3][1] Some of the smallest cells, built with brick or wooden partitions, measured about 0.8 by 2 meters (2.6 by 6.6 feet).[1]
Art and inscriptions
The museum keeps the prison buildings, prisoner photographs, archives, torture instruments and paintings of the prison. It serves as a memorial and as a place of education.[1][3][5] Building B displays hundreds of photographs of prisoners, and Building D holds the words of victims and perpetrators.[3] The paintings of Vann Nath show life in the prison and the torture used on prisoners. He was spared because he was put to work painting and sculpting portraits of Pol Pot.[1][6] A new memorial stupa was inaugurated at the site in 2015. Plaques around it carry the name of every S-21 victim.[3] The last 14 victims found at the site lie in graves on the grounds.[3]
Significance and conservation
The Tuol Sleng archives were inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World International Register in 2009.[7] They hold photographs, prisoner biographies, notebooks, propaganda magazines, forced confessions and other records.[7] A UNESCO-supported project digitized more than 60,000 documents and opened the database to relatives, researchers and the public, and it upgraded the archive and added multimedia rooms where visitors can consult the records.[7]
On July 11, 2025, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee inscribed the Cambodian Memorial Sites on the World Heritage List under criterion (vi). The property links three places that document the Khmer Rouge security system: Tuol Sleng, the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center and M-13, a former prison in Kampong Speu.[5]
Visiting
The museum is open every day from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. A testimony program about children under the Khmer Rouge and child survivors of S-21 runs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.[8] In 2010 the ECCC Study Tour brought students, teachers and villagers from every province to the court and to Tuol Sleng.[9]
References 9
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 tuolsleng.gov.kh, History of the Museum - Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
- ↑ Documentation Center of Cambodia, Mapping the Killing Fields (undated)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Memorias Situadas CIPDH - UNESCO, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum - CIPDH - UNESCO (2019-03-01)
- ↑ Australian Embassy Phnom Penh, Death of Kaing Guek Eav (alias Comrade Duch) (September 2, 2020)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 UNESCO, UNESCO Congratulates Cambodia on the Inscription of Its Memorial Sites to the World Heritage List (July 11, 2025)
- ↑ Al Jazeera, Cambodia's 'Killing Fields' painter dies (September 5, 2011)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 UNESCO, UNESCO and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum launch a digital ... (2021-02-09)
- ↑ Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Museum: Visitor Information (undated)
- ↑ ECCC, 32,633 Persons Visited ECCC in 2010 (December 30, 2010)
Know something we're missing? Send a tip