Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Tuol Sleng

(Navyn) Tuol Sleng or S-21, is a former schoolhouse, which became the interrogation epicenter for the Khmer Rouge. It remains encircled in barbed wire just as it had been in 1978. In the classrooms, thousands of black and white photographs document the prisoners who were detained here. Each innocent face stares into the camera lens with raw emotions of terror, anger, shock, resentment, disgust and fear of the unknown. 12,000 people were tortured here and forced to admit to crimes they never committed, then trucked to the Killing Fields where they filled over a hundred mass graves. Only seven survived this massacre and two are alive today. We met one.

Chum Mey

Chum Mey, now 85, told us the stories of the unthinkable first hand. After watching his wife and two month old son killed at gunpoint he was brought to Tuol Sleng. He sat on the floor of his cell #22 and explained the cruel methods of abuse and humiliation. For twelve days and twelve nights he was beaten, tortured and electrocuted in this small cell until he fabricated a story that he once worked with the CIA. This confession was what his captors needed to cease the torture. To his good fortune, word got around that Chum Mey was a mechanic and could fix things. First he was needed to repair the sewing machines used to make the black pajamas everyone was forced to wear, then service the typewriters needed to document the confessions. These basic but critical skills saved his life. Many years later Chum Mey testified as a witness in the trial of the chief at Tuol Sleng know as Duch. In 2012 he was handed a life sentence for crimes against humanity.

Prisoner photographs

Following this very moving experience, Paul and I traveled to the Killing Fields to visit the museum and hear the haunting stories of how hundreds of men, women and children were killed every week. It is always hard to understand genocide, and try to comprehend how human beings can behave so brutally, but I couldn’t help but think – this was Cambodians killing Cambodians, what really was it that really divided them? Perhaps we can never fully understand.

That afternoon, we walked through the slums of Phnom Penh. Tin shacks, garbage filled dumps, and filth surrounded us. The heat and smell of sewage was unbearable. Seeing children living in such dirty and dangerous conditions was tough to see. The Cambodian Children’s Fund brings these children in and provides schooling, healthcare and one meal a day. They also provide full-time housing for hundreds of orphans. We visited several classrooms and the girls got a chance to teach a little English to the kindergarteners. Then we visited with the little ones, the youngest being one month old. Every one of these kids wanted to be picked up, hugged and played with. The staff had to drag us out of there or we would have packed them all in our suitcases.

To get to dinner via tuk-tuk was an adventure all by itself. Traffic here is a varsity sport. There are 2.2 million motorbikes and 2.4 million people in the capitol city of Phnom Penh. We saw all of them. It is chaotic gridlock. We witnessed plenty of accidents and it took forever to get across town. There is no stop or go but a constant state of yield. You cannot get anywhere. It’s like LA but far more entertaining and life-threatening. Mopeds with three kids on board, a mother breastfeeding her newborn on a moped, crates of chickens balanced on the back of one, and a guy with a few cases of beer on the way to celebrate Chinese New Year.

That was a heavy day. I am exhausted and still processing.