Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

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Tuol Sleng Genocide
Museum archives
Inscribed 2009
What is it
The archives of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum,
the former S-21 prison and interrogation centre,
contain photographs and biographies of over
5000 prisoners, as well as ‘confessions’, many extracted
under torture, and other records of prisoners, prison
guards and officials.
Why was it inscribed
It is estimated that over 15,000 prisoners were held in
this former high school by the Khmer Rouge regime.
Only a handful of them survived the ordeal. The archive
bears testimony to man’s inhumanity to man and its
documentation confirms this genocide as of one of the
most extreme examples of crimes against humanity in
the 20th century, with a major impact on world history.
Where is it
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
The barbaric events during the Khmer Rouge regime
in Democratic Kampuchea (1975–79) are revealed more
clearly in this archive than in any other single source.
The devastating consequences for the Cambodian people
are hard to contemplate. Between 2 and 3 million people
� All those detained had their
pictures taken. Chan Kim
Srung was photographed
with her newborn child
on 14 May 1978.
� Copies of Revolutionary
Flag, a magazine of the Khmer
Rouge left at Tuol Sleng after
the fall of Pol Pot’s Khmer
Rouge regime.
540 Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum archives
(over a quarter of the total population) lost their lives
during the rule of the Khmer Rouge, and it is thought that
hundreds of thousands of people were executed, following
a period of imprisonment and torture.
The historic buildings that currently make up the Tuol
Sleng Genocide Museum, were built in 1960 as the Chao
Ponhea Yat High School. They were used during the
Khmer Rouge regime as a prison and brutal interrogation
centre. The school was enclosed by electrified barbed
wire fencing, the classrooms converted into tiny prisons
and torture chambers, and all windows were covered
with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes. At
least 15,000 prisoners were held here, usually for two
to three months, and most were executed at the ‘Killing
Field’ of Cheung Ek or died in detention in Tuol Sleng
prison. Initially those detained here were either linked
to the previous government of Lon Nol or were skilled
professionals including doctors, teachers and engineers,
incarcerated as part of the Khmer Rouge’s campaign
against intellectuals. Later, the Khmer Rouge leader,