around the perimeter To accommodate the victims of purges that were important enough for the attention of the Khmer Rouge, a new detention center was planned in the building that was formerly known as
Tuol Svay Prey High School, named after a royal ancestor of King
Norodom Sihanouk. The five buildings of the complex were converted in March or April 1976 into a prison and an interrogation center. Other buildings in town had already been used as prison S-21. The Khmer Rouge renamed the complex "Security Prison 21" (S-21) and construction began to adapt the prison for the inmates: the buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes and suicides. From 1976 to 1979, an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng (the precise number is unknown). At any one time, the prison held between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners. They were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured and killed. In the early months of S-21's existence, most of the victims were from the previous
Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc. Later, the party leadership's paranoia turned on its own ranks, and purges throughout the country brought thousands of party activists and their families to Tuol Sleng, where they were murdered. It is proven that medical experiments were performed on certain prisoners. There is clear evidence that patients in Cambodia were sliced open and had organs removed with no anesthetic. The camp's director,
Kang Kek Iew, has acknowledged that "live prisoners were used for surgical study and training. Draining blood was also done." In their confessions, the prisoners were asked to describe their personal background. If they were party members, they had to say when they joined the revolution and describe their work assignments in DK. Then the prisoners would relate their supposed treasonous activities in chronological order. The third section of the confession text described prisoners' thwarted conspiracies and supposed treasonous conversations. At the end, the confessions would list a string of traitors who were the prisoners' friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Some lists contained over a hundred names. People whose names were in the confession list were often called in for interrogation. There, they were killed by a group of teenagers led by a Comrade Teng, On 3 September 2012, DeLance's photograph was identified among the caches of inmate portraits. As of 1999, there were a total of 79 foreign victims on record, but former Tuol Sleng Khmer Rouge photographer Nim Im claims that the records are not complete. On top of that, there is also an eyewitness account of a
Filipino, a
Cuban and a
Swiss who passed through the prison, though no official records are shown.
Survivors Out of an estimated 20,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only twelve known survivors: seven adults and five children. One child died shortly after the liberation.
Chum Mey,
Bou Meng, and
Chim Meth. All three said they were kept alive because they had skills their captors judged to be useful. Bou Meng, whose wife was killed in the prison, was an artist. Chum Mey was kept alive because of his skills in repairing machinery. Chim Meth was held in S-21 for two weeks and transferred to the nearby
Prey Sar prison. She may have been spared because she was from Stoeung district in
Kampong Thom where
Comrade Duch was born. She intentionally distinguished herself by emphasizing her provincial accent during her interrogations.
Vann Nath, who was spared because of his ability to paint, died on 5 September 2011. Norng Chan Phal, one of the surviving children, published his story in 2018. The
Documentation Center of Cambodia has recently estimated that, in fact, at least 179 prisoners were freed from S-21 between 1975 and 1979 and approximately 23 prisoners (including five children, two of them siblings Norng Chanphal and Norng Chanly) survived when the prison was liberated in January 1979. One child died shortly thereafter. The hot unit (sometimes called the cruel unit) was allowed to use torture. In contrast, the cold unit (sometimes called the gentle unit) was prohibited from using torture to obtain confessions. If they could not make prisoners confess, they would transfer them to the hot unit. The chewing unit dealt with tough and important cases. Those who worked as interrogators were literate and usually in their 20s.
Discovery In 1979, Hồ Văn Tây, a Vietnamese combat photographer, was the first journalist to document Tuol Sleng to the world. Hồ and his colleagues followed the stench of rotting corpses to the gates of Tuol Sleng. The photos of Tây documenting what he saw when he entered the site are exhibited in Tuol Sleng today. ==Description==