Special Report: Khmer Rouge's S-21 torture prison
Cambodia is to relive the horrors of the Khmer Rouge's S-21 torture prison when its jailer goes on trial.
The old prison is a museum now, lined with the haunting black and white portraits of its inmates. Each one of them was grotesquely tortured with the tools still on display until they confessed to crimes they never committed. Many victims implicated everyone they ever met in fantastical conspiracies in their desperation to satisfy the inquisitors. John Dawson Dewhirst, the only British victim, eventually claimed he joined the CIA when he was 12 years old.
Finally they were driven to the killing fields outside Phnom Penh at Choeung Ek to be killed and dumped in pits. The site is a tourist attraction now, with a monument of skulls and the clothes of victims emerging from the bumpy ground. Surviving prisoner lists show that at least 12,380 people passed through S-21, although the true number may be higher. Only around a dozen are believed to have survived.
Four other Khmer Rouge leaders are in custody awaiting trial and prosecutors at the court, jointly run by the United Nations and the Cambodian government, are preparing cases against six more people. The court will only pursue senior figures – Him Huoy is not important enough to be prosecuted, although he will be a witness in Duch's trial.
It is three decades since the fall of the Khmer Rouge's lunatic regime, and the special court has been blighted by delays, financial scandal and political rancour. The hope is that at the end of it all Cambodians will have heard their painful history carefully examined and – perhaps – laid to rest. If the process is a success the wounded country might move a step closer to reconciliation and "closure".
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
The old prison is a museum now, lined with the haunting black and white portraits of its inmates. Each one of them was grotesquely tortured with the tools still on display until they confessed to crimes they never committed. Many victims implicated everyone they ever met in fantastical conspiracies in their desperation to satisfy the inquisitors. John Dawson Dewhirst, the only British victim, eventually claimed he joined the CIA when he was 12 years old.
Finally they were driven to the killing fields outside Phnom Penh at Choeung Ek to be killed and dumped in pits. The site is a tourist attraction now, with a monument of skulls and the clothes of victims emerging from the bumpy ground. Surviving prisoner lists show that at least 12,380 people passed through S-21, although the true number may be higher. Only around a dozen are believed to have survived.
Four other Khmer Rouge leaders are in custody awaiting trial and prosecutors at the court, jointly run by the United Nations and the Cambodian government, are preparing cases against six more people. The court will only pursue senior figures – Him Huoy is not important enough to be prosecuted, although he will be a witness in Duch's trial.
It is three decades since the fall of the Khmer Rouge's lunatic regime, and the special court has been blighted by delays, financial scandal and political rancour. The hope is that at the end of it all Cambodians will have heard their painful history carefully examined and – perhaps – laid to rest. If the process is a success the wounded country might move a step closer to reconciliation and "closure".