Qualla: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Gruijters at Dutch Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The classrooms still have their blackboards. But the desks are gone, replaced by iron bedframes and rusting shackles bolted to the floor. Tuol Sleng was once Tuol Svay Prey High School, named after a royal ancestor of King Norodom Sihanouk. In March or April of 1976, the Khmer Rouge converted its five buildings into Security Prison 21 -- S-21 -- one of between 150 and 196 torture and execution centers that operated across Cambodia. From 1976 to 1979, an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned here. Fewer than two dozen survived.

Image: Michael Gruijters at Dutch Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: From Schoolyard to Kill Zone

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jean-christophe windland, CC BY-SA 3.0. The conversion was methodical. Workers enclosed the school buildings in electrified barbed wire. Classrooms became tiny cells and interrogation rooms. Windows were covered with iron bars to prevent escapes and suicides. At any given time, the prison held between 1,000 and 1,500 p...

Image: jean-christophe windland | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: The Confessions Machine

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donovan Govan., CC BY-SA 3.0. The interrogation system at S-21 operated with bureaucratic precision. Prisoners described their personal backgrounds, their work history under the Khmer Rouge, and their supposed treasonous activities in chronological order. Each confession ended with a list of alleged co-conspi...

Image: Donovan Govan. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: Those Who Lived

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. Out of an estimated 20,000 prisoners, approximately 23 people survived the liberation of S-21 in January 1979, including five children. The adults who lived did so because they possessed skills the regime found useful. Bou Meng was an artist. Chum Mey could repair machinery. Vann...

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: Following the Stench

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sgroey, CC BY 4.0. In January 1979, Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia and drove out the Khmer Rouge. A combat photographer named Ho Van Tay followed the smell of decomposing bodies to the gates of Tuol Sleng. His photographs documenting what he found -- prisoners still chained to iron bedframes, k...

Image: Sgroey | CC BY 4.0

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: Memory Against Forgetting

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chrismanes, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2010, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia convicted Comrade Duch for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. He died in 2020 while serving a life sentence. Filmmaker Rithy Panh, who lost his family to the Khmer Rouge when he was e...

Image: Chrismanes | CC BY-SA 4.0