Written by Anne Mugisha
The Observer
Our next stop in the tour of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S21) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia took us to a room filled with photographs of the victims who were tortured and killed there.The Khmer Rouge executed their brutality with clinical detachment and professionalism that still sends a chill down the spines of visitors here. What happened here was methodical extermination of anyone considered a threat to the regime.
The systematic documentation of their deeds speaks of the complete belief in the legitimacy of their orders to capture, torture and kill.
The prisoners in S21 had a special chair made for them where they sat to pose for their final photograph. In a perfectly silent room I stared at the mug-shots of the victims.
Only the controlled voice of our guide interrupted the silence even though the room was crowded with tourists. They were old and young, women and men, children and babies too.
The innocence of the babies which pulled the heart strings of tourists must have been completely lost to their executioners. Their killers only knew that these babies were born to the ‘wrong’ parents and that sealed their fate.
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