Killing Fields Phnom Penh

Choeung Ek and S-21: Why Phnom Penh’s Darkest Sites Matter

Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia and killed between 1.5 and 2 million people out of a population of approximately 8 million. The exact figure remains debated. The mechanisms were systematic: evacuation of cities, forced agricultural labour, execution of perceived class enemies, intellectuals, people who wore glasses, people with soft hands. The Tuol Sleng prison (S-21) in Phnom Penh and the Choeung Ek killing site outside the city are the two most accessible places to understand concretely what happened.

Whether to visit sites of mass atrocity is a genuine question. The answer here is yes, for the same reason it is yes at Auschwitz and the Rwandan genocide memorials: the physical places demand a kind of attention that reading about events in the abstract does not.

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21)

Tuol Sleng is a former secondary school in the Chamkar Mon district of Phnom Penh, seven kilometres from the city centre, converted in 1975 into a prison and interrogation facility by the Khmer Rouge security apparatus. Between 14,000 and 17,000 people were imprisoned here. Only 12-14 are confirmed to have survived.

The Khmer Rouge photographed and documented their prisoners meticulously. Rooms of photographs face you as you enter: men, women, children, some looking directly into the camera with expressions that are hard to look at and harder to look away from. The classrooms where prisoners were held in wooden cells barely large enough to turn around in are intact. The buildings where the most severe interrogations took place are also open; the beds with the iron bar restraints are still there.

Admission is $3 USD. Audio guides are available for an additional fee and are worth getting: survivor testimony from the small number of people who lived through the facility provides context that the objects alone cannot supply. Two survivors, Bou Meng and Chum Mey, have for years come to the museum to speak with visitors; as of the time of writing they continue to do so.

Allow 2-3 hours minimum. Do not rush through it.

Choeung Ek

Choeung Ek is 15 kilometres south of Phnom Penh, accessible by tuk-tuk (around $10-15 round trip) or by hiring a driver for the day. It was an orchard before 1975. The Khmer Rouge used it as an execution site and mass burial ground, trucking prisoners from S-21 in batches to be killed, buried, and eventually covered over.

The 43-meter-high memorial stupa at the center of the site contains 5,000 skulls, arranged and visible through glass panels. It is a deliberate and direct memorial; there is no ambiguity in what you are looking at. The mass grave pits are visible as depressions in the ground throughout the site, some still bordered by raised earth from excavation. Cloth and bone fragments continue to surface after heavy rain. The audio guide, included in the $6 USD admission price, uses recorded testimony from survivors and perpetrators. One section plays recordings near a particular tree; the content of what happened there is disclosed through headphones.

The audio guide is considered by most visitors to be one of the most effectively designed such guides at any memorial site in the world. It takes 90 minutes to walk the full route following it.

Visiting Both Sites Together

Most visitors combine Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek in a single day. Some find Tuol Sleng more difficult because the individual faces of victims are unavoidable; others find Choeung Ek more difficult because the scale becomes physically present in the depressions in the ground and the bone fragments. Either sequence works. Having lunch between the two is appropriate and necessary; some people feel guilty about this and should not.

Phnom Penh More Broadly

The Royal Palace on the riverfront near Sisowath Quay is open to visitors ($10 USD) and the Silver Pagoda inside the grounds contains a collection of Buddha images including a life-size figure set with diamonds. The National Museum on the Sangkat Chey Chumneah holds the world’s most important collection of Khmer sculpture from the Angkor period.

The riverfront itself, particularly Sisowath Quay, has a concentration of restaurants and bars. The Friends restaurant on Street 13 is a social enterprise that trains formerly street-connected youth in hospitality skills; the food is good and the organisation is worthwhile. The FCC (Foreign Correspondents’ Club) on the riverfront remains a reliable option for the view and a reasonably priced lunch.

Getting around Phnom Penh: tuk-tuks are negotiated by the journey (typical short trip 2-4 USD, airport to city center around 8-12 USD); Passapp and Grab provide app-based metered alternatives.