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The families of offenders were often brought
to the prison as well in order to keep the deaths of their loved one from being
avenged. Almost all of the prisoners had worked in the armed forces, factories,
or administration. Upon arrival at S-21, the prisoners were photographed,
tortured until they confessed to whatever crimes their captors charged them
with, and then executed in Choeung Ek or the Killing Fields. The prisoners'
photographs and completed confessions formed dossiers that were submitted to
Khmer Rouge authorities as proof that the "traitors" had been eliminated. This
precise record keeping resembled that of the Nazis and the Jewish Holocaust.
Of the approximately 20,000 people who were
imprisoned at S-21, there were only seven known survivors. At least 20 other
similar centers operated throughout the country. Today, S-21 prison is now the
Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, a reminder to the world of Cambodia’s darkest days
The executed were
buried in
mass graves. In order to save ammunition,
executions were often carried out using hammers, axe handles, spades or
sharpened
bamboo sticks. Some victims were required
to dig their own graves; their weakness often meant that they were unable to dig
very deep. The soldiers who carried out the executions were mostly young men or
women from peasant families.
The Khmer Rouge
regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections
with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals
and intellectuals. Ethnic
Vietnamese,
Homosexuals, ethnic
Chams (who were and are
Muslims),
Cambodian
Christians, and the
Buddhist monkhood were the demographic
targets of persecution.
photos of some of those killed
The best known of the
Killing Fields is
Choeung Ek. Today, it is the site of a
Buddhist memorial to the terror, and Tuol
Sleng has a museum commemorating the genocide.
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