The Khmer Rouge was a faction of Cambodia’s communist party, led by Pol Pot, which was in power from 1975 to 1979. In only four years, they undertook a campaign of mass genocide in which over two million people perished.
Whilst most victims were taken to the Killing Fields to be murdered, the site of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum also played a central role in the atrocities. Over 17,000 people were taken to Prison S-21, where they were subjected to forced labour and torture.
S-21 was used to hold prisoners before they were to be taken to the Killing Fields, but many died of starvation, disease and torture before they met this fate. The prison was uncovered by the invading Vietnamese in 1979 and was reopened in 1980 as a museum.
The core of S-21 prison was established in two adjacent former schools, built in the 1960s. Although the prison and its related administrative and support department were spread over a significant section of the city area (today known as BKK III), the TSGM site today occupies only the core of the former prison, the main site where the prisoners were brought, photographed, detained, many tortured, interrogated and executed or taken away to be killed at Choeung Ek.
Current research estimates that 18.063 men, women and children were detained in S-21. Considering that many more houses in the neighborhood were part of the prison complex (work and accommodation places for the guards and other staff, kitchen, interrogation and torture houses, offices etc.), the museum took the initiative to seek limitation of nearby construction activities. Zones around TSGM have been defined and accorded legal status.
