Where’s the Devil? (Part 1)

“S 21”

Jonathan A. Cray
Jul 23, 2017 · 7 min read

Every place you visit has a history to be learned and respected.

Man, oh man!

I did a fair bit of research but nothing could prepare me well enough for what I was about to witness. The infamous detention camp/torture conclave that is S21.

My 3 friends and I reached S21 via tuk-tuk. Now called ‘Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum’ it looked like any old unused building in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

The Entrance

Outside the gates, life went on as normal. Inside, however, it was silent and still.

We got our tickets just inside the gates and were handed a recorded tour guide gadget, a set of headphones and a map. Some tour groups had personal guides who spoke different languages.

Tourists Listening Attentively to Their Guide

I wore the headphones, nodded to my pals and from then on I was on my own. Alone with the narrator and alone with my thoughts. Slow-paced and easy to comprehend the narrator went on to recount what went on in this place. The stories I was about to hear would turn out to be the most disturbing real life accounts I had ever heard. Here at S21, thousands of innocent men, women and children had their lives wrenched out of them, literally. It’s hard to even comprehend the magnitude of pain, suffering and absolute horror this place has witnessed.

S21 is unique among torture and detention centers primarily because only days before it became a prison, it was a functioning school. Yes a school, kids and all. This space I found myself in had seen two extremes of human nature. It stands to this day reminding all who come here of the good and evil man is capable of.

Building A: Classrooms Turned Jail-cells

Hundreds of innocent people of all ages were brought here against their will, shackled down and not allowed to speak, let alone cry. Prison guards extracted false confessions from them through waterboarding, nail pulling and all sorts of other hideous torture techniques. There were even lists of rules written up that inmates had to follow while they were being tortured. The inmates’ dark dilemma during interrogation though was not knowing the outcome of lying or telling the truth. Unbeknownst to them, death was to be the only outcome. They were starved, tortured and lynched no matter what they said or did.

Typical Interrogation Room with Iron Bed, Shackles and Torture Toolkit

Prison guards would hang detainees upside down from a tall wooden frame in the courtyard with their hands tied behind their backs. After hanging for a good while, their bodies were lowered into large earthen pots filled with human excrement and body fluids. They were kept there until they choked, asphyxiated and eventually died. Only days earlier this frame was being used to hold up swings for the school children. See the hook?

The Swing Frame and Earthen Pots

Behind all this carnage was nothing but the twisted theory of one man and a handful of his followers.

The Face of Evil - Pol Pot

In 1975 the Vietnam War next door spilled into Cambodia. American forces retreated thereafter, destabilizing the region and Cambodia’s political structure. This allowed Pot Pot’s regime to come out of the jungle and quickly seize power. The mad man wanted to take Cambodia back to “year zero” and start afresh by destroying all forms of modernization or development and killing everyone who he thought was a threat to his plan.

Unfortunately this insanity was allowed to perpetuate for 4 long years. He would go on to wipe out almost 2 million of his own people.

I learned that the guards carrying out the atrocities were mostly uneducated teenagers, the oldest in his early twenties. All impressionable minds ordered to act or be killed. The punishment for disobeying orders was death. That is how the generals got people to do such unspeakable things. And that is why it has proven extremely difficult to prosecute them when they were eventually tried in court years later.

One of the many sad stories during this time is that of New Zealander Kerry Hamill (brother of former Olympian Rob Hamill) and his 2 friends Stuart Glass and John Dewhirst. The 3 were sailing around the world when their yacht got caught in a storm and drifted too close to the coast of a Cambodian island. They were intercepted by Khmer forces. Stuart Glass was shot dead while Kerry and Dewhirst were apprehended by the soldiers and taken to S21.

There they were tortured for 4 long weeks, forced to confess to being CIA operatives and then brutally murdered. Kerry’s 4000 word confession, part of which stated that he worked for the CIA under the command of ‘Colonel Sanders’ of ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’ shows the depths of the regime’s ignorance and Kerry’s resourcefulness in the face of certain death. Through his sheer resilience and love, Kerry also found a way to subliminally message his family through his recorded confession. His tragic story has been made into a beautiful film called “Brother Number One” you can find here. To order the DVD you can email Kerry’s brother Rob. I longed for a photograph of Kerry that I could use for this piece so I contacted Rob. He sent me a warmhearted reply and the picture you see below. Kerry was one of several innocent foreigners who also saw their end at S21.

Picture of Kerry Hamill Taken 2 Months Before his Capture

Thousands came into this prison and left only to be bludgeoned to death in ‘The Killing Fields' not so far away. So severe was their suffering here that most prisoners longed only to die. After some inmates attempted to kill themselves by jumping out of the buildings, the guards barb-wired the place up. The privilege of suicide was also swiftly denied.

Barbwire to Prevent Suicides

Walking through the classrooms I saw blood-stains on the floors of some of the tiny cells. That’s when a sudden realization made me shiver. This didn’t happen all that long ago. The regime was in power from 1975 to 1979. This means that almost every Cambodian adult alive today is scarred in some way or another by this genocide.

Makeshift Cells in Classrooms and Dried up Blood

The guards documented all inmates who entered here. Each poor soul was also photographed before and after their death. The pictures have now been put on display to keep their memory alive. There were a few young guys in these pictures whose faces made me tear up. They had that young fire in their eyes you know, the kind that makes you feel invincible in your youth. The fire that says “the world is at my feet”. Well that fire was very quickly snuffed right out, leaving their bodies limp, broken and dead. Worse were the kids’ faces. Young children oblivious to everything, their life cut short before it even began.

Two of the many prisoners

Of the 1.7 million murdered during the Khmer Rouge regime12000 died here at S21. Of the 12000 that came here only 8 survived.

The playground surrounded by the buildings is now covered with tombstones in memory of the dead.

Playground Turned Graveyard

It is of great significance to know that of all the nations who at the time had the power and ability to end this nightmare, it was none other than the war-torn and struggling Vietnam that finally came to the rescue and liberated the people of Cambodia.

As I made my way through every classroom, I subconsciously longed for it to be over. Somewhat numb by the end of the 4 building tour, I came across 2 elderly men sitting at separate tables beside the pathway. They were smiling and greeting people. The tables were piled with books. The book covers had their faces on them. Then it hit me…

SURVIVORS… Damn!

I couldn’t bring myself to go chat with them and this was surely not my ‘photo op’. So I took a good long look at the 2 gentlemen and said a little prayer. I also promised the skies to forever remember what I had seen that day and to strive to be a good human being.



(continued in Part 2)

Jonathan A. Cray

Written by

Been around a bit and I’ve been thinking.

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