No, we are not done with Tuol Sleng. Unfortunately, there is still too little research. Entire areas of S-21 operations remain unknown. As well, the administrative and human mechanics of destruction is still insufficiently studied.1
This quotation, from the preeminent filmmaker on the Khmer Rouge era who has done so much to help the world comprehend what happened during the Cambodian genocide, is crucially important. Particularly since this statement comes, as it does, in this groundbreaking new volume on S-21/Tuol Sleng, the hybrid entity that is both the central torture and execution center of the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime, and the museum that documents and teaches about those crimes. This book provides a wealth of new information and analysis of Tuol Sleng, including how it has changed over time, how it was and is part of wider networks during DK and subsequently as a memorial to the dead. It is both a dramatic flood of new information and a clarion call to do more.
Time is of the essence. As the editors point out in the introduction, historical accounts are crucial at this moment with the closing down of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC – the Khmer Rouge Tribunal) and the coming of a new ‘post-justice’ era. I would argue that even more urgent is the fact that many Khmer Rouge survivors are now elderly; even child survivors are in their 50s and 60s. Many elders have health problems from those years of suffering and starvation and are nearing the end of their lives. As an anthropologist who has spent many years interviewing survivors about the DK years and the rebuilding of society in the aftermath, I fear the loss of information as these people pass. Only three of the survivors of S-21 who wrote memoirs are still alive, working as living testimonials at the museum.2 The research on M-13, the precursor to S-21 in Kampong Speu province, demonstrates that it is crucial to interview survivors, to learn things as basic as the camp’s location, the way prisoners were held and tortured and how the system that became S-21 and the other “S” centers around the nation were developed.3
There is the difficulty of working continually with the stories of violence and cruelty, and for outsiders, for those of us who are not ourselves Cambodian survivors, there is an extra responsibility of carefully choosing words, images, and attitudes that maintain the dignity of those who suffered and died. Describing torture and enduring violence, starvation and degradation cannot truly convey it in the ways ‘deep memory’ captures survivors and forces them to relive it.5 Writing about it flattens it, and in doing so makes it ‘bearable’ to the readers.6 It is a daunting responsibility well met in this volume. For example, the analysis of purity and control in the KR interrogators’ notebooks and confessions takes us inside the twisted logic of “correct” torture arising from absolute revolutionary “purity”. A footnote tells us that the material from the notebooks of the cadres and even more so the “confessions” “do not represent what they actually did or thought. Rather such writings and confessions reflect what the interrogators and victims believed they had to say to please the party or (in particular) the interrogator…” in that horrific moment.7 Like a hall of mirrors, DK propaganda and internal slogans distort reality and goad the cadres on to a “perfection” that produces devastation.
My own encounter with Tuol Sleng began with a visit in 1989. I administered a microfilming project for Cornell University at the National Library, National Museum, the Royal Palace, and eventually the Tuol Sleng archive. Cornell was able to keep one copy of the microfilm, provided a copy back to the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, and filmed their holdings on Cambodia in French and English to give back to the National Library. I trained staff at each of these institutions to shoot microfilm and organized lists of the documents. For Tuol Sleng, this meant filming and constructing the first digital database of the ‘confessions’.
I worked at Tuol Sleng for several months. I spent much of this time reading the materials in the archive, mostly “confessions”. I was handling the original
In hindsight, it was likely this immersion in the stories of those who died at Tuol Sleng that set me on a course to chronicle the stories of Khmer Rouge survivors. I have always been resistant to the idea that we who conduct this research are ourselves emotionally scarred by this work. I am disturbed by the thought that our discomfort could be even some tiny percentage of what these people suffered, or of their suffering that comes from living with their memories of those times. We are vessels that briefly contain these stories and then pass them on – in publications, museum exhibits, films, and teaching. We did not live them. From nightmares I could awaken and escape, knowing it was not true and had never been true. Maybe recording and faithfully telling the stories became my duty after beginning my career “drowning” in the documents at Tuol Sleng.
The scale of the violent project at S-21 to purge the movement of internal enemies stuns the visitor; by the end of ECCC case 002/02 the number of dead was documented to be at least 18,063 at S-21. However, that does not count the families of those who were arrested and imprisoned there, as the DK policy was to “dig up the roots” when one kills the plant.8 Most of the children were not photographed or documented, just brutally murdered. Even Vann Nath, the S-21 survivor who painted the atrocities he witnessed to display at the Tuol Sleng Museum was stunned to learn that the babies he painted torn from their mothers’ arms were slaughtered.9 In a short piece for Searching for the Truth, I wrote that I was not surprised by the descriptions of violence in the testimony of Him Huy, former guard and alleged executioner, at the ECCC in 2009, including the “smashing” of babies. Lists were made, people blindfolded,
Many people use the word “visceral” to describe the exhibits at Tuol Sleng. Designed to be displayed as evidence of atrocities, leaving the details of the torture and murders is deliberate – the blood stains on the floors and walls and the torture instruments and bullet cases used as toilets. You are forced to confront the fact that the story you are being told really happened. Nevertheless, the ability of these artifacts to evoke raw emotion, fear, even panic, has waned over time. The smell of death is gone, the bloodstains have faded, but a visit remains a powerful experience. More needs to be written about how listening to a guided tour on headphones has changed the experience of the tour (as it has done, I would argue more successfully at Choeung Ek).11 I wonder if at Tuol Sleng it limits the experience in certain ways not yet fully understood.
When I wrote my piece on Tuol Sleng published in Museum Anthropology, my main goal was to explain the People’s Republic of Kampuchea/State Of Cambodia narrative logic articulated in the museum. The PRK/SOC leadership claimed credit for the successful revolution, and for having ousted the genocidal Pol Pot – Ieng Sary – Khieu Samphan genocidal clique who had hijacked that victory. For the foreign visitors, viewing the evidence of atrocities justified the Vietnamese invasion and the establishment of a pro-Vietnamese government. For Cambodian visitors, looking for pictures of their loved ones on the walls, it provided a national narrative to ignite and maintain their anger at the DK regime so they would support the PRK government, and send their sons to fight to prevent the return of the Khmer Rouge. The central message was, “you must support us because to fail to do so will result in the return to power of the Khmer Rouge.”12 Furthermore, I argued that having S-21 at the center of constructions of the horrors of the DK regime did not require survivors to abandon or reframe their memories of their own experiences. Rather, the worst moments for them, remembering the death or their mother or their child, or the guilt of not having been able to save a loved one, resonated with the message of that place, with all the faces of the dead staring accusingly from the walls.
Also important is the editors’ message at the end of the volume that the crucial work of continuing to research S-21/Tuol Sleng and its wider network of associated sites, including rural sites, will fall to a new generation of Cambodian researchers. This volume contains important looks back to early aspects of the site – like the study of early visitor books, initial visits by foreigners and their interpretations of the site, and the uses of the archives as evidence for the tribunals. Moreover, authors wring new data from evidence long before us, but never fully analyzed, like the study of the clothing fragments and human remains. Moving forward, the work on M-13 and other sites, and the study of the history of the museum as a place for education as well as memorializing the dead will fall largely to Cambodian researchers. Now a well-trained cohort of archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and other social scientists stands ready to grapple with the legacy of the DK years.
These researchers, however, need funding and support, from their own ministries, universities, and organizations, as well as from outsiders with whom they collaborate. Cambodian scholars employed at universities receive salary to teach classes but are not rewarded for conducting research and writing their findings. With the tribunal over, there may be a decline in funding for NGOs that worked to support the gathering of evidence, including the Documentation Center for Cambodia and the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center. International and national funders should continue to support efforts at documentation and education on the Khmer Rouge. Government funding should also be assured for Tuol Sleng, Choeung Ek and other memorial sites, in part because the logic of the national narrative from decades ago remains central to the identity of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party – you owe us your loyalty because we saved you from the Khmer Rouge.
Foreign scholars should collaborate with Khmer scholars to seek research monies from international funders, and to coauthor publications, at least initially, to help navigate the politics of publishing in international journals and with Western presses. I have worked over the course of my career to create opportunities and to train this next generation. I agree with the editors of this
Judy Ledgerwood
Bibliography
Chandler, David. Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Langer, Lawrence. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
Ledgerwood, Judy. “The Cambodian Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes: National Narrative.” Museum Anthropology, vol. 21, no. 1 (1997): 82–98.
Ledgerwood, Judy. “Seeing Duch on Trial.” Searching for the Truth. Phnom Penh: Documentation Center for Cambodia, first quarter (2011): 53–56.
Vann Nath. A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21. Bangkok: White Lotus, 1998.
See “Irradiations of Violence: Interview with Rithy Panh” in the book.
See Anne-Laure Porée’s chapter.
See Hang Nisay’s chapter.
David Chandler, Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison (Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkwork Books, 2000 [1999]), 145.
Lawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
Chandler, Voices from S-21, 144.
See Daniel Bultmann’s chapter.
See “S-21, a Purge Center but Not Only: Interview with Helen Worsnop.”
Vann Nath, A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1998), 114.
Judy Ledgerwood, “Seeing Duch on Trial,” Searching for the Truth, Phnom Penh: Documentation Center for Cambodia, first quarter (2011).
See Julie Fleischman’s chapter.
Judy Ledgerwood, “The Cambodian Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes: National Narrative,” Museum Anthropology, vol. 21, no. 1 (1997): 91.
See Caroline Laurent’s chapter.