Talk:Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

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I must say, expanding this article has been a really disgusting thing (but someone had to do it). It was horrible. We should never forget things like this. Leaving my emotions aside, I must say that I'm not a native English speaker and this is one of my first contributions. Fixing is probably needed :) Sarg 15:48, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You did a very good job, the article is very well written —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.181.140.251 (talk • contribs) 16:52, 31 December 2005.

Thanks a lot :) But for the sake of justice I must say it has been improved and corrected a lot of times since I wrote it. Sarg 17:59, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Nice article. However, I don't understand certain things, with regards of the security regulations.

For one thing, why are most of the regulations involve the words "my" and "me"? If they were regulations, that is likely to be written on signs and such, why do they use the first person pronouns and posessives?

Another thing, I don't understand what they mean by "8. Don’t make pretexts about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor." What's this Kampuchea Krom?

Thanks in advance. --Kylohk 14:39, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• The explanation is simple :) I included the regulations as they were written originally on the prison, with typos. Sarg 09:40, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Kampuchea Krom ("Lower Cambodia") is the term used in Khmer to refer to a region which is now in southern Vietnam, which was lost to the Khmers in the 19th century and where there are still about half a million Khmers, known as Khmer Krom. I don't know what the reference here means. Adam 14:46, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

You are correct. Throughtout history Cambodia was both geographically and politically sandwiched between two powerful neighbours - Thailand and Vietnam. Even when fighting beside the Viet Cong (and NVA) against the Americans during the Vietnam war, the Khmer Rouge were distrustful of the Vietnamese. As the Revolution started going wrong in Democratic Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge started looking for enemies within its ranks. S-21 was primarily used to torture and purge the KR of supposed traitors of the Revolution. The KR believed that these counter revolutionaries were secretly agents of the Vietnamese - hence the Kampuchea Krom statement. -- Thaths 22:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Name of article 2 Number of Prisoners 3 Images 4 Children Killers not mentioned

[edit] Name of article

Really I think the name of the article should be "Tuol Sleng" - not "Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum." Its historical significance is not in the fact that it's a museum, but rather that it was an execution center. It might merit its own entry as a museum, but the title of the entry should refer to what is most significant about the place. If no one disagrees, I will change the redirects accordingly. Bruxism 04:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Tuol Sleng is the name of a locality in Phnom Penh, which is not of itself notable, any more than the town of Auschwitz is particularly notable. Auschwitz is notable for the concentration camp, and Tuol Sleng likewise is notable for the prison which is now a museum. It's not very clear what the place was actually called when the Khmer Rouge ran it, so I think this is the best name. Adam 05:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• For the record, the original article was called S-21, since that was the article that was requested when I created it. It was changed a few months ago. Sarg 09:40, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

It should be changed back to "S-21" unless there's a good reason not to call the article this. Otherwise I suggest "Tuol Sleng prison", in keeping with "Auschwitz concentration camp". Peter G Werner 06:59, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

A quick search via Google confirms the current name of the article as the correct name. Brimba 07:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Number of Prisoners

The nuber of people who were improsoned in S21 is given as 17000, 20000 and 14200 at different points in this article. I imagine the exact number is not known anyway, but article could at least be internally consistant. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 58.6.95.239 (talk • contribs) 00:51, 10 September 2006.

There is a large group of highly respected academics (see below) who disagree completely with the whole premise of Khmer Rouge genocide here and specifically with the farce that is Tuol Sleng Museum. Fact: S-21 was a prison and formerly a school. Fact: Every regime in the world has prisons. FACT: "Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum" was created and way over-dramatized (read: mostly lies and propaganda) by the Vietnamese invaders to justify their conquest and occupation of a peaceful country, then known as Democratic Kampuchea, which, yes, was struggling mightily to feed itself after all aid and trade was cut. Did anybody ever wonder why the signs telling you what happened are ALL written in Vietnamese and poor English? One given in history is that all conquering invaders will launch a propaganda war to justify their usually dubious actions. The Western media has swallowed it hook, line and sinker due to expedience and fear of believing in a system of radical communism. The fictional Hollywood movie "Killing Fields" completely over-dramatized the whole situation and every Cambodian, even those who had a rough time from '75-'79, who has seen it laughs at the grotesque inaccuracies. I lived in Cambodia for 3 years and speak Khmer fluently so I saw this reaction hundreds of times. Here is a list of reading material from the most respected academics on Cambodia's '75-'79 period: Laura Summers' "Consolidating the Revolution" and "Defining the Revolutionary State in Cambodia" in Current History, George C. Hildebrand's and Gareth Porter's sine qua non of the STANDARD TOTAL ACADEMIC VIEW: Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, Torben Retbøll's "Kampuchea and the Reader's Digest" in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars and Malcolm Caldwell's towering essay "Cambodia: Rationale for A Rural Policy" in Malcolm Cadwell's South-East Asia (1979). Noam Chomsky's and Edward Herman's masterful "Distortions at Fourth Hand" in the Nation and "After the Cataclysm" completely debunk the mainstream media, US government and right-wing academic views of the Khmer Rouge.

I would suggest a complete overhaul of this article -- removing emotive, subjective and errant words such as "genocide" museum to start with. Riccardo Sept 24, 2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RiccardoGRSB (talk • contribs) 12:27, 24 September 2006.

• If the Museum is called that way, there is nothing we can do to change it. One thing is toning down emotive sentences and subjectiveness, which is a very good thing, and another one completely would be turning the article in a non-NPOV one. Sarg 06:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I would like to point out that none of the references that were mentioned by Riccardo were published after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. While I agree that the Tuol Sleng museum has been used for propoganda purposes by the Vietnamese and the Heng Samrin/Hun Sen government, there is no doubt among experts about Cambodia that S-21 was used to torture and extract confessions from people perceived to be enemies of DK. I refer you to the documents at the cambodian genecide program which are translated into German, English, Thai etc. from their original Khmer (not Vietnamese). I agree with Sarg in all respects. -- Thaths 22:14, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images

I think the article has way too many images as it is now, and they are messing the page's layout. Unless anyone complains I'm going to start removing some of them selectively ;)) Sarg 06:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I have turned the images into a gallery, as well as removed excessive wikification and toned down the language a bit. I am opposed to the use of the word "genocide" to describe what the KR did. Adam 09:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Children Killers not mentioned

I went to Cambodia this summer and I went to the museum that displays information about this crazy genocide.

First of all, the museum is actually a school. When the Khmers invaded, the school was evacuated and the class rooms were used as prisons to keep normal civilians inside. Inside these classrooms today are still the beds and chains that bound the prisoner to the room. On the wall of each classroom is a photo of the corpse found in the room when American or French (I forgot who came right after the genocide) soldiers discovered it.

One of the rooms were completely filled with photos. Not only were the photos of victims but also the photos of the ruthless killers. The amazing thing is, none of the killers were older than twenty. Most of the killers, including girls, were estimated to be around fifteen and sixteen, mostly adolescents from the worst part of Cambodia where guerilla bandits frequent. Adolescents were recruited as soldiers for this genocide because they could be easily manipulated to torture and kill fellow civilians.

Pictures in another room showed weapons and tools used for torture. One of the rooms showed cells made of bricks that were clearly exposed so that soldiers could patrol and keep eye on the prisoners. The whole school museum screamed of pain from lost souls.