Why you should visit Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh

The victims of Pol Pot’s extreme cruelty go into the millions. Photos of some of the dead are on exhibit at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide museum is situated a short distance from the notorious Killing Fields of Phnom Penh.

So, if you hire a tuk-tuk to the Killing Fields, tell your tuk-tuk driver to wait for you. Alternatively, ask them to come back after at least two hours so that you can ride the same tuk-tuk to the museum later.

In fact, those who were executed at the Killing Fields were herded from the Tuol Sleng Prison, which acted as a holding area and torture centre.

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh.

The building was previously a school that was converted into a prison once Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge regime came to power. After the horrors that took place there, this same building has now been preserved as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum so the dead can be remembered for generations to come.

The general energy at this museum, even along this stark corridor is heavy with sadness, fear and hopelessness.

Inside the museum

All visitors to the museum are told to maintain silence as a sign for respect for the victims who were imprisoned here before their executions. To be honest, if you find the Killing Fields depressing, you will find this place ten times more so.

The museum building consists of several blocks. There are rooms with beds in which detainees were tied up, tortured and left to suffer and die needlessly.

Visitors to the museum are told that these eerie torture rooms were reserved for Pol Pot’s higher ranking comrades. There are also small cells within the grounds made from wood for lower ranking officers

Previously a school, these classrooms were converted to torture chambers before the victims were marched to the Killing Fields to be executed.

The lower the rank of the officers, the more torturous the treatment meted out to them during detention and the smaller the rooms or cells were.

Photos of the victims are now on display in the very rooms where they were tortured, leaving a stark reminder of the terror they felt and the pain inflicted on them. For the visitor, it is heart-wrenching to see.

Don’t be surprised if the hair at the back of your neck stands on end because the air is still thick with sadness, fear and disgust at the cruelty of the Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot.

(L): The lonely corridor still fenced with barb wire leading to the various torture rooms to the right. (R): Doors that open to the torture rooms.

Pol Pot’s cruelty

In one of the rooms in the museum are photos of those who died within the confines of the then prison, before they could be saved. Reading about the torture they were subjected to will undoubtedly leave you feeling sick to your stomach.

Pol Pot was a meticulous though cruel leader. Before torturing the victims or sending them to the Killing Fields for execution, he ensured there was proper documentation of each and every one of them. He assigned them serial numbers and took photos of each victim.

It is unimaginable to think that the photo-taking was actually the beginning of the end of their lives.

The graves of the dead in the compound of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

Despite the stomach-churning experience of visiting this museum, it is still recommended that you find the opportunity to pay it a visit, at least once in your lifetime.

Why? If nothing more but to remember those who were needlessly tortured and executed, and to understand the terror one communist leader was capable of inflicting on millions.

Khai and wife Amira are Malaysian travel bloggers who blog at Kaki Jalans. Their travels have taken them to almost all the countries in Asean and five countries in Europe. They are still actively travelling and adding to this list.

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Why you should visit Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh

Although stomach-churning, a visit to this museum is a lesson of the cruelty that the human race is capable of.