I've been to Tuol Sleng more than a few times. On my last visits to Phnom Penh I've chosen not to return to Tuol Sleng, S-21 and instead think about what I've seen and read. I've already got my stories.
The photograph above shows two.
It is a grubby photograph mounted in a crude frame. The woman was taken and killed by the Khmer Rouge, along with her son. They were killed shortly after. Every death was documented at Tuol Sleng, a converted school building in a western suburb.
The picture hangs inside one of the schoolrooms, reflected in the glass, with barred and barbed wire windows to keep inside the fifty plus people inside shackled to rusting iron leg braces. Some of the schoolrooms had been converted into dozens of individual cells where more important prisoners were held. The bricks in the bottom right of the photo show the remains of one of them.
I took the shot on a glorious, sunny morning. Outside behind a trestle table Vann Nath was signing booklets to fund a charity. Vann Nath was one of Tuol Sleng's few survivors.
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