reportage The Sadness of S-21
By the time the Vietnamese intervention of 1979 forced the former schoolteacher Pol Pot into exile, one million Cambodians - approximately one in seven of the population - had died of disease or starvation. Another 200,000 were killed as enemies of the state, many of them crudely dispatched by blows to the skull with agricultural implements. After Year Zero, ploughshares were turned into swords. The Khmer Rouge followed the precedent of Stalin's and Mao's repressions, yet there was something still more dementedly paranoid about Pol Pot's depredations. For all that it was a grotesque charade, the Maoist ritual of rectification and self-criticism did at least allow for eventual rehabilitation; likewise, Stalin's show trials were grim parodies of judicial process but they were conducted in public and a death sentence was not automatic. The confessions extracted in Tuol Sleng were for the Party's private satisfaction only; they provided no grounds for clemency. Only seven people are known to have survived the prison.
Spring 1997 | The Photo Archive Group and related links | Archive | Back | Next | 6 of 10