The Toul Sleng Genocidal Museum (S-21) refers to the “Field of Poisoned Trees”. It was also known as the “Strychnine Hill”. It is basically a school that was taken over by the Khmer regime and turned into a political prison. This sinister place was discovered after the Vietnamese invasion from 1979. About 150 such places were discovered in the entire Cambodia, yet none of them was so diabolic.
During the Pol Pot regime (1975 to 1979), over 17,000 people were imprisoned. Almost all of them were killed. Only 11 of them survived. In 2011, three of them were still alive. Curious why they were kept alive? They were good painters and mechanics. They were supposed to paint pictures of Pol Pot and fix the machines used by the Khmer regime.
Prisoners were tortured in severe ways – electrocuted, burnt with hot metals, hanged, suffocated, cut with knives or kept underwater. Some of them got their nails taken out, while some women were raped, although this behavior was theoretically forbidden. Some cases mention organs ripped apart from living prisoners or cut without an anesthesia. The blood was often taken out with a pump, only for the soldiers to make bets on how long it takes the body to die. Some problematic prisoners were also skinned alive.
It is shocking, but it makes you wonder what would have happened with all those people if they were not taken through such torturing nightmares.