There were various kinds of cells at Tuol Sleng, but ultimately the treatment was the same.
After an intake with an extensive interview, prisoners were assigned to different cells: individual, smaller cells, or larger group cells. Those in smaller cells were shackled to walls or the floor, those in large cells were shackled to an iron bar. They slept without mat, mosquito netting, or blankets. Rising time was 0430. Meals were four small spoons of rice gruel and leafy soup twice a day. Drinking water without permission resulted in a beating. Talking resulted in a beating.
Fourteen cells were individual classrooms which had in them a single iron bed stand used for interrogation and torture. When the Vietnamese Army invaded in 1979, they found 14 bodies in the 14 interrogation rooms that were had been slain only hours before by the retreating Khmer Rouge.
Very sobering.
ReplyDeleteEd, it is. And this was not some 80 years ago; this was within my lifetime.
DeleteThis is exactly what I was thinking.
DeleteLeigh, the terrifying thing - something I have read about the Death Camps of WW II as well - is how methodical the process was. Likely thousands of confessions, thousands of pictures, thousand of people recorded and then destroyed in a sort of industrial death practice. At an estimate 20,000 deaths over the life of this camp alone, that is an average of 417 deaths a month, 14 deaths a day, every day for 48 months. Literally up to hours before the Khmer Rouge was forced to flee in the face of the invading Vietnamese Army. Within hours of being invaded, they still took the time to torture and kill 14 remaining individuals (more on that next week).
DeleteHaving read of the suffering of the Romanians under Communism under WW II through Richard Wurmbrand's biography, this is not an unusual story for Communism.
How many perished in the last century because of Communism? How many millions? How many names not recorded? Sobering is understating it TB.
ReplyDeleteSome general estimates are between 94 million and 100 million in the 20th Century. Many of them, as you say, nameless.
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