Torture at Tuol Slen represented a wide range: electrocution, water boarding, beatings, searing with hot metal, hanging, suffocation, removal of nails and then the pouring of alcohol in the wounds. Confessions, once given, could run into the thousands of words, all recorded via tape or writing and used against other individuals named in the confessions. Likely most of the confessions were the product of torture. Additionally, prisoners were used for medical experiments and training, undergoing surgery without anesthesia or having their blood drained from their bodies.
After the end of torture after 1976, prisoners taken to the nearby Boueng Choeung Ek ("Crow's Feet Pond) where, in order to conserve valuable bullets, prisoners were battered to death with iron bars or pick axes or cut down with machetes.
The average age of an guard was in their teens, those of the interrogators in their 20's.
One of the larger prison cells, where prisoners were chained to an iron bar.
Reading this post makes me wonder what happened to the killers TB. Off to the InterNets to search. How people can do that to other people......
ReplyDeleteNylon12 - Various things (as always). Some came to justice, including the commander of this camp Khang Kheck Iew, who was convicted by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia in 2012 to life in prison (he died in 2020). Some escaped via death. Other surrendered to the Cambodian government.
DeleteAt least two of our local tour guides had been prisoners of the Khmer Rouge.
I think these sorts of events show that mankind can quickly lose any sense of morality in certain situations. It is a reminder that we need to be vigilant against those situations so we are not put to the test.
ReplyDeleteEd, I have been reading more and more about the Weimar Republic of late. The similarities with the modern world are becoming worrisome.
DeleteDan and I watched Operation Finale last night. It is baffling how people can justify cruelty and murder.
ReplyDeleteLeigh, it is baffling - and not, in a way. The capacity of people for evil seems endless, just as their ability to justify their own actions. Having spent some time reading recently about resistance to the Nazi's in WW II and post-War trials, the ability of those that practice heinous deeds to makes them sound like "no big deal" or "just following orders" was shocking to me.
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