Tuol Sleng

Earlier this week we visited Toul Sleng, the Cambodian Genocide Museum. This is a somber experience but something you can't ignore to understand the city and the country we live in. Toul Sleng was the former prison (called S-21) used by Pol Pot and his regime for detention, interrogation, inhuman torture, and killing of innocent civilians. This went on for 4 years from 1975-1979 where around 10-15 people were killed every day, with Pol Pot killing a total of anywhere between 1.5 and 3 million educated Cambodians. This museum is about as raw as you can imagine, being that it is the original site for the crimes that were committed by the Khmer Rouge. The rooms are still in their authentic form, even to the point of having the chains used to pin people to the ground still being something you have to walk over. As you walk through the rooms and rows full of 1x3 meter cells, you can't stop yourself from imagining what it must have been like to have hundreds of prisoners in each of these buildings. The rooms that display how the prisoners were tortured is not for the squeamish, as the torture devices and gruesome pictures give a clear idea of what happened there. After walking past mugshot after mugshot in the museum walls you can't rid yourself of the chill in your spine as your heart breaks for the victims and the many families who were horrifically affected by this regime. As we walked out of Toul Sleng it is hard not to look at all the Cambodians you pass and wonder who they lost to the Khmer Rouge. A Mother or Father? Sister or Brother? Son or Daughter? You can still see the dramatic affects of what Pol Pot had done to this country even today. One of biggest factors is that now 50% of the population is under the age of 25, and there is little to no skilled labor in the city. This visit also helps us even better understand why God has brought us here in the dreams of bringing hope to the people who are still recovering from such a dark history.

If you would like more info on Cambodia and Pol Pot we posted about that earlier in our blog history. We also recommend reading the tragic book called "They First Killed my Father" by Loung Ung, who writes about her family's story of living through the Khmer Rouge. But also as always please pray for the Khmer people here!