Friday, July 6, 2012

#965 Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

In Cambodia there is a place I will never forget for as long as I live. That is not because it is a good place, but because of the horrors that took place there. Memorable can be amazing, and amazement can be about bad things, about what human beings are capable of doing to other human beings.

In the middle of busy downtown Phnom Penh is a former school building, but during the Democratic Kampuchea (a.k.a Khymer Rouge) it was a torture and detention center. The acts committed here of one people against their own are horrific. The torture centers of Europe are no less horrifying, but the proximity of the outside world really struck a chord with me in Tuol Sleng.

Just outside the city is a monument the government has built to remember the victims. It is filled with the skulls from mass graves and is also memorable.

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