Tuol Sleng words should not mean anything to almost anyone. It was just the name of a school in the center of the capital of Cambodia. Nothing news, it not that between 1975 and 1979 nearly ten thousand people were brutally overcrowded, interrogated and tortured to death in frenzied delirium of a self-proclaimed communist regime, that of the Khmer Rouge, determined to clean off the face of all traces of capitalism Cambodia, although this is not just a title of master or engineer, or Beatles record found in the living room of a house.
Gen. Pol Pot and his generals, with wild pretext curry favor with the Russian and Chinese superpowers, claimed the lives, according to the latest UN, nearly two million people, more than forty percent of the total population of a country in which, moreover, the vast majority of its citizens barely write and read, and whose interest in political affairs was knowing when the time came to collect the rice fields.
All citizens have a college degree were killed. And all those who were associated with the former government, and landowners, and those who could read, and those who had ever left the country, and those living in cities or towns that were considered, go figure why, subversive.
Thirty years later, Cambodia displays, halfway between shame and exemplary memory, the remains of that slaughter. What first strikes when one approaches called Genocide Museum is the huge wire necklace surrounding what should be the wall of a school placid more. Payment for a couple of euros, once crossed the threshold, the visitor enters the room of horrors. XXXXX
To begin with, a large sign Decalogue recalls the macabre orders received newly arrested: "Answers all my questions without trying to circumvent any. When you ask a question, answer quickly and not waste time in thinking. Do nothing, just sit and wait for my orders. If there are no orders, keep quiet. When you ask for something, do directly without protest. While receive lashes or electric shock, it prohibits you cry. If you do not fulfill all orders, you'll get hit again and more electric charges ".
Then begins the visit classrooms, the military divided into four modules. The pavilions B, the C and D were divided in turn between small individual cells had no more than 0,8 by two meters, on the lower floors, and ample space for cramming multitudes of common prisoners in higher plants.
When visiting prisoners Hall A, could echarse the temblar. According to the drawings and prints that can be seen on the walls, that were lined with glass and corks to not hear the cries of pain, were subjected to all sorts of harassment. I tore the fingers with huge pincers, or they sank the skull with clubs, or savagely beat them pony one day served for children to practice in physical education class. End, everyone ended confessing whatever was necessary: If they were to say they were American spies or supporting the capitalist uprising, they said, although they did not know what the word capitalism.
This visit takes your breath to the legions of Western tourists, most ignorant, we visited Asia with our backpack and we tend to look at the Asian, broadly, as bajitos friendly gentlemen who get themselves in with nobody ever, bearing his poverty with great presence of mind, and who do not care at all for anything other than the food dish every day.
A Tuol Sleng, renamed by the regime as the Office S-21, we eyes snap open, and discovered that it is not true that there havens, and that violence is the heritage of all human beings. Also here, in Cambodia, where one can not imagine, today, nor how it will sound a cry. Look scary rickety beds in rooms that isolated the alleged leaders of the revolution. O executioners elements employed for their systematic torture, or photographs of hundreds of citizens who seemed to foresee and terrorized the hell hit them.
And, if it is courage, at eleven in the morning and two in the afternoon, a video display (halfway between the English and French) responds with fidelity and fortitude to do, who, when, how and why the savagery of the Khmer Rouge. To me I have stuck two images, but there are a thousand. The first is that of a group of soldiers patrolling the streets looking for beautiful women to be able to violate. When found to, will they put a grenade in his pocket, stopped and carried the heads before showing the grenade: "We found preparing to attack the revolution". And the second is another woman who was found murdered because the very capitalist Khmer discover in the shower whistling a song the years American 50.
Two million people died in a few years, without the international community to intervene. In fact, it was not until 1991 when the UN condemned the attacks of the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot died without trial, unfortunately for the Cambodians, almost all- who lost a loved one during the years of communist madness. Today, Cambodia is reinvented and youth, who are veterans of this country, are delivered to the task of having many children and try to raise healthy and sensible. And reminds everyone Tuol Sleng, Cambodians and Europeans ignorant, errors in them that they should re-commit.
