Trifter

Yesterday I went to the Killing Fields and the S21 detention centre (Tuol Sleng, in Khmer language). When Democratic Kampuchea, the communist republic established after the 1975 coup, started failing, rather than concede that communist economics are wildly unworkable, Pol Pot blamed “secret enemies within”. This consisted largely of intellectuals (such as people who wore glasses or spoke foreign languages), monks, out of favour cadres and people like that.
These people were rounded up and taken to Tuol Sleng where they were tortured into admitting fictional alliances with the CIA and similar fallacies. They were tortured in various ways. A favourite was pulling out their nails with pliers and pouring alcohol on the wounds.
Once they’d signed pages of confessions they were taken to the killing fields. There they were led to the side of mass graves and made to kneel down. On their knees they were smashed on the back of their neck. Some had their throats slit. They poured chemicals over the corpses to get rid of the stench so that no one in the surrounding area would become suspicious. Also, some of them were still alive when they were buried. The chemicals finished them off.
Tuol Sleng, which was a primary and secondary school before it was modified for its services to the regime, is now a museum. You can see the cells and also a range of exhibits, one of which consists of several display boards covered in photographs of the victims. They must have been photographed at various different stages of their incarceration because their expressions vary. They form a spectrum running right from naïve smiles to utter hopelessness and resignation, of longing for death.
     A whole stand was covered in men wearing flat caps. Some of them were even smiling. They looked like they’d hike over the Himalayas to be home for Mothers Day. Some looked wistful. Some looked annoyed. Some looked like teenagers who’d been told they weren’t allowed to go out with their friends. Some looked furious. Some looked confused. Some looked like they were posing for a passport photo. Some had half closed eyelids as if they’d been sedated. Some looked boldly, wide-eyed at the camera. Others looked wild-eyed. Some looked stern. One man, wearing a flashy shirt with collars that went down two buttons below the neck, looked like he’d been arrested for stealing road signs on a stag night. Some frowned in perplexity. Some looked tearful. Some looked demented. One woman like she was trying to get someone’s attention so as to say something she was worried about. Another woman looked like a model posing for classy black and whites to go in a glossy magazine. Others looked down. Some had their eyes shut. Some were looking just below and to the left of the viewer.  Some looked like they were already ghosts.
Of the children, one looked like he’d dropped his lollipop. Another like he didn’t know how to feel about mum’s new boyfriend. One had his cheeks puffed out and eyebrows raised, circumspect. Some looked like boys being told off. Some looked surly. Some looked grumpy. One looked on the cusp of realisation that something was very wrong. Some looked bewildered. Many looked wise beyond their years. One cocked his head with a look of knowing curiosity. One had the sulks. One had dead eyes. One girl looked like a bossy sister preparing to scold a younger sibling. One boy wore a visionary look like the as-a-child shot in a television retrospective of a man’s rise to success. Another boy had a frown like an English colonel realising that a subordinate is becoming impertinent.
And one little girl had a down-turned pout and high eyebrows, a fringe and a sort of short bob. She looked like she’d lost her parents at the fairground. But she wouldn’t cry, no. She was just beseeching this person to take her by the hand and lead her back to her mummy.
The children were killed too. They were swung by the feet so that they smashed into a tree. The leader of Tuol Sleng, Duch, who sobbed in the ongoing trial as he took responsibility for the atrocities carried out at the detention centre, had been concerned that the children would later seek revenge if left alive.
An aspect of the expressions that all the victims shared in their photographs was innocence. I don’t mean that anyone could have deserved that treatment. Perhaps enemies of the state are necessarily good at feigning innocence. But it didn’t seem that way. No one looked like anything other than an ordinary citizen.
This was written on one of the displays in the museum, said by one of the survivors of the regime, Khoeung Buoy Sor: “Later we heard that he [his brother] was sent to Prey Sar prison for re-education and then arrested and sent to S21. I think my brother is dead because 20 years have gone by and he still hasn’t come home. Now we are at peace; if he were still alive, he would have come back. I haven’t seen him in all this time, even in my dreams.”