The Khmer Rouge began its reign in a country already devastated by war and hunger. Set up by the Khmer Rouge behind walls of corrugated metal and barbed-wire fences after the group won power in April 1975, Tuol Sleng came to epitomize the blood lust and brutality that infected the Pol Pot regime during its destructive rule. Tuol Sleng opens a window on one of the most mysterious and least understood mass movements in modern history. Amid the recent twists and turns of Cambodia's shifting alliances, stunning historical revisionism and murky behind-the-scenes maneuvering, it serves as a reminder of what went before, a landmark of sorts on an uncertain path to peace, and a warning that something was - and perhaps still is - desperately wrong in this supposedly 'gentle land.'

Today, Liem's former school is called the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crime. Despite its past, the Khmer Rouge was not left out of the peace process, because it was deemed too dangerous to ignore.įor many Cambodians, it is as if Hitler himself were making a comeback, or mass murderers were returning to the scene of their crimes. Under a peace accord designed to culminate in free elections in 1993, representatives of the Khmer Rouge have returned to Phnom Penh to attend meetings of the Supreme National Council, a reconciliation body composed of all four parties to the country's 13-year-old conflict.

A U.N.-sponsored peace process is forcing people to confront their worst fears: a return of the Khmer Rouge. The victims were among more than 1 million Cambodians who died during the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge rule - from exhaustion, starvation, disease, or execution, sometimes at the hands of stone-faced children wearing baggy black pajamas and toting AK-47 rifles.įor Liem, Tuol Sleng revisited brings out feelings that many Cambodians seem to be experiencing these days. Liem's school was formerly called Tuol Svay Prey, but it is now known by the name of Tuol Sleng, which means 'hill of the poison tree.' It was here that the Khmer Rouge communists of dictator Pol Pot set up an institution they called S-21, a prison and torture center that sent an estimated 20,000 people to their deaths. 'I am afraid to come here,' the 35-year-old driver said in halting English. Outside it was sunny and warm, but Liem could not help shivering.

A weather-beaten, louvered wooden door banged in a gentle breeze. A thick layer of dust covered the floor of his former third-floor classroom cobwebs hung from the ceiling. PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA - The last time Hen Liem walked up the stairs of his high school was in 1973, when he was a 17-year-old student.

Khmer old songs 1975