This one has pictures to help illustrate, but just to warn you, you might find them disturbing. In fact, just to give you fair warning this chapter kind of invoves people who were tortured so you may find it all disturbing, particularly when you remember it actually happened.
The morning after we arrive in Cartemullo we all go our seperate ways. I head off to the airport as I am getting a six hour flight to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. Why did I get stuck with the one with most air travel? The only one who hates it more than me is Justin. Guess the bastard got lucky with his trip. I'm heading to Tuol Sleng, a torture and extermination centre in the grounds of an old school. It was created shortly after Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge party gained occupation of Cambodia in the mid seventies.
After the plane leaves the ground and my breathing is somewhat regulated I try to remind myself of what little I know of Pol Pot and his regime. He banned education of the past; he demanded that everything in the history of Cambodia be forgotten and that they year he came into power should be referred to as 'Year Zero'. Sounds ridiculous but that's what happened. He had complete power over the country and could do whatever he wanted. He was a brutal dictator who killed about 1.7 million people under his regime. I silently thank God that I got the shortest trip out of the five of us -even if it does include flying- because I can tell what I'm gonna be seeing is gonna be pretty harrowing.
I try to take my mind of what awaits me when I land and think about what I've got to do when I'm back home. Production meetings are always a joy, I've got a couple of phonecalls to make to various costume and prop makers and... ah, fuck this. I'm gonna get some sleep.
After a couple of hours of what can only be called sporadic napping I wake to find myself in Phnom Penh, well the airport to be more precise, with about five people staring at me as I raise from my slumber. I then head into the minibus waiting for me outside and am driven to Tuol Sleng.
I thought Cartemullo was a different world, but Phnom Penh turned out to be pretty different too. It was more developed and rather than mules outnumbering cars, several pickup trucks pottered past. There was still the same sight of women with woven bowls on their heads and babies wrapped in cloth around their bodies though, it was most certainly the same country.
I had been informed at the hotel that I was to take the transportation laid out for me to go to Tuol Sleng and back and that I would only stay an hour or two for the tour then see a couple of charities at work. Then I'd go home. Easy. Yeah right.
The buildings do very much resemble the school which it once was, if you ignore the metal bars covering all the windows and the eerie feel the place gives you.
Then a voice behind me makes me jump, "Welcome to konlaenh choul min dael chenh," I turn around to face the female who addressed me. "or as it is in English: the place where people went in but never came out" Yay.
Ten minutes into the tour and the only other person here besides me and the camera crew is our tour guide Marnhaa. She informs me that Tuol Sleng was more commonly known to the Khmer Rouge as S-21 when around 17 000 men, women and children were imprisoned, systematically tortured and killed in this campus alone before its liberation on 7 January 1979. The prisoners were captured because they were thought to have commited terrible crimes against their fellow Cambodians and all-powerful ruler. They were often innocent despite having signed confessions of their gult because they were so brutally and sadistically tortured.
The buildings are divided into four: A-block, B-block, C-block and D-block. A-block was home to detention centres where the prisoners had to wait their turn for their interrogation. Marnhaa informs me that they were shackled in leg irons and left for days on end without food or water, only to be released when they were to be tortured. She then takes me to a board outlining the rules prisonerswere forced to follow and translates:
1. You must answer accordingly to my questions - don't turn them away.
2. Don't try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don't be a fool for you are a chap who dare thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don't tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don't make pretexts about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.
9. If you don't follow all the above rules, you will get many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
My translation? You do not have your own say, you do not have freedom of speech, you do not have the right to remain silent. I can't even begin to comprehend what you could do to survive. I guess if you were tortured you'd do anything to stop the pain, you'd just want to die. The only reason anyone survived (out of the 17 000 prisoners only 7 lived) was because they had skills the Khmer Rouge could use.
B-block is the most chilling of all buildings I am told, and once I set foot inside, I swear it's the most chilling building that every existed. The walls are covered with photographs of the people captured and killed, it disturbs me terribly yet I can't help but be drawn into their faces. Everyone is different, yet the Khmer Rouge gave them a number and that's all they became. That number. No words or descriptions or illustrations other than the bloody pictures. Some just took it as best they could while others are in obvious pain, some are photographed again moments before they die. It isn't fair, it's terrible, and they're only numbers. There are some lucky ones whose families I presume came here after the liberation and scrawled their names underneath, it almost seems like a privellige looking at the named ones, like they're the only ones who are truly remembered. The pictures of the children disturb me the most, some as young as about five were tortured. Why?
C-block is row after row of cells where the prisoners were held during interrogation, some still had dried bloodstains on the floor, I walk as quick as I can through it, anxious to get this over with. I feel uneasy, very uneasy.
D-block is the final building thank God, and I am informed that it is home to a collection of artwork pieces, to which I breathe a sigh of relief, thinking it'll be less harrowing. Most of the pictures are done by a man called Vann Nath but there is one piece that I can't even bear to look at, a map of Cambodia made of 200 human skulls.
When I was back on the minibus I had never been so relieved in my entire life, everything was just so... overwhelming. This is the kind of stuff that makes me squirm in movies, but this is real life, this actually happened. But I am informed the charity work will be much more uplifting. Not really hard now is it?
The Cambodia Trust is working with Comic Relief this year to both help raise awareness of the charity and its work, and to help raise money. It focuses mainly on the damage caused by landmines to Cambodian people but also trains a lot of Cambodians to become doctors and surgeons.
I walk around the grounds and breathe a sigh of relief, this is how it should be. Well preferably the country would be prosperous, but what I mean is this is what life should be about, making a difference, having a voice. I pray nothing like this ever happens again.
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