S-21: Total Brutality
Alongside Angkor Wat, S-21 Prison and Killing Fields were what I came to Cambodia to see - or rather to revisit, 20 years later, with a more mature head on my shoulders. Both are stark reminders of what man is capable of doing to other men, women, and children. Both are stark reminders - in an ever more polarised world - of what happens when you seek the answers in extreme political movements. Both far left and far right are dangerous - be careful what you wish for. The Cambodian genocide was very different to what happened in/around Germany. Hitler and the Nazis were cold and clinical - methodical in everything they did. Pol Pot's regime was about sheer, blunt brutality - savagery...something almost animalistic. S-21 was a prison during Pol Pot's and the Khmer Rouge's regime - one of several prisons across Cambodia, but the most famous...or infamous. It was a school before the Khmer Rouge swept to power, in 1975. When they did seize power, and entered Phnom Penh, the peop...