Taking a local to KF and S21

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steve.sheps
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Re: Taking a local to KF and S21

Post by steve.sheps »

StroppyChops wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:28 pm
steve.sheps wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:16 pm I recently read on cambodia news online if i remember correct is that a majority of khmer dont visit s21 as 80% of its inmates where khmer rouge.dunno how true.
I think you'll find that's not at all true.
http://factsanddetails.com/southeast-as ... -2859.html
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Arget
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Re: Taking a local to KF and S21

Post by Arget »

steve.sheps wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:41 pm
StroppyChops wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:28 pm
steve.sheps wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:16 pm I recently read on cambodia news online if i remember correct is that a majority of khmer dont visit s21 as 80% of its inmates where khmer rouge.dunno how true.
I think you'll find that's not at all true.
http://factsanddetails.com/southeast-as ... -2859.html
Prisoners at S-21 were usually held for weeks and months for grueling interrogations before they were taken out for execution. Many of the prison's population included Khmer Rouge members who were arrested and killed in the regime's internal purges of its own ranks. Four fifths of all those admitted were former Khmer Rouge cadres who had either been accused of turning against the regime or had been purged by Pol Pot.
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StroppyChops
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Re: Taking a local to KF and S21

Post by StroppyChops »

steve.sheps wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:41 pm
StroppyChops wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:28 pm
steve.sheps wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:16 pm I recently read on cambodia news online if i remember correct is that a majority of khmer dont visit s21 as 80% of its inmates where khmer rouge.dunno how true.
I think you'll find that's not at all true.
http://factsanddetails.com/southeast-as ... -2859.html
From the link:
Many of the prison's population included Khmer Rouge members who were arrested and killed in the regime's internal purges of its own ranks. Four fifths of all those admitted were former Khmer Rouge cadres who had either been accused of turning against the regime or had been purged by Pol Pot.

Typically, the victims were rank-and-file Khmer Rouge members who had been suspected of being disloyal in some way and were forced to say they had spied for a foreign government or worked for the CIA, even though many didn’t even know what the CIA was.
While not claiming this to be false I've never heard it before - well, to the degree expressed - and the signage at S21 doesn't seem to concur. Certainly the photo boards at S21 would make you wonder if this actually occurred to this degree. Thanks for the alternative view - given how different countries record the Vietnam event historically, it's not surprising.

Edit: the author states he is not a historian and largely uses Google as his primary source. Any similar sources that are documented?
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John Bingham
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Re: Taking a local to KF and S21

Post by John Bingham »

Even though we've lived nearby and often have to take visitors on tours around the city, none of the family here ever go further than the gates of those museums. There were quite a few prisons around in that time, Prey Sar was S24, and was for "reformable" prisoners who had some home of redemption. They did some gardening out there. There was an animal husbandry unit in Boeung Tumpun, which was more of a marsh than a neighborhood back then. There was another "S" which was in Boeng Trabek high school, this was where all the educated but naive Khmers from abroad who were fooled into coming back and helping the revolution went.

S21 was different, there were hundreds of provincial prisons around but only special people got sent there. In its first existence in the former Municipal Police HQ on Pasteur (now the site of GSM) it was mainly involved with executing former Republican soldiers, who by all accounts were treated well. It moved a couple of times again to where we all know it now. While there were still the odd Vietnamese caught in border raids and foreigners whose boats went off coarse by this time it was mostly used for internal enemies, basically other members of the "Khmer Rouge" who fell foul of their insane policies. So while we can say that a very large proportion of the poor victims of S21 were from within the organization, how are we to know that they weren't just persecuted for being moderate and not towing the hardline? There's an excellent account from the guards at S21 called "Khmer Rouge Division 703 - From Victory to Self-Destruction". It's very sad to read, it has drawings of different planes from sketch pads but it's all just tragic. Division 703, who were an elite division that took part in the final liberation of Phnom Penh, found themselves given the role of camp-guards for the newly created prisons. A very large proportion of the soldiers/kids in charge of guarding the prisons found themselves behind bars.

So even if the vast majority of the victims of S21 were part of that general liberation movement that gets called "Khmer Rouge", it's likely that a lot of them were the reasonable or not-so-hard liners in the party, considering the maniacs who took control of the center and went on to impose their damaging ideas for too long.
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Re: Taking a local to KF and S21

Post by pczz »

steve.sheps wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:16 pm I recently read on cambodia news online if i remember correct is that a majority of khmer dont visit s21 as 80% of its inmates where khmer rouge.dunno how true.but was an interesting read. Regards ops post. I took my missus.she to didnt like it and wanted out of there as quick as possible
not sure if the younger hmer know about any of that. I have found that khmer I have taken generally find s21 boring, but often refuse to go into killing fields. Might hbethe stupor full of bones freaking them out
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