In 1979, a couple of days after the Vietnamese army entered Phnom Penh, two photojournalists who had accompanied the invasion were drawn toward a particular compound by the smell of decomposing bodies. The site was surrounded by a corrugated tin fence topped with coils of barbed wire and looked like an abandoned school building. Over the gate was a red placard inscribed in yellow with a Khmer slogan: “Fortify the spirit of the revolution! Be on your guard against the strategy and tactics of the enemy so as to defend the country, the people and the Party.” The place carried no other identification. In rooms on the ground floor of the southernmost building, the two Vietnamese came across the corpses of several recently murdered men. Some of the bodies were chained to iron beds. The prisoners’ throats had been cut. The blood on the floors was still wet. Altogether the bodies of fourteen people were discovered in the compound, apparently killed only a couple of days before. In the days that followed, the Vietnamese army found more then 50 bodies, all kinds of torture devices and an immense archive. This is how the secret prison of Khmer Rouge, called S-21 in which more then 15 thousand people were killed, saw the light of day. Only three months after its discovery, the Vietnamese government turned it into the Museum of Genocidal Crimes, Tuol Sleng (name of the hill on which it stands, meaning sleng tree, which is known to bear poisonous fruits) and opened it to the public. The compound besides being cleaned, was left intact.
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