Tuol Sleng

Tuol Sleng - darkometer rating : 10 - A former Khmer Rouge "security prison" and torture centre in Phnom Penh, Cambodia ; a site where the cruelty of Pol Pot 's regime is most graphically documented. One of the world's top dark tourism destinations (esp. in conjunction with the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek ) > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info : In 1975 Pol Pot 's Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and emptied the city (like all cities across Cambodia ) of its inhabitants, turning them into an enforced purely agrarian "classless" utopia (which in reality meant starving and working millions to death). In Phnom Penh, now virtually a ghost town , they took over the building complex at 103 Street, formerly a school, and turned it into a prison. Now code-named S-21' (the standing for "security prison") it became their principal interrogation and torture centre. Between 14,000 and 20,000 victims had passed through here by January 1979 (when it was liberated by the Vietnamese ) – almost all of these prisoners ended up in the killing fields of Choeung Ek just outside the city. Initially the victims were the typical suspects – previous government officials, intellectuals and all other supposed "threats to the revolution". Gradually, after a series of purges Khmer Rouge comrades themselves became victims too – fallen from grace or subjected to wild (often completely arbitrary) accusations of being "traitors". Such was the paranoia that ran through the system, whose principal motto was "better kill 10 innocent people than let one enemy go free". All prisoners were subjected to the most brutal interrogation/torture methods.