In 1975, fresh from victory in the Cambodian Civil War, the Khmer regime commandeered the Chao Ponhea Yat High School in Phnom Penh. They turned it into the notorious Security Prison 21, or known in Khmer as Tuol Sleng. The complex was encased in electrified barbed wire, the rooms were converted into tiny prison cells and torture chambers of the most barbaric nature. Between 1975 and the eventual fall of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in 1979, it’s estimated that at least 17,000 men, women and children were imprisoned, tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng Prison. It was transformed into a museum in 1980 after the invading Vietnamese liberated the prison that has been described as ‘demonstrating the darkest side of the human spirit’.
