Black-and-white photographs of 103 inmates of a secret prison in the Cambodian capital propel viewers into a complex confrontation with genocide.
The haunting pictures on show at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto were originally attached to interrogation documents and portray a few of the estimated 14,000 prisoners detained, tortured and killed at S-21, a prison in Phnom Penh, between 1975 and 1979 under Pol Pot’s communist Khmer Rouge regime.
S-21, now the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide, was where people linked with the Khmer Rouge but accused of being enemies of the state were held captive. It was discovered after the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1978 and captured Phnom Penh in 1979.
“Looking at this chapter in Cambodian history serves as a reminder of what happens when the world community becomes a bystander to genocide,” said curator Carla Rose Shapiro. “The exhibition aims to motivate greater participation by organisations devoted to protecting human rights around the world.”
Under Pol Pot’s reign of terror cities and towns were evacuated and people forced to work in the fields, hundreds of thousands were murdered and many died from hunger, disease and overwork, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 2 million people.
