The Tool Sleng camp is in central Phnom Penh.
Between 1.7 million and 2.5 million Cambodians were murdered by Pol Pot. He wanted an agrarian society with no western knowledge or skills.
When he came to power in 1975, the people welcomed him as a liberator. Within days, the cities were completely abandoned and the killing started.
This is a major prison for torture and killing in Pnomh Penh.
Here are the rules.
The building was originally a high school.
ThePol Pot regime turned it into a torture and death camp
The Gallows
Turned into a death camp with unspeakable torture
Women and children too for no reason
Children
When you see the individual faces, you see the horror
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m left speechless, it’s as if someone punched me in the gut. Viewing these horrors, one wonders if there is any hope for humanity. From what I’ve read, many of the perpetrators of the horrors are free and loose in the country and some in high positions.
Those pictures, Diane … holy cow. I am glad people who visit Vietnam will forever remember what happened to the people there as well as the troops.
One of my brothers was a paramedic for the A.F. in Vietnam. He was part of a team dropped by helicopter to rescue “downed” pilots. He is the only one who came back alive re: the team of 5. He was a REAL mess when he returned home. Today he is doing better, but he still suffers internally. At least today he smiles. He didn’t smile for years and years.
http://www.pbs.org/show/vietnam-war-not-edited/
I’m convinced that this is what Trump, his hardcore supporters, and most if not all members of ALEC want to do to the rest of us in the U.S.
Agree, Lloyd. Thanks for saying “it” outloud.
It will morph into that over time if the country continues to evolve in this plutocratic orientation.
The anti-war movement, wanted “peace in Vietnam”. The US withdrew from Vietnam, and we got “peace”. As predicted in the “domino theory”, the countries of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all went communist.
“Peace” killed more people than the war did. The dominoes fell, and the (Cambodian) holocaust happened.
(I served on active duty during the VietNam conflict, I did not serve in Vietnam. My first wife was from Thailand)
Pure Socialism and/or Communism dpes not work just like a pure capitalist system will fail without a separate public sector. There is no pure Communist country left on the planet. Cuba is close but it is also moving in the economic direction China, Laos, and Vietnam have already gone.
The last four so-called communist countries in the world are:
People’s Republic of China (with a HUGE capitalist economy and private business sector)
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) — stopped being a Communist Country when the Kim dynasty took over in 1948. Now just a nightmare place to live with lots of suffering.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam. (with a capitalist economy and a private business sector) According to a forecast by PricewaterhouseCoopers in February 2017, Vietnam may be the fastest-growing of the world’s economies, with a potential annual GDP growth rate of about 5.1%, which would make its economy the 20th-largest in the world by 2050. In 1986, Vietnam launched a political and economic renewal campaign (Đổi Mới) that introduced reforms to facilitate the transition from a centralized economy to a “socialist-oriented market economy”. Đổi Mới combined government planning with free-market incentives and encouraged the establishment of private businesses and foreign investment, including foreign-owned enterprises.
Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos) — has had a growing private business sector since 1986 and Laos currently ranks among the fastest growing economy in the world, averaging 8% annually. Farmers were permitted to own land and se3ll crops on the open market.
Republic of Cuba — To remedy Cuba’s economic structural distortions and inefficiencies, the Sixth Congress approved expansion of the internal market and access to global markets on April 18, 2011. For instance, Legalization of sale and private ownership of homes and cars
North Korea is not a Communist Country. That ended long ago. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) — stopped being a Communist Country when the Kim dynasty took over in 1948. Now just a nightmare place to live with lots of suffering.
All that’s left is the word “COMMUNISM” that many in the U.S. think is evil just because it is that word.
I forgot to add Cambodia because that country stopped being communist in 1993. Similar to the UK, the government of Cambodia is considered a constitutional monarchy, which means that the monarch rules according to a written constitution. This document sets forth the legal limits of power held by the monarch. In Cambodia, the Prime Minister acts as head of government while the Monarch acts as head of state, a symbol of national unity. The government is carried out by a Parliamentary system and three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. This article takes a closer look at each branch.
The domino theory was a simplistic application of European experience to a set of conditions that it did not fit. Laos and Cambodia were not dominos, they were casualties of a hundred years of European imperialism that got caught up in the perception of communism as monolithic. Laos and Cambodia fell because the governments there could not deal with the violation of their neutrality by the various combatants.
The American view that appeasement had caused Hitler led to the attitude that we could never again allow an aggressive power to assume control of a sovereign nation unopposed. Thus we fought proxy wars for decades opposing communism. The last one, featuring Bin Laden, laid the foundation for the present conflict with radical Islam. Most of the dictators we supported instead of their communist rivals are gone now, but their victims are strewn around the globe. There had to be a better way to oppose tyranny, don’t you think?
No words.
Thanks, Diane. Over the years, I’ve spent a great deal of time reading and thinking about what happened in Cambodia in the 1970s (I recommend “Sideshow” by William Shawcross). Your photographs render it real for me in unexpected ways.
That do or die list is ghastly. The photos are loaded with information from a first class journalist and historian.
Pogroms. Mongol massacres. Hitler. Stalin. Westward Expansion. Rwanda. Atrocity is common. The relative decency we see in our society is precious and fragile. Our schools should be serious about preserving this, as Germany is today, but they’re not. Instead they’re bent on implemented flawed notions of reading and math skills. We will pay the price for this neglect.
Nicely put.
A monument to man’s inhumanity to man! Sadly, this is a message we need to hear lest we repeat these atrocities in the future. What is worse, some of these same inhumane acts are already occurring the world today. We must do better!
Thanks, Diane. Of course a lot of us remember reading about the “killing fields” in Cambodia and the pictures of pyramids of human skulls. Hannah Arendt’s comment about the “banality of evil” comes to mind with these pictures of a school turned into a death camp. Ponderosa is correct: “Atrocity is common. The relative decency we see in our society is precious and fragile.”
Some of my favorite music comes from the Cambodian rock scene right before the crackdown. There have been a few albums out called Cambodia Rocks, compiling the amazing blend of late 60s British Invasion influences with traditional Cambodian sounds. But it’s haunting to listen to, knowing all the musicians were slaughtered. Here is a trailer a 2014 documentary on the lost music:
http://www.dtifcambodia.com/trailer
Long live democracy. Never cede an inch to those who seek control without being elected to have it. Fight power.
I just got out of a school budget meeting that went overtime. I thought during the meeting, This is torturous. Then, I came home and saw these photos and realized it was not torture. Far from it. The photos are of places of torture. How ashamed I am. The meeting was democracy.
Fight power. Never cede an inch. Long live democracy.
Terrible. Sounds similar to what they did in the House of Terror close to the center of Budapest in the 50’s and part of 60’s. It’s about half a mile from where I used to live.
http://www.terrorhaza.hu/en/museum