MARTYN AIM

CAMBODIA : DARKNESS FALLS

TUOL SLENG PRISON WAS OPENED ON APRIL 17, 1975. THE FORMER HIGH SCHOOL BECAME A DETENTION CENTRE FOR INTERROGATION, TORTURE AND MURDER. PRISONERS WHO SURVIVED WERE BLINDFOLDED AND DRIVEN OUT OF PHNOM PENH TO THE KILLING FIELDS. OVER 3 MILLION PEOPLE WERE KILLED BY THE KHMER ROUGE REGIME.

A tree casts it's shadow on the side of one of the blocks at Tuol Sleng (S-21) Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
   
Cambodian visitors walk past one of the old school buildings taken over by the Khmer Rouge for the interrogation and torture of prisoners. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
   
Khmer Rouge hammered holes in the wall to create easy access to cells where prisoners were shackled. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
     
  
Every prisoner who entered Tuol Sleng was photographed and an individual file created, a practice the Nazi Party utilised in their genocide. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
   
Guides inform foreign visitors of the history of the Khmer Rouge regime's genocide. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
   
A Cambodian visitor takes a portrait of his wife posing in front of the cells at Tuol Sleng (S-21) Prison. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
     
  
View through the bars of a cell where prisoners were brought for interrogation and torture. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
   
Blackboard in an interrogation room at the Khmer Rouge prison of Tuol Sleng (S-21). The prison, previously a high-school, was thought of by the Khmer Rouge as a place for re-education. In reality false confessions of anti-revolution activities were extracted through torture. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
   
Bed and torture implements in the Khmer Rouge prison of Tuol Sleng. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
     
  
Under a stairwell at the Khmer Rouge prison of Tuol Sleng (S-21) prisoners clothes, shoes and food dishes remain in a pile. The prison is now a museum. Workers there have used the room as a place to dump their plastic bottles and cans as they can be taken to recyclers for money. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
   
The view through the bars of a prison interrogation room's window show life goes on as normal. Many of the people who live near the prison make their livelihood from the tourists who visit the prison. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
   
Above a stairwell at the Khmer Rouge prison of Tuol Sleng (S-21) foreign visitors have written their emotional reactions on the walls. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
     
  
Blackboard in an interrogation room at the Khmer Rouge prison of Tuol Sleng (S-21). The prison, previously a high-school, was thought of by the Khmer Rouge as a place for re-education. In reality false confessions of anti-revolution activities were extracted through torture.
   
A Cambodian man sits in the garden in front of the prison. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)
   
Prisoners who survived torture were blindfolded, pushed onto the back of a truck, and brought to the Killing Fields where they were murdered. This dry cracked earth covers one of the pits where people's bodies were dumped. The Killing Fields have now been privatised in a deal with a Japanese company who now operate the site and collect visitor's fees. The profits go to a fund that is half owned by Cambodian government officials. (Credit Image: © Martyn Aim)