This past week the human skull and bones map in Phnom Penh Cambodia's Tuol Sleng S-21 Prison has been dismantled.

The maps 300 skulls and bones represented the grim results of an estimated 1.7 million people who were tortured and murdered in Po Pots Khmer Rouge Killing Fields from 1975-79.

The map was assembled in 1979-80 after the Pol Pot regime was driven out of Phnom Penh. It was shaped like Cambodia with the red form indicating the Tonle Sap Lake.

Tuol Sleng Prison was a converted high school that is situated in the heart of Phnom Penh where people were tortured, raped and killed. Many of the skulls and bones used for the map were taken from the Tuol Sleng courtyard. Only 14 people survived their ordeal. Only three remain alive including artist Vann Nath whose paintings depicting a behind the scenes perspective of the atrocities that he was exposed to.

The facility is now used as a tourists site now known as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Its pamphlet states Tuol Sleng was the most secret organ of the KR regime. It was Angkars premier security institution, specifically designed for the interrogation and extermination of anti-Angkar elements.

The dismantling of the map is part of a $3,920 renovation project. The skulls are to be cleaned and the map is to be reconstructed and placed into a wood-and-glass cabinet.

The Cambodian Daily newspaper states in its weekend edition of March 9-10 that 16,000 people were killed (men, women and children) at the prison.

The Tuol Sleng pamphlet notes that male and female children ranging from 10-15 years of age were trained and selected by the KR regime to work as guards. They are described as being normal when they started out but became increasingly evil. The pamphlet states that they were exceptionally cruel and disrespectful toward the prisoners and their elders.

 

Skull and bones map shaped like Cambodia. The red form indicates the Tonle Sap Lake.

Those children would now be between the ages of 32-42 and are now integrated into Cambodian population without being punished for their activities.

Kang Kek Ieu also known as Duch, was Tuol Sleng's director assuming that position in 1975. He is now jailed in a prison at a location just four blocks away from Tuol Sleng. He has been incarcerated for the past three years after he was arrested in May 1999 while he was working as a medical assistant in refugee camps for the American Refugee Committee in northern Cambodia.

Duch was born in 1942. He claims that he is now a Christian. He has been charged with treason and murder but has yet to be tried.