Posted Monday, November 15, 2004; 21:00 HKT
We usually go to museums to be uplifted, to see the glorious distillation of civilizations and wonder at the compulsion to create that runs through humankind. Cambodia's Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, however, is a monument to destruction. With its grassy lawn, institutional architecture and palm trees, Tuol Sleng resembles a pleasant Indo-Chinese high school—which it was, until the Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison. It's only on drawing closer that you notice the barbed wire and neat row of white gravestones. In the courtyard stands a wooden frame once used for gymnastics practice, converted by the Khmer Rouge into a torture rack. On the outside wall is posted a translation of one of the regulations every prisoner heard on arrival: "Rule 6. While getting lashes or electrocution, you must not cry at all."

In a bare, former classroom stands a stripped metal bed with iron manacles still attached to the legs. Piled on a crumpled sheet are various implements—a head clamp; an iron bar (it was heated and used for searing flesh); a car battery and wires for administering electric shocks. On the tiled floor nearby is a bloodstain.

When the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, they set about transforming Cambodia into a pure agrarian society, and virtually the entire populace was forced into labor camps. Business owners, the college-educated—even those who simply stole food to survive—were branded traitors. In all, around 1.7 million Cambodians died in the prisons and killing fields. Some 17,000 were tortured at Tuol Sleng alone, and the walls of several classrooms are covered with thousands of photographs. Tuol Sleng's meticulous torturers kept evidence of each one of their victims—men and women, young and old. Each stares at the camera one last time, facing certain death. Some are bloodied from beatings, some are defiant, some look blank. But in their own way, these faces are as unforgettable as anything you will ever see in the Louvre.

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