Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison

by David Chandler

Overview

The horrific torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during the 1970s is one of the century's major human disasters. David Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, examines the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by focusing on one of its key institutions, the secret prison outside Phnom Penh known by the code name "S-21." The facility was an interrogation center where more than 14,000 "enemies" were questioned, tortured, and made to confess to counterrevolutionary crimes. Fewer than a dozen prisoners left S-21 alive.

During the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) era, the existence of S-21 was known only to those inside it and a few high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials. When invading Vietnamese troops discovered the prison in 1979, murdered bodies lay strewn about and instruments of torture were still in place. An extensive archive containing photographs of victims, cadre notebooks, and DK publications was also found. Chandler utilizes evidence from the S-21 archive as well as materials that have surfaced elsewhere in Phnom Penh. He also interviews survivors of S-21 and former workers from the prison.

Documenting the violence and terror that took place within S-21 is only part of Chandler's story. Equally important is his attempt to understand what happened there in terms that might be useful to survivors, historians, and the rest of us. Chandler discusses the "culture of obedience" and its attendant dehumanization, citing parallels between the Khmer Rouge executions and the Moscow Show Trails of the 1930s, Nazi genocide, Indonesian massacres in 1965-66, the Argentine military's use of torture in the 1970s, and the recent mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda. In each of these instances, Chandler shows how turning victims into "others" in a manner that was systematically devaluing and racialist made it easier to mistreat and kill them. More than a chronicle of Khmer Rouge barbarism, Voices from S-21 is also a judicious examination of the psychological dimensions of state-sponsored terrorism that conditions human beings to commit acts of unspeakable brutality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520924550
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	09/01/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	251
Lexile:	1380L (what's this?)
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

David Chandler is Professor Emeritus of History at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. His published works include A History of Cambodia (1991, 1996) and Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot (1992). He currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Discovering S-21
2. S-21: A Total Institution
3. Choosing the Enemies
4. Framing the Questions
5. Forcing the Answers
6. Explaining S-21

Appendix. Siet Chhe’s Denial of Incest
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Photographs

Editorial Reviews

Chandler presents a grisly but lucid historical accounting of S-21, the secret prison where at least 14,000 people were interrogated, tortured, forced to confess to counterrevolutionary crimes and executed during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. This "anteroom to death," as Chandler labels it, was discovered by two Vietnamese photographers in the wake of the invasion that forced out the Khmer Rouge in January 1979. Drawn to the site by the smell of decomposing flesh, the men discovered the bodies of 50 recently murdered prisoners, an array of implements of torture and a vast abandoned archive of institutionally sanctioned torture and murder. (The area was immediately turned into a museum.) Chandler methodically reconstructs the history of S-21, working with both the archives discovered there and his own interviews with survivors of the camp; he offers some context for his evidence by drawing on his considerable knowledge of the region's past (the Australian scholar is the author of a history of Cambodia), for instance, identifying Chinese models for the camp. His assessment is of a government gone mad with paranoia, which must torture and murder its own citizens to protect itself against conspiracies that arise against it--"hidden enemies burrowing from within" who were viewed as more dangerous than outside threats. In attempting to understand how such evil arose, Chandler comes to the dismaying but arguable conclusion that places like S-21 and Nazi concentration camps originate in our own everyday capacities to order and obey, form bonds against outsiders, seek perfection and approval and vent anger and frustration upon the helpless. 13 b&w photos not seen by PW. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In an effort to explain what happened inside Tuol Sleng (then known by the code name S-21), David Chandler, the preeminent historian of Cambodia, spent years examining the voluminous archives discovered in the compound when the Vietnamese seized power in Cambodia in 1979. He plumbed comparative materials on state-sponsored terror and sought insight in psychological studies of the human capacity to inflict pain. ''Voices From S-21'' is the wrenching and dispassionate result.
—The New York Times Book Review

Judith Shapiro

"In an effort to explain what happened inside Tuol Sleng (then known by the code name S-21), David Chandler, the preeminent historian of Cambodia, spent years examining the voluminous archives discovered in the compound when the Vietnamese seized power in Cambodia in 1979. He plumbed comparative materials on state-sponsored terror and sought insight in psychological studies of the human capacity to inflict pain. Voices From S-21 is the wrenching and dispassionate result."

New York Times

"Voices from S-21 contributes to a better understanding of the secretive and violent aspects of the paranoid Khmer Rouge regime and fills a gap in the literature on violence in Southeast Asia. . . . the book is timely in light of heightened interest in a permanent International Criminal Court to bring violent war criminals, like the Khmer Rouge, to justice."

American Historical Review

"Based on archival resources Chandler himself had gathered over the years, as well as other pertinent material available in Cambodia and elsewhere, Chandler's book offers an engaging portrait of the inner workings and thoughts of those who spearheaded the genocidal campaign."

H-Genocide

"It is Chandler’s persistent effort to get as close as possible to the minds and experiences of both the captives and captors that elevates his work."

Japan Times

"Books that give insights into the geopolitics, history and internal mechanics of the rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge have their own significance. But this one . . . may be the most illuminating book yet on understanding Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge."

Cambodia Daily