Cambodia: Torture room in the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crime, Phnom Penh

Located in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, Tuol Sleng is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge communist regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. An estimated 17,000 Cambodians, including a great number of women and children, were tortured at S-21 into giving confessions and naming accomplices for so-called crimes against the state. Many of the Khmer Rouge's own cadres were killed at Tuol Sleng after being purged from the Communist Party. Only seven persons are known to have survived S-21. Tuol Sleng means 'Hill of the Poisonous Trees' or 'Strychnine Hill'. The site is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.