Today I visited the building in the photo below, it is a museum now but it has a famous past; starting life as a high school but being turned into a prison called S-21.
In 1975 Cambodia was taken over by a group called the Khmer Rouge led by a man called Pol Pot. Within hours of taking over he started moving people from the cities to the countryside to live as farmers and within one week the cities were deserted. The Khmer Rouge bombed banks because they didn't want people to use money any more, they closed down schools because they didn't think people needed educating (This is when the building below became a prison) and they also shut down hospitals. Sadly many, many people didn't survive this because they simply didn't know how to farm properly to make enough food.
Pol Pot also didn't want any intellectuals (Educated, clever people) in his country so he arrested every teacher, doctor, lawyer and politician his soldiers could find and put them in prisons like S-21. The soldiers even arrested anyone wearing glasses or having soft hands as this was seen as a sign of intelligence! Those that were arrested also had their whole family captured too and had to stay in prison until they admitted they were spies. If they didn't admit to this (They rarely were spies) the soldiers found ways to force the prisoners to say they were. Once they had said they were they were killed with their family.
Unfortunately this lasted for nearly four years until other countries found out what was happening and in that time 3,000,000 people lost their lives. Cambodia is not the biggest country on the planet so that works out at more than 1 in every 4 people!
It may seem weird to think of turning places like S-21 (Or even the concentration camps in Germany) into museums about times like this but the Khmer Rouge is a big part of Cambodia's history and it is agreed that keeping these places open means that no one will ever forget those that died and it will help stop someone like Pol Pot ever being in control again. What do you think?
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