The Killing Fields, S-21

In the years 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge waged a campaign of genocide on Cambodia's population. 1.7 million Cambodians lost their lives to famine and murder as the urban population was forced into the countryside to fulfill the Khmer Rouges' goal of an ''agrarian utopia''. 

A photograph of the killing fields in Cambodia. Killing fields were where the Khmer Rouge executed innocent people and put their corpses. These are the skulls of people who were killed. Most victims had been battered or hacked to death with iron bars, pickaxes, machetes and many other weapons.

Guns were seldom used because ammunition was scarce. Small children and infants were swung against trees to smash their heads before throwing their bodies into the pits

S-21

The most infamous was Phnom Penh's S-21 Prison and the Choeung Ek extermination center. At first it was a high school called Tuol Svay High School. But in 1976, the Khmer Rouge took over, renamed the school into Security Prison 21 (S-21) and turned it into a torture, interrogation and execution center.                

About 1,720 workers controlled the prison. Most of the personnel were boys and girls from peasant backgrounds ranging from ten to nineteen years of age who were trained to work as guards and interrogators.

The prisoners included Vietnamese, Laotian, Thai, Indian, Pakistani, British and American nationals, but the majorities were Cambodians. Civilian prisoners were workers, farmers, engineers, technicians, intellectuals, professors, students, politicians, and so on.

Whole families were taken to S-21 to be interrogated, tortured to obtain a ‘confession’, and then sent to the Choeung Ek extermination centre. The average period of imprisonment was from two to four months

Link to the documentary- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j17_CAzwVv4

S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine is a 2003 documentary film of the S-21 genocide prison in Phnom Penh. This documentary is directed by Rithy Panh. Rithy, himself, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge, brought together two former prisoners of the regime with their former captors at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the former Security Prison 21 (S-21) under the Khmer Rouge. This documentary includes interviews with the prisoners and guards of S-21.

Plot: Rithy Panh, Vann Nath, and Chum Mey, three survivors of the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng Prison are reunited to revisit the former prison. They meet their former captors (guards, interrogators, a doctor, and a photographer). Many of the captors were barely teenagers during the time of the Khmer Rouge era from the years 1975 to 1979. The prisoners are now old men, contrasting their former captors.