After the World War II Holocaust everyone seemed to vow that we'd do everything we could do stop genocide. What could be done for the people of Cambodia under Pol Pot? I think that this is a genocide that is not very well known, but I think it should be. Like any genocide it is horrific and it enrages me. I want to include an image of those who were killed. 1.7 million victims, 25% of the Cambodian population. Many of the prisoners of S-21 were photographed before they were interrogated and killed.
"Chan Kim Srung, wife of Foreign Affairs Minister Puk Suvann, May 14, 1978, with newborn child." Information and pictures from Tuol Sleng-Photo's from Pol Pot's Secret Prison. Look at the pictures here, women with their young children. I'll spare you the details of what likely happened to this particular woman and her baby, but if you watch the CNN story you'll gain more information.
I found this information on Chan Kim Srung:
"Chan Kim Srun, a woman with a baby on her lap and a placard dated May 14, 1978, knew exactly what was going to happen to her. She and her husband, Deputy Foreign Minister Puk Suvann, were overseas intellectuals "invited" back from exile in 1975 by Ieng Sary. One by one, Mrs. Chan saw her friends and colleagues disappear in subsequent Party purges. "Even though the prison was secret, they must have known when they arrived that this was the feared place they had heard about, where people came in and never came out alive," speculates Mr. Niven. In the photograph, Mrs. Chan has tears in her eyes." From Wall Street Journal Online
This is unpleasant work, but I feel that the study of history sometimes provides justice and can do the service of telling the story of those who are no longer able to. The brunt of my research work is on crime and imprisonment, mostly involving post-revolution Iranian prisons. I believe that those who have been killed or tortured anywhere in the world must be known. I hope you remember Chan Kim Srung and her baby. I will.
