Recently, the CNN has interviewed a survivor of the genocidal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
According to Van Nath, the survivor, he was brought to S-21 and was kept in a room packed with 50 other inmates, shackled together and forced to lie down. He thought he was going to die. All the inmates were not allowed to sit without permission and to talk, not even whispering.
During the interview, Van Nath described how male prisoners were whipped raw, their fingernails were yanked out, they were hogtied to wooden bars. Prison guards mutilated women's genitals, ripped off their nipples with pliers. And worst of all, babies were ripped from their mothers' arms and slaughtered.
For Van Nath himself, he was given electric shock torture at first. Later on, he was asked to paint Pol Pot's picture continusouly after being known that he was one of Cambodia's most prominent painters. He was in the S-21 during the Pol Pot regime, seeing how people were being tortured, such as water torture. Van Nath remembers it as if it were yesterday.
So when Pol Pot finally fell in 1979, Van Nath returned to paint what he had really seen and heard at S-21. He did it as a memorial to the 14,000 who had been tortured and executed in the prison. It's one of the few public reminders of the regime's crimes.
Please click here to watch the interview.
According to Van Nath, the survivor, he was brought to S-21 and was kept in a room packed with 50 other inmates, shackled together and forced to lie down. He thought he was going to die. All the inmates were not allowed to sit without permission and to talk, not even whispering.
During the interview, Van Nath described how male prisoners were whipped raw, their fingernails were yanked out, they were hogtied to wooden bars. Prison guards mutilated women's genitals, ripped off their nipples with pliers. And worst of all, babies were ripped from their mothers' arms and slaughtered.
For Van Nath himself, he was given electric shock torture at first. Later on, he was asked to paint Pol Pot's picture continusouly after being known that he was one of Cambodia's most prominent painters. He was in the S-21 during the Pol Pot regime, seeing how people were being tortured, such as water torture. Van Nath remembers it as if it were yesterday.
So when Pol Pot finally fell in 1979, Van Nath returned to paint what he had really seen and heard at S-21. He did it as a memorial to the 14,000 who had been tortured and executed in the prison. It's one of the few public reminders of the regime's crimes.
Please click here to watch the interview.
No comments:
Post a Comment