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The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a
museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of
Cambodia. The site is a former high
school which was used as the
notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21)
by the Khmer Rouge regime from its
rise to power in 1975 to its fall in
1979. Tuol Sleng in Khmer;
means "Hill of the Poisonous Trees"
or "Strychnine Hill".
Formerly
the Chao Ponhea Yat High School
named after a Royal ancestor of King
Norodom Sihanouk, the five buildings
of the complex were converted in
August 1975, four months after the
Khmer Rouge won the civil war, into
a prison and interrogation center.
The Khmer Rouge renamed the complex
"Security Prison 21" (S-21) and
construction began to adapt the
prison to the inmates: the buildings
were enclosed in electrified barbed
wire, the classrooms converted into
tiny prison and torture chambers,
and all windows were covered with
iron bars and barbed wire to prevent
escapes... More
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