Cambodian Memorial Sites: From centres of repression to places of peace and reflection
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How it came to be
From 1971 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge built up a security system of detention, interrogation and execution across Cambodia. It reached into almost every part of life, and in about a decade roughly a quarter of the population died. The property is made up of three sites that mark its stages.
M-13 was a prison from the first stage, during the civil war, and served as a prototype for what followed. In Phnom Penh, Tuol Svay Prey High School was converted in 1976 into Security Prison 21, S-21, where an estimated 20,000 people were held by 1979. Only twelve are known to have survived. In 2010 the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia convicted its chief, Kang Kek Iew, of crimes against humanity.
Many S-21 prisoners were taken to Choeung Ek, about 17 km south of the city centre, and executed there. After the regime fell in 1979, S-21 became the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and its archives are on the Memory of the World Register. At Choeung Ek remains were exhumed from mass graves, and a stupa built in 1989 holds more than 5,000 skulls. The three sites were inscribed in 2025.
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