Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21)

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum occupies a former secondary/high school in the heart of Phnom Penh that was converted into Security Prison 21 (S-21) after the Khmer Rouge took the city in April 1975. Operated by the regime's security apparatus from approximately 1975 until its fall in 1979, the facility functioned as an interrogation, detention, torture and execution center where thousands of people were imprisoned and many died. Scholarly and journalistic sources estimate that some 20,000 people were held at Tuol Sleng between 1976 and 1979. Its commandant, known as Duch, was later the subject of international legal proceedings and trials concerning responsibility for the crimes committed there. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge the site was preserved as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and memorial to victims of S-21. The museum maintains extensive archives of photographs and documents from the prison; over 60,000 documents have been digitized and the collection is registered with UNESCO's Memory of the World program. The site is the focus of scholarly work on memory, transitional justice, and state-sponsored commemoration, and has been central to documentaries and survivor-perpetrator encounters, notably Rithy Panh's film S-21. The provided research notes do not document any paranormal phenomena associated with Tuol Sleng. Sources treat the site in historical, legal, memorial and educational terms; reported matters concern documented imprisonment, torture, interrogation and executions, archival preservation, museums, and memory politics rather than supernatural claims.