Talk:Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

"end of 1979"
"However, by the end of 1979, cadres ran out of burial spaces, the prisoner and their family were taken to the Choeung Ek extermination centre, fifteen kilometers from Phnom Penh." This cannot be true. Phnom Penh and the Tuol Sleng prison were liberated in January 1979, so "end of 1979" must be a mistake which should be corrected by an expert. --91.9.63.21 (talk) 10:03, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your help. You are right. I looked up the original source (http://www.dccam.org/Projects/Genocide/History%20of%20DK%20Part%202.pdf) and it should be 1976. Not 1979. -- Thaths (talk) 19:55, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

split needed
This should be split into articles about the prison and about the museum. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 03:09, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * A belated support. Looking through the history and talk page archives, the article was originally called S-21, but was moved fairly early (and unilaterally?) to the current title (minus a slight mispelling) .  On the talk page it was suggested here  (and at the end of the previous section) to move it back to S21, but opinion split evenly.  It was suggested to split the article into 2 articles here, but no action was taken.  And finally by Milotor in May 2013 later on the current talk page.  There really should be a separate article about the Khmer Rouge prison camp, and since this article is mostly about the camp, it should be renamed and a separate article created for the museum.--Wikimedes (talk) 19:57, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Skulls in Toul Sleng.
I visited Toul Sleng in February this year, having read this article before I went. There are indeed still some of the skulls in cases in the genocide museum, but far less than 300. My Khmer friend, Pola, who accompanied us,says that most of them were removed to Cheung Ek, The killing fields, (he lives in the same village), and are now to be found within the very beautiful memorial stupa there, which I have also visited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.26.167.150 (talk) 19:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

crimes against humanity
How many people stood trial for these crimes against humanity? How many people have been found guilty? Or are these questions too controversial to nbe related in a wikipedia article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.226.83.171 (talk) 11:10, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry no one responded sooner than a couple years after you left this comment, but if you are interested in the trials, the tribunal that has been set up, and how many people have been tried and/or convicted, there is a separate article on that at Khmer Rouge Tribunal. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 22:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

History section should be split
The history section currently accounts for most of the page. I'd recommend either splitting it up into smaller sections (rather than subsections) or summarizing the content there and creating a new page altogether for the history. Milotoor (talk) 07:41, 2 May 2013 (UTC)Milotoor

Why use a school?
Is anything known why the Khmer Rouge chose a school to house this prison/death camp? Apparently this required a lot of crude makeshift (yet sadly effective) work. Surely a big city like Phnom Penh would have had prison facilities already before the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Had those been destroyed, or were there ideological reasons against using them? Or maybe they were used as well and the Khmer Rouge were running out of suitable buildings for their camps, but that would still leave the question why such an important interrogation center did not get priority? Elanguescence (talk) 11:45, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe symbolic? The Khmer Rouge disliked education as much as they disliked most of the other trappings of civilization. 62.196.17.194 (talk) 17:05, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

It was a place where nobody among the civilians would have never imagined that such bad things were happening inside. Many secret torture places in China, Russia and so on are allegedly located in the basement of abandoned schools.--Fabrizioberloco (talk) 13:40, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Do not laugh
What I found bad was that they put up signs inside which show that people should not laugh (out loud) there, as though any civilised person would need telling (178.236.117.122 (talk) 10:33, 9 January 2014 (UTC))

Help with stub: Kingdom of Cambodia (1975-76)
Hello, I noticed there was a gap in the former states of Cambodia so I created Kingdom of Cambodia (1975-76); any help in expanding this stub would be much appreciated. Cheers, walk victor falktalk 04:51, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposed additions/changes/modifications
I plan to collect a bunch of proposed additions/changes/modifications to the main article here. Some of these need further investigation and gathering of sources before they can go into the main article.


 * According to this piece in the Guardian: "179 people were released from S-21 in the early years of the regime." (according to DC-Cam's research)

Non local victims
The handfull of western victims are named, and their stories are told, thus 'humanising' them. The local victims are left as a nameless mass, part of a statistic. While it would be obviously not possible to name them all, this 'focussing in' process should be more representative and less euro-centric. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.194.210.196 (talk) 09:00, 19 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I have noticed that about the article as well. Perhaps one way to reduce this imbalance could be to still retain the names of the westerners, but instead of whole sentences about what happened to them in S-21, we could perhaps link to the wikipedia entries about them (if they had ones). Thaths (talk) 21:28, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20081012001333/http://www.dccam.org/Archives/Documents/Confessions/Confessions_Killed_S_21.htm to http://www.dccam.org/Archives/Documents/Confessions/Confessions_Killed_S_21.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 01:36, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

website link is unofficial museum page - contains incorrect visitor information
I am representing the Director of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Mr Chhay Visoth (who can be contacted at chvisoth@yahoo.com or by phone at 0236655395). After meeting with him, he brought it to my attention that there were unofficial websites associated with the museum, two different domain names occupying high places on a google search but owned by the same person who was not officially representing the museum.

The website linked on this page is one of these domains: http://www.tuolslenggenocidemuseum.com/

This page has erroneous information regarding the visiting hours of the museum and often causes problems with foreign visitors getting to the museum an hour before it opens.

As this is one of the largest tourist attractions in Phnom Penh, this is quite a serious issue. As Wikipedia is often the first port of call for visitors, it's important that the page links to the official government website.

The official website run by the museum is http://tuolsleng.k4media.com/en/

This falls directly under the guideline of External links in the content guide: "External links should be kept minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article. Wikipedia is not an advertising opportunity."

LPeters91 (talk) 23:42, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Website Link Needs to be Changed
The website link that is associated with the page is old, outdated and needs to be replaced by the official government page which is run by the museum itself - this is important as the page does not even contain the correct opening times for the museum.

please change it to www.tuolsleng.gov.kh

this needs to be done as soon as possible to avoid further complications for the museum.

175.33.204.189 (talk) 02:42, 5 September 2017 (UTC)


 * In the Talk page 3 different websites have been suggested as being the official or unofficial website for the museum:


 * 1) http://www.tuolslenggenocidemuseum.com/ : There is some information (correct or incorrect, I cannot say) on the website about the museum. But it is not clear whether this is the official website of the museum. There are some signs that this website might be someone's personal website, and not the official one. For example, the first person singular 'I' in the sentence "I have to say I left this place with a lump in my throat." Whois also points to an individual owning this domain name.
 * 2) http://tuolsleng.k4media.com/en/museum/ : From the URL, this appears like an unofficial website. k4media.com seems to be a web development company based in Phnom Penh. But the content on the site seems pretty authoritative. And is also translated into other languages including Khmer.
 * 3) http://www.tuolsleng.gov.kh/ : Considering its a a sub-domain under an official government-looking .gov.kh this one might be the official one. But it is failing to resolve in DNS to an IP address.


 * I have temporarily removed the link to the website in the infobox. If we are able to establish one of these is the official one, we should then link to it. Thaths (talk) 08:25, 7 September 2017 (UTC)


 * The URL http://www.tuolsleng.gov.kh/ has started resolving. The content on the site also seems authoritative. I am adding it as back to the infobox as the official web site. Thaths (talk) 22:47, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

EXHIBITIONS IN THE MUSEUM The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum displays a permanent exhibition on the history of the Khmer Rouge Period and mounts temporary exhibitions. The temporary exhibitions are mainly focused on certain topics regarding the Khmer Rouge period, the living conditions and the impact of this time on the present society. In addition, a Mobile Exhibition has been created for educational purposes and regularly visits schools. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Khmerfor12 (talk • contribs) 08:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

ARCHIVE OF PRISONERS Over the three years of S-21 operation, prisoners were registered and identified upon arrival. Many were photographed wearing a tag showing, in the early years, only a number. In later years, the tag included a number, date of entry and name. Through these tags, the museum has been able to categorize prisoners by year. The more than 15,000 prisoners were men, women, children and foreigners. Here is a small sample:

Scroll your cursor over the photos below, then click to find out more information about the victim.

For more information, you are welcome to visit the archive at the museum. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.90.177.146 (talk) 08:42, 14 January 2019 (UTC)