Voices From S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison by David P. Chandler

accorded some high-ranking prisoners did not include permission to fraternize with the staff. Instead, to use Wolfgang Sofsky’s phrase, the prisoners “existed in a tertiary social region, a world of misery and namelessness.” 70
After mid-1976, when Tuol Sleng expanded, prisoners deemed to require extensive interrogation, but not senior enough to be confined in the “special prison,” were kept in cinder-block cubicles measuring two meters by eighty centimeters, where they were shackled by one ankle to the fl . Less important prisoners, like Vann Nath, were confi in large classrooms on the second floor of the complex, “lined up in rows and shackled to the floor with ankle irons. . . . A long pole was inserted into the sprockets of each ankle iron and secured at the end of the room.” 71
Male and female prisoners were segregated, and women with small children stayed with them while their husbands underwent interrogation and before all the family members were taken off to be killed. Scattered entry records reveal that wives and children were often kept at S-21 for very short periods—sometimes as little as two days—before their executions, and one document suggests that in early July 1977 seventy-five prisoners, identified only as sons or daughters of those previously executed, were “smashed” (komtec) at Prey So. Confessions of prison personnel suggest that female prisoners were frequently harassed and occasionally assaulted. Vietnamese female prisoners were especially vulnerable to attack. 72
Isolation, poor food, and silence were crucial to breaking the prisoners down in preparation for their interrogations, for as Foucault has suggested, “solitude is the primary condition of total submission.” 73 The prisoners’ day began at 5:00 A . M ., when they were awakened and strip-searched. They were then encouraged to engage briefl in awk-ward calisthenics, without being unshackled from the fl . Nearly twenty years later, Vann Nath recalled the “gymnastics” vividly:
Then we heard a voice order, “All of you get up.” When I sat up I saw a small boy, about thirteen years old, standing with a rod made of twisted electric wire, maybe a meter long.
“Why are you sleeping? It’s nearly dawn,” the boy said. “Don’t be lazy.
Do some exercises.”
“How can I exercise, brother?” a prisoner asked.
“How stupid you are, you old coot,” the boy said. “Get the shit buckets, put them under the bars, and jump together.”
All the prisoners followed his instructions. The noise of the shackles and buckets clanged throughout the room. I tried to jump a few times with the others. How could we do that, with one ankle fastened to the shackles and the other foot jumping? 74
Those scheduled for interrogation could be taken off to as many as three sessions a day, scheduled from 7:00 A . M . to noon, from 1:00 P . M . to 6:00 P . M ., and from 8:00 P . M . to midnight. Those who stayed behind were forbidden to communicate with each other; they were allowed to address guards only when they needed to relieve themselves. 75
Prisoners in the large classrooms were “washed” every three or four days by being hosed down en masse through open windows. Food consisted of a few spoons of watery rice gruel, garnished with bits of water convolvulus (trokuon) or banana leaves, served up at eight in the morning and eight at night. Prisoners soon lost weight and suffered from diarrhea, “numbness” (spuk), swollen limbs, and a range of skin diseases. As their resistance weakened, they were infected by other prisoners. Many of them died before they could be questioned, and others died after questioning but before they could be taken off to be killed. If they died at night, their bodies were not removed until the next morning. The contradiction between treating prisoners like animals and expecting them to provide detailed, supposedly rational confessions was central to the culture at S-21, and it was never resolved. Would more