PHNOM PENH – Three places utilized by Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime as torture and execution websites 50 years in the past have been added by UNESCO to its World Heritage Record.
The three places had been inscribed to the record by the United Nations cultural company Friday throughout the forty seventh Session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris.
The inscription coincided with the 50th anniversary of the rise to energy by the communist Khmer Rouge authorities, which triggered the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians via hunger, torture and mass executions throughout a four-year reign from 1975 to 1979.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Record lists websites thought-about essential to humanity and contains the Nice Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India and Cambodia’s Angkor archaeological advanced.
The three websites listed Friday embody two infamous prisons and an execution web site immortalized in a Hollywood movie.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, positioned within the capital Phnom Penh, is the location of a former highschool utilized by the Khmer Rouge as a infamous jail. Higher often called S-21, about 15,000 individuals had been imprisoned and tortured there.
The M-13 jail, positioned in rural Kampong Chhnang province in central Cambodia, additionally was considered one of many primary prisons of the early Khmer Rouge.
Choeung Ek, positioned about 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of the capital, was used as an execution web site and mass grave. The story of the atrocities dedicated there are the main focus of the 1984 movie “The Killing Fields,” based mostly on the experiences of New York Instances photojournalist Dith Pran and correspondent Sydney Schanberg.
The Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, and instantly herded nearly all the town’s residents into the countryside, the place they had been pressured to toil in harsh situations till 1979, when the regime was pushed from energy by an invasion from neighboring Vietnam.
In September 2022, the U.N.-backed Extraordinary Chambers within the Courts of Cambodia, higher often called the Khmer Rouge tribunal, concluded its work compiling instances towards Khmer Rouge leaders. The tribunal value $337 million over 16 years however convicted simply three males.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet issued a message Friday directing individuals to beat drums concurrently throughout the nation Sunday morning to mark the UNESCO itemizing.
“Might this inscription function a long-lasting reminder that peace should at all times be defended,” Hun Manet stated in a video message posted on-line. “From the darkest chapters of historical past, we will draw power to construct a greater future for humanity.”
Youk Chhang, government director of the Documentation Middle of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, stated the nation is “nonetheless grappling with the painful legacies of genocide, torture, and mass atrocity.” However naming the three websites to the UNESCO record will play a task in educating youthful generations of Cambodians and others worldwide.
“Although they had been the panorama of violence, they too will and may contribute to heal the injuries inflicted throughout that period which have but to heal,” he stated.
The UNESCO inscription was Cambodia’s first nomination for a contemporary and non-classical archaeological web site and is among the many first on the earth to be submitted as a web site related to latest battle, Cambodia’s Ministry of Tradition and Fantastic Arts stated in a press release Friday.
4 Cambodian archaeological websites had been beforehand inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Websites together with Angkor, Preah Vihear, Sambo Prei Kuk and Koh Ker, the ministry stated.
Copyright 2025 The Related Press. All rights reserved. This materials is probably not printed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.
