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    Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison
    Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison
    Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison
    Ebook425 pages6 hours

    Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison

    By David Chandler

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The horrific torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during the 1970s is one of the century's major human disasters. David Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, examines the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by focusing on one of its key institutions, the secret prison outside Phnom Penh known by the code name "S-21." The facility was an interrogation center where more than 14,000 "enemies" were questioned, tortured, and made to confess to counterrevolutionary crimes. Fewer than a dozen prisoners left S-21 alive.

    During the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) era, the existence of S-21 was known only to those inside it and a few high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials. When invading Vietnamese troops discovered the prison in 1979, murdered bodies lay strewn about and instruments of torture were still in place. An extensive archive containing photographs of victims, cadre notebooks, and DK publications was also found. Chandler utilizes evidence from the S-21 archive as well as materials that have surfaced elsewhere in Phnom Penh. He also interviews survivors of S-21 and former workers from the prison.

    Documenting the violence and terror that took place within S-21 is only part of Chandler's story. Equally important is his attempt to understand what happened there in terms that might be useful to survivors, historians, and the rest of us. Chandler discusses the "culture of obedience" and its attendant dehumanization, citing parallels between the Khmer Rouge executions and the Moscow Show Trails of the 1930s, Nazi genocide, Indonesian massacres in 1965-66, the Argentine military's use of torture in the 1970s, and the recent mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda. In each of these instances, Chandler shows how turning victims into "others" in a manner that was systematically devaluing and racialist made it easier to mistreat and kill them. More than a chronicle of Khmer Rouge barbarism, Voices from S-21 is also a judicious examination of the psychological dimensions of state-sponsored terrorism that conditions human beings to commit acts of unspeakable brutality.

    This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 2000.
    The horrific torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during the 1970s is one of the century's major human disasters. David Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, examines the Khmer Rouge phenomenon
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of California Press
    Release dateSep 1, 2023
    ISBN9780520924550
    Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison
    Author

    David Chandler

    David Chandler was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1971. He attended Penn State and received an MFA in Creative Writing. The Ancient Blades trilogy is his first foray into fantasy.

    Read more from David Chandler

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    Reviews for Voices from S-21

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I've read plenty of books on Pol Pot, along with many other brutal dictators and leaders of the 20th century, and I've read and seen pictures of some of the atrocities that took place during that century, but even then, this book is still pretty damn disturbing and it can take a strong stomach for some to wade through this. Well researched and written -- very disturbing material.
    • 1/5
      The author seems to care more about talking about how he got his sources for the book than about the actual subject matter. Also he translates every fifth word into Cambodian and puts it into parenthesis, which is annoying. There really aren't too many voices either. Plus it's published by Berkely University Press...the same Berkeley university that sent care packages of donated US flour to America's enemy, North Viet Nam during wartime. Perhaps if they had helped the American war effort instead of being traitorous, S-21 would never even had happened?

    Book preview

    Voices from S-21 - David Chandler

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