Over 60,000 documents of Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum go digital

A visitor to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum contemplates photos of S-21 prisoners (Photo: phnompenhpost)

Phnom Penh (VNA) – Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which hasbeen registered as a UNESCO Memory of the World since 2009, has launched adigital database to access the largest archive of the Khmer Rouge regime’sprison system records.

The general public will be able to access the digitaldatabase and website for additional information about the victims’ familymembers and researchers.

The project was jointly implemented by UNESCO incollaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts of Cambodia and withthe generous financial support of the Korea International Cooperation Agency(KOICA).

In a press statement, UNESCO said the museum has completedthe digitisation of more than 60,000 documents totalling almost half a millionpages that include photographs, biographies of detainees, notebooks, propagandamagazines, forced confessions and other written materials.

All the information contained in the documents – amountingto over 4 million data elements – has been compiled in a digital database thatofficially went online on January 29.

UNESCO, the culture ministry and KOICA started the TuolSleng Genocide Museum Archives Preservation and Digitisation Project in 2015and worked on the project until the end of 2020 with funding provided by agrant of 1.15 million USD.

Tuol Sleng was also known by its official prison number “S-21.” It wasone of the most notorious interrogation and extermination centres run by theKhmer Rouge regime from 1975-79. Built as a school prior to the conflict, iteventually served as a prison for more than 18,000 prisoners and their families– including many Khmer Rouge members once they had fallen out of favour for onereason or another./.

VNA