Sites of Khmer Rouge execution, torture in Cambodia added to UNESCO list

Added to the World Heritage database are 2 prisons: Tuol Sleng and M-13, arsenic good arsenic the execution tract Choeung Ek.

Three notorious locations utilized by Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge authorities arsenic torture and execution sites to perpetrate the genocide of Year Zero 5 decades agone person been added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list.

Two prisons and an execution tract were inscribed connected the database by the United Nations taste bureau connected Friday during the 47th Session of the World Heritage Committee successful Paris.

It coincided with the 50th day of the emergence to powerfulness by the communist Khmer Rouge, which caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 cardinal Cambodians done starvation, torture and wide executions during a four-year reign of unit from 1975 to 1979 earlier it was brought to an extremity by an penetration from neighbouring Vietnam.

UNESCO’s World Heritage database lists sites considered important to humanity and includes the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza successful Egypt, the Taj Mahal successful India and Cambodia’s Angkor archaeological complex.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet issued a connection connected Friday directing radical to bushed drums simultaneously crossed the state connected Sunday greeting to people the UNESCO listing.

🔴 BREAKING!

New inscription connected the @UNESCO #WorldHeritage List: Cambodian Memorial Sites: From centres of repression to places of bid and reflection, #Cambodia 🇰🇭.

➡️ https://t.co/seTyyVu3sT #47WHC pic.twitter.com/SPl7zlxeFh

— UNESCO 🏛️ #Education #Sciences #Culture 🇺🇳 (@UNESCO) July 11, 2025

“May this inscription service arsenic a lasting reminder that bid indispensable ever beryllium defended,” Hun Manet said successful a video connection aired by state-run tv TVK. “From the darkest chapters of history, we tin gully spot to physique a amended aboriginal for humanity.”

Two sites added to the database are successful the capital, Phnom Penh – the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Genocide Centre.

Tuol Sleng is simply a erstwhile precocious schoolhouse that was converted into a notorious situation known arsenic S-21, wherever an estimated 15,000 radical were imprisoned and tortured.

Today, the tract is simply a abstraction for commemoration and education, lodging the black-and-white mugshots of its galore victims and the preserved instrumentality utilized by Khmer Rouge tormentors.

The UNESCO inscription was Cambodia’s archetypal information for a modern and non-classical archaeological tract and is among the archetypal successful the satellite to beryllium submitted arsenic a tract associated with caller conflict, Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said successful a connection connected Friday.

‘The Killing Fields’

Choeung Ek – a erstwhile Chinese cemetery – was a notorious “killing field” wherever S-21 prisoners were executed nightly. The communicative of the atrocities committed determination is the absorption of the 1984 movie “The Killing Fields”, based connected the experiences of New York Times photojournalist Dith Pran and analogous Sydney Schanberg.

More than 6,000 bodies were exhumed from astatine slightest 100 wide graves astatine the crushed successful the aboriginal 1980s, according to Cambodian authorities documents filed with UNESCO.

Every year, hundreds clasp remembrance prayers successful beforehand of the site’s memorial displaying victims’ skulls, and ticker students signifier melodramatic re-enactments of the Khmer Rouge’s bloody crimes.

Another situation site, known arsenic M-13 and located successful a agrarian country successful cardinal Kampong Chhnang province, was 1 of the astir important prisons of the aboriginal Khmer Rouge, wherever its cadres “invented and tested assorted methods of interrogation, torture and killing” but is contiguous lone a spot of derelict land.

A peculiar tribunal sponsored by the UN, costing $337m and moving implicit 16 years, lone convicted 3 cardinal Khmer Rouge figures, including S-21 main torturer Kaing Guek Eav, earlier ceasing operations successful 2022.

Pol Pot, person of the Khmer Rouge regime, died successful 1998 earlier helium could beryllium brought to trial.

Buddhist monks enactment up to person nutrient and alms during the yearly ‘Day of Remembrance’ for the victims of the Khmer Rouge authorities astatine the Choeung Ek memorial successful Phnom Penh, Cambodia, connected May 20, 2025 [Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP]