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Losing Our Way Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing. --------------------------------------------------------- Arundhati Roy (Indian author, advocate, activist)

CAMBODIA: Siem Reap; Phnom Penh; Battambang; Kratie.

Here, makeshift prisoner cells constructed inside S21. In each tiny space, chains are cemented to the floor.

CAMBODIA | Saturday, 23 January 2010 | Views [410]

Here, makeshift prisoner cells constructed inside S21. In each tiny space, chains are cemented to the floor.

Tuol Svay Prey High School was turned by the Khmer Rouge into what is now known as S21 – the most notorious of torture prisons. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979, I (Mi), was a toddler, safe on the other side of the world. I had no idea that what was being discovered were freshly killed victims, along with records of the most heinous acts human beings can do to another. 30 years later, I stop here to see, among the ropes and pliers and knives and chains, the prison's waterboarding mechanism. Waterboarding. We do this too, I whisper to myself.

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Ive and I wove in and out of the school rooms with their stained checkered tiles. We forced ourselves to look at rusted torture beds, one after the other. In one room I noticed a blackboard, and I realized that the room had been as safe in the weeks before the takeover as it was now as I was standing in it. And I thought of how, in the years to come, tourists will pay money to visit the same places in Darfur and Burma and all over the world where we won't risk to go now. And my mind broke a little.

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