Cambodians condemn photo-editing job on genocide victims

PHNOM PENH: Cambodians who lost family during the Khmer Rouge genocide on Sunday slammed an Irish artist’s decision to digitally add smiles to old black and white pictures of victims killed by the regime.

The ultra-Maoist Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge installed a reign of terror from 1975 to 1979 that left an estimated two million Cambodians dead from starvation, hard labour, torture and mass executions.

The brutal regime took photographs of thousands of its victims, including those sent to Tuol Sleng or S-21, a former Phnom Penh high school which was converted into a prison. An estimated 15,000 people were interrogated and tortured there before being put to death in a neighbouring field.