Jolie visits Cambodian genocide museum

Hollywood star Angelina Jolie toured a former Khmer Rouge death camp, now a genocide museum, during a surprise visit to Cambodia.

Jolie, who has an adopted son from Cambodia, was accompanied by her partner, Brad Pitt as she visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a former prison in the capital Phnom Penh yesterday.

Museum director Chey Sopheara said the visit lasted about an hour.

“I saw her with my own eyes. She bought tickets and toured the museum just like everybody else. It was a private visit,” Sopheara said, adding that there were about seven people in her entourage.

Up to 16,000 people passed through the gates of what the Khmer Rouge called S-21 prison before they were taken for execution outside Phnom Penh during the Khmer Rouge 1975-79 rule. Only about a dozen prisoners are thought to have survived.

Jolie and her entourage left Cambodia on a small private jet last night, a Phnom Penh International Airpot official said.

Early yesterday, Jolie briefly visited Pailin, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in northwestern Cambodia.

Pailin officials said she met with Ieng Vuth, a municipality deputy governor and the son of former Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, to discuss a forest conservation project in the area.

The 31-year-old actress – who has a child with Pitt as well as an adopted daughter from Ethiopia – has promised up to €1m over five years for a conservation programme near the former Khmer Rouge stronghold that was approved by the Cambodian government in 2003.

She has named it the Maddox Jolie Project after her adopted Cambodian son.

Jolie has recently been locked in a dispute with her former Cambodian associate in the project, Mounh Sarath, the director of the group Cambodian Vision in Development.

Trevor Neilson, her philanthropic and political adviser, said last month that Mounh Sarath has misappropriated “hundreds of thousands of dollars” Jolie had provided for the conservation effort.

Mounh Sarath has denied the allegation.

Scenes for Jolie’s 2001 movie, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, were filmed at Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat temple.