PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The game “Pokemon Go” is causing distress in Cambodia, where some smartphone-wielding players have been chasing its virtual characters at a genocide museum that was a torture center in the 1970s.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum director Chhay Visoth said Wednesday that he has posted a sign at the site’s entrance banning the popular game, which made its Cambodian debut last weekend, and told his staff to watch out for anyone playing it. He described the museum as a memorial to Cambodia’s suffering.
During the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime an estimated 17,000 Cambodians were tortured at the center, known as S-21 prison, and then killed. An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died from execution, starvation and inadequate medical care under the rule of the ultra-communist group.
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