Cambodia 2: Phnom Penh - Dictatorship and Genocide under Pol Pot

The Krama Scarf; The Tuol Sleng Museum & the former S-21 Khmer Rouge prison and the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek

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Today’s article on the Pol Pot dictatorship regime and the genocide at the Killing Fields is dark, distressing and may well be difficult to read. If you are able to persevere, I commend you.

Personally, I felt compelled to visit and to bear witness by writing about what I saw and learnt.

Introduction:

Painting: Phare Cambodian Circus, Live Performance, Siem Reap, Phare Ponleu Selpak (the Brightness of the Arts), a non-profit arts and circus school.

Then all of a sudden I heard loud banging a few houses away. My heart skipped. The banging continued, followed by the urgent squeaks and rattles of gates being opened, along with voices talking, shouting and arguing: Who the hell are you? Get out! No, you get out! This is our house! BOOM! Something exploded. A gunshot or maybe just a car tire, I couldn't tell. More banging, louder and nearer now, and before I had time to figure out what to do, someone was pounding on our gate, BAM BAM BAM! I jumped back a step or two, and one of the carnations that had been teetering on the wall fell to the ground near my feet. Just as I was about to pick it up, a voice commanded, "OPEN THE GATE!"…

…"He's a Revolutionary soldier," Papa said.

What? He didn't look like a soldier. Soldiers, I thought, were men who wore fancy uniforms decorated with stripes and medals and stars.

This boy was wearing the plain black pajama-style shirt and pants that peasants wore for planting rice or working in the fields, and a pair of black sandals made from—of all things— a car tire! The only color in his entire ensemble was the red-and-white checkered Krama, the Cambodian traditional scarf— that belted his pistol to his waist.

Tata came out and gasped, "Le Khmer Rouge."

In the Shadow of the Banyan, Vaddey Ratner, 2012.

Referring back to my previous article:

To state that 1975 to 1979 was a horrific period in Cambodian history is an understatement. It is estimated that up to 3 million innocent Cambodian people were murdered under the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge dictatorship. This came to be known as “the Killing Fields”.

In 1979, after the fall of Pol Pot, the population of Cambodia had fallen to 4 million people. Today the population is 17 million.

The Krama:

The Krama is a traditional long, cotton, check patterned, coloured scarf. It has a wide range of uses and comes in a range of sizes.

Photo: Woman wearing Krama, Phnom Penh ©UNESCO

As a garment, when wrapped around the hips, it is referred to as a Sampot, while it is called a Peanea when worn diagonally across the chest, and a Chorn Pong if draped across a woman’s upper body.

Other uses include rolling and wrapping the Krama scarf to make a turban/hat to protect your head from the sun’s strong radiation when tending rice in the paddy field; tying it around your shoulder to safely hold your baby when working in the paddy fields; tying and hanging your Krama between two trees to create a hammock to rest; using the Krama to cover your body when bathing; using your Krama to hold rice which you plunge into boiling water to cook for eating and even rolling your Krama into an approximate spherical shaped ball to play Chol Chhuong.

UNESCO recognises the Krama as an emblem of Khmer culture and an omnipresent feature in the lives of Cambodian people, accompanying them from birth through to death.

Today, no one wears or uses a RED and WHITE checked Krama scarf in Cambodia. It is forever associated with the Khmer Rouge.

The Tuol Sleng Museum & former S-21 Khmer Rouge Prison, Phnom Penh:

Photo: author

In 1975, Tuol Svay Prey High School was taken over by Pol Pot's security force and turned into the Khmer Rouge’s most notorious prison, known as Security Prison 21 (S-21). It became the largest centre of detention and torture in the country.

Photo: author

Over 18,000 people held and tortured at S-21 were taken to the extermination camp at Choeung Ek to be executed. The prisoners typically dug their own mass graves before being murdered. Prisoners who died during torture were buried in mass graves in the S-21 prison grounds.

Similar to the Nazis in WWII, the Khmer Rouge were meticulous in keeping records of their atrocities. Each prisoner who passed through S-21 was photographed, sometimes before and after being tortured.

Photo: author

Photo: author

Photo: author

The Rules for Prisoners:

Photo: author, Prisoner rules at S-21 Prison, Tuol Sleng Museum

DISCIPLINE OF THE SECURITY:

1. You must answer according to my questions. Don't turn them away.

2. Don't try to hide the facts by making excuses about this or that. You are strictly prohibited to contradict
   me.

3. Don't pretend to be ignorant, for you are a chap who dares to thwart the revolution.

4. You must answer my questions immediately without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don't go on about your minor mistakes or infringements of the moral code or on the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must
   absolutely not scream or cry out.

7. Do nothing. sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. and when I tell you to do
   something you must do it right away without protesting

8. Don't make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secrets or your betrayals.

9. If you don't scrupulously follow all the above rules. you shall set many lashes or electric shocks.

- For every infringement, 10 lashes or 5 shocks.

The Gallows:

Photo: author, the school yard sports bar, turned into an improvised gallows for hanging by the Khmer Rouge

The courtyard between buildings "A" and "B", the current location of 14 graves, used to be a volleyball court, with a rope climbing frame. A former student of Tuol Svay Prey High School describes it:

We went to play rope climbing at that place during the semester exams, where there was a gymnasium, I remember that place to climb the rope, the old place ... it has been there for long time ago.

Under the Pol Pot dictatorship between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge turned the sports climbing frame into an instrument of torture.

Photo: author, Mr. Vann Nath’s painting

Mr. Vann Nath, who had been detained in S-21, testified at the ECCC Khmer Rouge Tribunal that:

What I clearly saw was highlighted in my painting. When you see the location of the wooden frames where children used to climb, a prisoner—he was an artist…

…and the guards took him back, but he was not taken to his room.

He was taken to that location that I described…

…I could see that he was put in the water jar and he was hung up there…

…If we talk about that rope, the rope was there permanently. Even a year after liberation, it was still there.

When Phnom Penh was liberated by the Vietnamese army in early 1979, they found just seven prisoners alive at S-21.

Photo: The seven living prisoners who were found at S-21 in 1979. From left to right: Chum Mey, Ruy Neakong, Iem Chan, Vann Nath, Bou Meng, Pha Thachan, Ung Pech and Vong Pheab, a former guard at S-21 who later became a prisoner himself (missing)

Fourteen others had been tortured to death as Vietnamese forces were closing in on the city. Photographs of their decomposing corpses were found.

Photo: unknown, tortured and murdered S-21 prisoner, found on the day the prison was liberated

Photo: unknown, tortured and murdered S-21 prisoner, found on the day the prison was liberated

Their graves are nearby in the courtyard.

Photo: author, murdered victims’ graves in the grounds of the Tuol Sleng Museum

Bou Meng, prisoner and survivor of torture at S-21:

Bou Meng is a one of the seven prisoner survivors and a witness to the Khmer Rouge torture and genocide at S-21.

Photo: Seth Mydans

I met Bou Meng at the museum on the morning I visited; greeting him with the traditional Cambodian Sampeah (bringing both palms together in front of my chest and then bowing) and then shook his hand in respect. These days, Bou has health issues and requires medical treatment.

He is an artist, who originally lived on the banks of the Mekong River, in the Kampong Cham province, known for rubber farming, in north eastern Cambodia, 200 km from Phnom Penh. Bou served the Buddhist monks as a pagoda boy from aged five, and in addition to learning Khmer Literature and Mathematics, this is where Bou developed his passion for painting.

Bou became a novice monk aged fifteen, but his love of painting led him to becoming a painter at a cinema theatre.

On 16th August 1977, Bou and his wife Ma were arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to S-21. Photographs were taken whilst Bou was ordered to hold a number plate labelled 570 on his chest. Body measurements were taken and questions about family background were asked. After that, Bou never saw his wife again.

Bou was 34 years old when he and his wife were imprisoned in S-21 prison. He survived because he was an artist and was asked to draw portraits of Pol Pot and other senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge. His wife Ma Yoeun was tortured and murdered. Bou’s two children starved to death at a Khmer Rouge child centre.

Drawing: Bou Meng

Bou Meng has collaborated with the writer Huy Vannak, to produce a book Bou Meng: A Survivor from Khmer Rouge Prison S-21 Justice for the Future Not Just for the Victims (2010). The book is a testament to the atrocities and genocide that Bou witnessed, whilst imprisoned and tortured at S-21.

Drawing, Bou Meng, Building C Room 13, S-21 prison

In the book, Bou describes a particularly harrowing atrocity:

Every night I heard prisoners crying out from their cells, "Mother, help me!" One evening, I saw a 16-year-old guard walk in my room. He then approached an old man who was sleeping opposite me. He stamped on the chest of that old man again and again. I did not know why he did so or what was wrong with that old man. I heard that old man groaning as his mouth bled. No one was able to help anyone else. At 9:00pm, the man passed away. I was so anxious over that tragedy, and I thought about whom the next victim might be.

The latest estimate of the number of victims who died at S-21 is 18,063. Of the victims, 12 (8 adults, 4 children) are known to have survived.

Today, the former S-21 prison has been converted into the Tuol Sleng Museum, which now records the terrible suffering and serves as a testament to the genocide crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge occupation of the city.

The Killing Fields at Choeung Ek:

Photo: author. Choeung Ek is 11 km south west of Phnom Penh

Photo: author

Photo: author, Entrance to Choeung Ek

Choeung Ek, is one of the mass grave sites of the Killing Fields, where the Khmer Rouge executed over a million men, women and children between 1975 and 1979.

Photo: author, the large scale Stupa for the mudered victims found at Choeung Ek

Today, Choeung Ek is a peaceful memorial with a tall Buddhist stupa filled with skulls and bones, arranged by sex and age, to honour the victims.

Photo: author, It is only went you walk much closer to the large Stupa, that you realise what it contains.

Photo: author, Over 8000 skulls, arranged by sex and age are visible behind the clear glass panels of the 17 storey Memorial Stupa, which was erected in 1988.

Photo: author

A truck was used to transport victims to be exterminated from Tuol Sleng prison (S-21) and other places in the country, to Choeung Ek.

The truck would arrive 2 or 3 times a month. Each truck held 20 to 30 frightened, blindfolded and silent prisoners.

When the truck arrived, the victims were led directly to be executed at the pits or were sent to be detained in the dark, gloomy prison nearby.

After 7th January 1979 one truck remained, but it has been taken away since.

The remains of 8985 people, many of whom were bound and blindfolded, were exhumed in 1980 from mass graves in what was once an orchard; 43 of the 129 communal graves here have been left untouched.

Photo: author, site of the mass graves at Choeung Ek.

After the mass graves were exhumed in 1980, every year during heavy monsoon rains, some undiscovered, buried rags of victims' clothes rise up and come to the surface of the soil. The rags are collected as a memorial to the dead.

Photo: author, Rags of victims’ clothes.

Photo: author

During the annual monsoon rainy season, broken bones also continue to rise to the surface.

Photo: author

The Cherry Tree/Magic Tree was used as a tool to hang a loudspeaker, which projected very loud music to disguise and hide the screams and moans of the victims, whilst they were being executed.

Photo: author, The Cherry Tree/The Magic Tree.

Photo: author

Babies and young children were slaughtered by smashing their heads against the tree trunk below.

Photo: author

The remains of the babies and young children were then deposited in mass graves. Many were naked.

Photo: author

Key Personnel under the Pol Pot Regime:

SON SEN (alias Comrade Khiev)

Son sen was born on June 12, 1930 in Travinh, Southern Vietnam. His wife was Yun Yat (alias Comrade Ath) who was Minister of Education and Culture of Democratic Kampuchea.

He studied in France between 1950 and 1956 and joined the French Communist Party. In 1963, he fled to the jungle, escaping from the police. He became Chief of Staff of the Cambodian People’s National Liberation Armed Forces in 1971.

In 1976, Son Sen was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense and was directly responsible for the S-21 prison. Son Sen and his whole family were killed under orders from Pol Pot on June 10, 1997.

DUCH (original name Kaing Guek Eav)

Duch was born in the early 1940s in Kampong Thom. He studied the Baccalaureate in Mathematics at Sisowath High School and won second place in a nationwide mathematics examination.

Duch worked as a maths teacher in Kampong Thom. In 1964, he was appointed an official of the Teacher Training school. Duch joined the communist Party of Kampuchea in 1970. He became the Director of S-21.

Duch defected from the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s and allegedly became a Christian.

When eventually found hiding near the Thai border and captured in May 1999, Duch was charged with crimes against humanity.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC, more widely referred to as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal) was established in 2003 to bring to justice the most senior members of the Khmer Rouge regime. Although it formed part of the Cambodian court system, the ECCC was a “hybrid” international criminal tribunal combining elements of domestic and international law, regulated by an agreement drawn up between the UN and the Government of Cambodia in June 2003. The ECCC was made up of Cambodian and international judges and personnel. The national and international components of the tribunal were separately funded.

In 2010, Duch became the first senior Khmer Rouge leader to be found guilty of crimes against humanity, torture and murder.

Mr. Meng, I have been especially moved by you. We lived in the same establishment and you were a healthy man. I was shocked to see you on 28 February 2008 before the Co-Investi-gating Judges. I would like to have responded to your wishes, but it was beyond my capacity because this work was done by my subordinates. I would presume that your wife was killed at Cheung Ek. Meanwhile, to be sure, I would like to suggest you kindly ask Comrade Huy who may know more details about her fate.

Please accept my deepest respects towards the soul of your wife.

Duch, addressing former prisoner and S-21 survivor Bou Meng, Transcript of 1 July 2009, page 88 Lines 22-25; page 89 Lines 1-7, Source: ECCC Archives

The UN-backed ECCC tribunal imposed a consolidated sentence of 35 years in prison on Duch. He died in 2020.

Reflections:

The UN helped establish the ECCC tribunal to try the surviving leaders, which began work in 2009.

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid spent, only three former Khmer Rouge have ever been sentenced - Comrade Duch, the regime's head of state Khieu Samphan and Pol Pot's second-in-command, Nuon Chea, who died in 2019, after being convicted of genocide. Pol Pot himself died in 1998.

Writing this has left me deeply upset and drained. But it was imperative that I did.

We can all only hope that History - whether the genocide in the Nazi concentration camps of WWII or the genocide under the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge dictatorship in Cambodia - enables all of us to learn from the past, to be ready for the future. Vigilance is vital.

In my next article on my travels in Vietnam and Cambodia, I travel by road to Siem Reap. I learn about the traditional Cambodian dance Apsara and I meet brave and intelligent rats (yes rats!) who have been trained to detect landmines.

I do hope that you will join me.

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