DUCH TALKS TORTURE, VIETNAMESE AT KRT

On his fourth day of testimony for Case 002/02 against Khmer Rouge leaders Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, former S-21 chief Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, continued to deny any instances of rape took place at the infamous Khmer Rouge detention center and was questioned further about interrogation tactics as well as the treatment of Vietnamese prisoners.

Continuing her line of questioning on rape at S-21, Civil Party Co-Lawyer Marie Guiraud described a sexual assault involving a stick that was confirmed at the center by previous witnesses and asked Mr. Guek Eav what had been done to the soldier after he was accused.

In line with last week’s testimony, Mr. Guek Eav said he tried to punish the soldier, but was not allowed to because of “party rules.”

“I was angry. I told them to remove him from the women’s interrogation unit and I reported it to Son Sen,” he said. “I do not have the authority to make an arrest, so I tried to transfer him to another post. But no one reacted to my report so no one was ever arrested.”

He claimed to have created a special interrogation unit made up of the wives of the facility’s leaders because of the incident, but Ms. Guiraud immediately showed he may have been lying – two interrogators who worked at S-21 and testified previously said they had never seen any female interrogation unit and were often asked to interrogate women themselves.

She then moved on to sex and marriages at S-21, and questioned what happened to prisoners caught having sex.

“If people were caught in action outside of marriage, they were smashed,” he said. “Some were allowed, but most were arrested for misconduct.”

He added that the issue became more of a problem later on in the Khmer Rouge reign, even saying one man fled and joined an opposing army because his request for marriage was rejected.

Mr. Guek Eav harped on this point, often saying only cases like these, where prisoners were caught having consensual sex, were the only ones found. Rape, he said, was nonexistent.

“There were no cases of violent rape,” he said. “But there were cases of love.”

Torture and the Vietnamese

Mr. Guek Eav continued his attempts to partially absolve himself when questioned about torture tactics used at S-21. National Civil Party Lead Co-Lawyer Pich Ang asked him about testimony from a witness who claims to have had the nails on his big toes removed with pliers and a finger broken. Interrogators also put needles into his toes repeatedly.

“I instructed him [his subordinate] to stop this kind of practice,” he said of the toe nail removal. “I authorized electrocution. But I forbid them from killing any prisoners because we needed their confession.”

The need for confessions took new importance with Vietnamese soldiers who had been captured by the Khmer Rouge. Starting in January 1978, after the first Vietnamese soldier was brought to S-21, recordings of their confessions would be broadcast over loudspeakers on direct orders from Mr. Chea.

Mr. Chea would often edit the confessions to fit the needs and desires of the Khmer Rouge leaders. They even took the time to create a film about the Vietnamese army, using detained soldiers to act in the film before murdering them outside S-21.

Despite constant denials, obfuscations and question-dodging, Mr. Guek Eav did openly question and criticize the Khmer Rouge tactic of burying the dead after they were killed, saying the practice was not part of Khmer culture. Buddhist tradition generally calls for cremation as opposed to burials.

“For prisoners, after they were smashed, they were buried,” he said. “That was against our tradition. Against our customs.”

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/26076/duch-talks-torture--vietnamese-at-krt/

DUCH GRILLED ON CHILD MURDERS

In his second day of testimony for Case 002/02 at the Khmer Rouge tribunal yesterday, Kaing Guek Eav, the former head of Khmer Rouge detention center S-21, was grilled by Assistant Prosecutor Dale Lysak about how the Khmer Rouge, and specifically S-21 prison, dealt with relatives of prisoners, children of people who were executed and pregnant women.
 

Mr. Lysak touched on the subject during Mr. Guek Eav’s testimony on Tuesday and continued to dive deeper into understanding how the Khmer Rouge organized the detainment of women and children.
 

“Spouses and children of enemies of the regime were treated the same way as enemies of the regime,” said Mr. Guek Eav, also known as Duch. “Even when senior regime officials were arrested, their wives were arrested too.”
 

But his cadres rarely interrogated wives or children, deeming them “not important.” He claimed that before April 1975, “children were spared and raised. In that time we had no principles to smash children.”
 

But later, he says he was “instructed to kill the wives of soldiers who we thought were spying on us,” illustrating symptoms of the paranoia within the Khmer Rouge regime that would later be touched on as well during his testimony.
 

He described an instance when a group of children was brought to S-21, and he complained to his superiors that “raising children at S-21 was impossible.”
 

“But the party center told me, ‘have a firm stance and separate friends from enemies’,” he said. “I tried my best to rescue the children, but my efforts were not successful.”
 

During the trial for Nuon Chea, Pol Pot’s deputy, and Khieu Samphan, the Khmer Rouge head of state, on a multitude of charges including genocide, Mr. Guek Eav went on to explain that when it came to the children of anyone they deemed a “traitor,” Son Sen himself said revenge should be everyone’s focus, and ‘eye for an eye’ should be a guiding principle.
 

Testimony on family purges then transitioned into the frequent Khmer Rouge purges of its own forces, and what happened to the family members of those killed. Mr. Guek Eav cited his own experience of being fearful of what might happen to him after one of his superiors, Vorn Vet, was arrested in 1978.
 

Mr. Vet and his deputy Cheng Orn were both detained along with their wives.
 

“There was no purpose interrogating the women,” he said. “The main focus was Brother Vorn. I assume his family was smashed.”
As regime forces arrested Mr. Vet, Mr. Guek Eav thought back to a meeting he had with him once, where he was told to be careful and watch who he trusted.
 

“I was so scared I could not work,” he said of the time after Mr. Vet had been arrested. “I had to stay along party lines because I was afraid I would be disappeared. If I was disappeared, my family would be disappeared as well.”
 

The fear and relentless paranoia was intentional, he said. Mr. Sen, head of the Communist Party of Kampuchea’s (CMK) security apparatus, reveled in “instilling fear” in his subordinates.
 

“Everyone was so fearful of being arrested because usually the arrests were done to people who were linked along the same lines,” he told the court. Even the interrogators at S-21, often attempting to confirm the paranoid suspicions of their superiors, were not safe from the purges.
 

Mr. Guek Eav said there were approximately 33 interrogators at S-21 at any given time, but the number fluctuated and often decreased “because some were found to be traitors and had to be smashed.”
 

Despite strict stipulations on so many aspects of life and specifically delineated party structures within the Khmer Rouge, Mr. Guek Eav said there were no specific rules on what to do with the family members of those being interrogated at S-21. Although party leaders told them to kill the children of “traitors” to stop “revenge killings,” Mr. Guek Eav claimed there was nothing specific ever said about what was to be done with detained family members. More often than not, everyone in the family was killed regardless of age, he said.
 

“If he only gave me instructions for four people, and not for the others, then they had to be smashed,” he added. “There was never any instruction not to kill children, women or pregnant women.”
 

Mr. Guek Eav confirmed an official document that said “interrogate four, smash the others,” at the bottom of a list of 18 family members, two of whom were four and six years old. All 18 were killed on April 7, 1977.
 

But throughout all of his testimony yesterday, it was often what he did not remember that ended up being the most harrowing.
 

Mr. Lysak went through a series of very specific instances hoping to get confirmation of murder from Mr. Guek Eav. But his repeated line of “I do not recall” left a disturbing pall in the courtroom. Many times he would say that so many people were killed or moved through S-21 that he was unable to remember specific situations.
 

He gave the same answer to two disturbing questions posed to him. There was a document from S-21 indicating that 160 children had been murdered in one day. Another said eight near-term pregnant women were executed in 1977 after being transported to S-21 from Prey Sar.
 

He could not recall the reason why either group was executed despite signing off on both.

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/25930/duch-grilled-on-child-murders/

DUCH: NUON CHEA CLAIMS ‘NONSENSE’

Attempting to draw links between Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea and infamous Khmer Rouge detention center S-21 prison, Assistant Prosecutor Dale Lysak spent most of the day grilling Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch to many, on the stand yesterday during Case 002/02 at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
 

Mr. Guek Eav, the first Khmer Rouge leader convicted of crimes against humanity in 2010 and sentenced to life in prison, spoke openly about Mr. Chea’s connections to the prison despite his relative reluctance later on to admit that soldiers of the Lon Nol regime had been arrested and killed at the detention center.
 

Mr. Lysak preempted Mr. Guek Eav’s testimony with a 2012 statement from Mr. Chea denying any connection to the prison.
 

“I have never been responsible for the operation of S-21. What Duch accused me of is unjust,” Mr. Chea said. “I have never ordered, or received documents from Duch. I have never been the superior of Duch.”
 

But Mr. Guek Eav refuted that statement immediately, citing direct mention of Mr. Chea by his own superior, Son Sen, and multiple documents signed by Mr. Chea giving direct orders. He also said it was agreed upon at an official party congress that any “traitors” had to be “smashed.”
 

“Everything comes from the party structure. His words are nonsense,” he said.
 

He told a story about a specific order from Mr. Chea involving the murder of Mr. Sen’s uncle and other relatives, illustrating the frequent specificity of Mr. Chea’s orders and his hands-on involvement in the activities of the prison and the Khmer Rouge’s larger security apparatus. Before a short meeting at a school in August 1977, Mr. Guek Eav said he had not met Mr. Chea in person.
 

Mr. Lysak used the rest of the day to focus on the treatment of Lon Nol soldiers after the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh. Specifically, he wanted to know who and how many soldiers passed through S-21. But Mr. Guek Eav was often unable to give him the answers he needed, either dodging questions or denying any knowledge of Lon Nol regime soldiers held in S-21.
 

Other than hearing second hand that government soldiers were being rounded up during the evacuation of Phnom Penh, Mr. Guek Eav was unable to directly verify any mass killings of Lon Nol soldiers.
 

“I had no experience dealing with former soldiers,” he said.
 

He did take Mr. Lysak through a shortened version of his own path to leadership, telling the court he was initially tasked with searching the homes of former Lon Nol soldiers and even Lon Nol’s home itself, gathering documents and hiding them at S-21. By October 1975, his boss was sent to the battlefront and he was chosen as his replacement.
 

The cross examination then turned to specific deaths at S-21, ranging from the uncle of Ta Nat, Mr. Guek Eav’s superior at S-21, and relatives of Long Boret, the prime minister from 1973 to 1975. In one instance, Mr. Guek Eav inadvertently described a horrifyingly routine practice at S-21 of prisoners being used for live surgical experiments.
 

But the point of the line of questioning seemed to concern the deaths of family members of notable Cambodians aligned with movements or forces opposing the Khmer Rouge, potentially pointing to involvement and direct orders from senior Khmer Rouge leaders like Mr. Chea.
 

When asked about the fate of the wife and young children of a professor who was killed during protests preceding the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh, Mr. Guek Eav said he could not remember specifically what happened to them, but knew how most prisoners at S-21 ended up.
 

“After the revolution, if the parents were killed, the children were killed as well,” he said. “As long as he was arrested, he or she was never released.”

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/25872/duch--noun-chea-claims----nonsense---/

‘EVERYDAY’ REMEMBRANCE

Many of us have been in this situation: you go back to your childhood home and are instantly reminded of specific events in your life. The fall off the third step on the staircase in the 5th grade, the fight with your sister in the hallway when you were 15.
 

Your surroundings often serve as an immediate trigger for a backlog of memories that, unintentionally or not, your mind decided to store away in the recesses of your mind.
 

This idea is amplified a thousand times over in relation to Khmer Rouge survivors forced to live amongst landmarks, both seen and unseen, of the tragedy they lived through, and serves as the topic of Everyday Experiences of Genocide Survivors in Landscapes of Violence in Cambodia, by Savina Sirik.
 

Ms. Sirik, a researcher who spent eight years working at the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) before getting her Masters in Geography from Kent State University in the United States, looks at the way the Khmer Rouge cemented violence into the everyday lives and surroundings of the country’s citizens, among a host of other interesting topics. 
 

Many of these landscapes, despite the lack of or dilapidation of physical memorials, now serve as personal reminders of tragedy for local residents, many of whom still live in the same homes and communities they resided in during the Khmer Rouge years.
 

“Through interviews with Khmer Rouge survivors, I discuss how men and women lived through the genocide years and how they conduct their day-to-day activities in the present amid sites of past mass violence,” she writes.
 

She goes on to detail the way structures and landscapes were taken over by the Khmer Rouge, used and then abandoned again. She focuses on Khmer Rouge survivors currently living around Chamkar Siv, a former Khmer Rouge prison located in Prek Ta Meak commune, Kandal province.
 

Residents of the commune are forced to live amongst landmarks, both personal and widely identified, of the violence that occurred during the Khmer Rouge. Rice fields that drivers pass by once served as mass burial sites. Schoolhouses and temples were once Khmer Rouge offices and prisons. The book delves into the effect this has on how survivors remember and commemorate those lost as well as deal with their own memories of personal tragedy.
 

“The potential for these sites to be memorialized or used to represent the past violence have largely been dictated by politics – the politics of memory that have been employed as a tool to justify the existing political regime.”
 

This idea blends into another topic she thoroughly researches – the politics of memory and its effect on people who were not there to witness what happened. She goes on to discuss how, once the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), led by current Prime Minister Hun Sen and backed by Vietnamese forces, took Phnom Penh from the Khmer Rouge in 1979, one of the first things the PRK did was create memorials and museums at the infamous S-21 prison and Choeung Ek Killing Fields.
 

“The significant message that Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek sent to the local population in the early period of the PRK regime, and which is still apparent today, was that the population needed to support the PRK government in order to prevent the Khmer Rouge from returning to power,” the book states. 
 

“In order to justify the presence of Vietnam and distance the PRK regime from the crimes committed by the DK [Khmer Rouge] regime, the new emerging state established a narrative that labeled DK a ‘fascist’ regime, in alignment with Hitler’s Germany,” she writes. “It was also important for the PRK regime to argue that what happened in Cambodia during the DK regime, and particularly at Tuol Sleng, was a genocide like that of the Holocaust during World War II.”
 

She says that while their objective was not malicious, the memorials did serve a very specific political purpose. By highlighting the absolute worst of the Khmer Rouge, they in turn legitimized their own takeover and justified their rule of the country thereafter.
 

* * * 

The dissemination of the state-sanctioned narrative of the Khmer Rouge mostly lines up with the experiences of people across the country, she writes. But this narrative may also do a disservice to the wide range of memories related to the Khmer Rouge. 
 

The dominant narrative often has an effect on the way people personally remember situations. Many people mesh the official story with their own, sometimes even forgetting their own specific experience in favor of the common narrative.
 

But what brings people back to their own personal memories are often landmarks – significant places or events that people will always remember regardless of the amount of time that passes.
 

“By exploring the experiences of survivors who lived through the violence and continue to live among sites where mass violence was perpetrated during and after the Khmer Rouge regime, this study reaches two major conclusions: 1) Although individual experiences vary, the ways in which survivors narrate their experiences appear to relate to standard or collective narratives widely disseminated at the national level; and 2) Public ceremonies and monuments are not enough,” she writes.
 

The last conclusion is the lynchpin for the book, and she goes on to explain how the current monuments and ceremonies are supplemented, or even replaced, by hyper-local, and sometimes intensely personal, displays of remembrance, ranging from private annual ceremonies in homes to traditional Buddhist gatherings at temples or stupas.
 

This also plays a role in the way the country’s young people interact with the Khmer Rouge and its memory. Many survivors interviewed in the book said they were dismayed by the lack of understanding and, at times, outright denial of facts by a new generation that cannot fathom the idea that Khmer people would do the things historians and survivors have described to other Khmer people. 
 

“These sites constitute unmarked violent landscapes, identifiable only by local residents, and remain invisible to visitors who merely pass by the area. This is especially true for members of the younger generation born after the atrocities,” she writes, adding that having young people understand and think about what happened will not only have an effect on them, but on survivors as well.
 

“Many survivors… stressed that having their children learn and accept the history of the DK regime validated their own experiences and personal narratives,” she writes. 
 

Though efforts by DC-Cam to hold events and include the country’s history in textbooks are working to better educate young people, many survivors wonder whether the younger generation will ever truly understand what happened during the Khmer Rouge.
 

Thy, a woman Ms. Sirik spoke to for the book, said: “I think even if I keep telling them, children still do not believe me 100 percent. It’s hard for them to believe that such an atrocity could have taken place in their country and against their parents.” 
 

The book is available at all Monument Bookshops across Cambodia, Laos and Burma. You also can find it at DC-Cam. 

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/25441/---everyday----remembrance/

SURVIVOR RECALLS CANNIBALISM AT TRIBUNAL

In harrowing testimony yesterday at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a witness described hearing about guards at the Au Kanseng Security Center in Ratanakkiri province disemboweling a sick and dying prisoner there so Khmer Rouge security officials could eat her gallbladder.
 

Answering questions for Case 002/02, Moeurng Chandy, a 62-year-old Takeo province native, described her life in Au Kanseng after being brought there in June of 1977. She spent the first two years of the Khmer Rouge regime takeover working on a rubber plantation near Ban Lung town. Along with three other women, she was arranged to marry a man in the village. She ended up with Phon Thol, who also testified at the court yesterday. The two have since divorced.  
 

She was unsure of why she and her husband were brought to the prison, but testimony from other witnesses and research into the Khmer Rouge leadership found that Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary and Son Sen, three of the most senior officials within the Khmer Rouge at the time, had ordered that all workers at Ms. Chandy’s rubber plantation be arrested and brought to the prison in June of that year out of fear that a revolt was fomenting. Detainees estimate that 400-600 prisoners were held there at its peak.
 

“I didn’t know what I did. One day at a village committee meeting, the village chief said Thom, who was running all of Ratanakkiri, ordered me in. They put me in a truck after,” she said.
 

Three pairs of men and women joined her and her husband on the drive to the prison, which was about an hour or two away, according to Ms. Chandy’s testimony. “Once I got off the truck I knew I was being taken to a prison. The location was isolated and I saw people locked inside,” she told the court. “When I arrived in the area, I realized I would die. I did not know why I was sent there, but I thought that would be the end of my life.”
 

It was only after arriving at the prison that she realized she was pregnant. In early 1978, with only a single medic and her cellmates to help her, she gave birth to a baby girl. Once she regained her strength, she was assigned to work in the kitchen to cook rice for the prison guards.
 

“I had no breast milk, so I had to feed my child palm juice. The situation was miserable,” she said.
 

Ms. Chandy was eventually moved from a locked cell to an unlocked room with a guard on the outside. She described a number of atrocities committed at the prison, some of which she said she saw firsthand.
 

Groups of 10-20 Jarai people from a village along the Vietnamese border were detained at the prison during her time there. She said the women were put in her facility and tied together by a single rope. After 10 days, the prison guards told them that they would be sent back to their village. Some of the women had small children with them, half of whom could not walk without their mothers.
 

Three days after watching this from her prison cell, she said she was picking vegetables in a garden when she saw a pit created by a bomb dropped from a B52 airplane. In the pit, she could see the bodies of people wearing the same clothes as the Jarai who were detained in her facility.  
 

“I smelled the decomposing bodies. I could tell they were Jarai from their clothing. I was talking to myself, asking if I would also share the same fate,” she said. “The pits were eventually covered, and the clothes of the Jarai were distributed to other prisoners in my building.”
 

The leader of the prison guards, Ta Ouy, stuck out in her memory as particularly cruel and vengeful. She witnessed him murder a young woman, and had to hold back tears as she described the scene.
 

“I saw him walking a woman to a field as I was picking vegetables. She was begging him for her life, but he hit her with the butt of his rifle,” Ms. Chandy told the tribunal. “I did not know her, or where she was from, but I remember her begging for her life as he smashed a hoe on her repeatedly.”
 

Ta Ouy was well known around the prison for his depravity, and especially by the kitchen staff, the witness said. Ms. Chandy said it was widely rumored around the facility that the prison guards had removed the gallbladder from a dying prisoner and ate it.
 

“The kitchen was along a road I used to walk. One person was so cruel and brutal. He used a bamboo stick from the wall to cut open bodies and remove the gallbladder. These people were dying,” she said. “Every time Ta Ouy left the kitchen, he said that he ate human gallbladders.”

This story ran on March 4, 2016.