RIGHTS-CAMBODIA: Decades Later, S-21 Survivors Recall Ordeal

• by Robert Carmichael (phnom penh)
• Thursday, July 09, 2009
• Inter Press Service

'They had a bunch of sticks and dropped it on the floor and it made a noise. I was asked to choose the stick I preferred. I said: ‘Whichever one I choose you will still beat me with it, so it is up to you, Brother, which one to use.’'

Those words comprise less than a minute of a full day of harrowing testimony delivered in Phnom Penh last week by Khmer Rouge survivor Bou Meng at the ongoing U.N.-backed tribunal, known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

Bou Meng was describing his experiences of torture at the security prison called S-21. Perceived enemies of the Khmer Rouge state known as Democratic Kampuchea were imprisoned, tortured and murdered at S-21 between 1975 and 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown.

More than 15,000 people were sent to the prison. Just a handful survived.

A famous photograph taken in the early 1980s shows the seven known survivors standing outside S-21, their arms around each other. Four of the seven men have since died.

The men survived solely because they had skills that the prison commandant, Comrade Duch, found useful.

Last week represented the chance for the three survivors in that photograph to tell the court of their experiences at the trial of Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, for crimes against humanity. Duch faces life in jail if convicted.

Their testimony brought to life the horrors of the period between 1975 and 1979, during which two million Cambodians died.

The three men were just ordinary people, caught up in a terrifying time: Cambodia in the 1970s as the Khmer Rouge regime began to consume itself. At the time of his arrest, Bou Meng was making agricultural tools at a cooperative, and his wife worked in the rice fields.

He told the court that the couple were arrested in mid-1977 and transported to S-21. They were separated on entering the prison, and he never saw his wife again. Bou Meng was photographed, stripped, and shackled with other prisoners to a metal bar in what had been a classroom at the former school.

'In that room there were about 30 to 40 of us. In one corner I saw a tall, white foreigner who was detained there as well near me. He received the same thin gruel ration as the rest of us. We had very little rice. I was so skinny. I had no strength,' he said.

All three men spoke of an unbearable lack of food and water, and of being treated worse than animals. Prisoners at S-21 were tortured as a matter of course – they suffered beatings, whippings and electric shocks.

The point of the torture was purely to get them to confess to their supposed crimes. The three survivors, who arrested separately between mid-1977 and late 1978, were accused of having joined the CIA and the KGB in a supposed bid to bring down the government.

In Orwellian style, to be at S-21 was to be guilty. So there was no chance of proving your innocence. The only option was to confess, after which you would be killed – or ‘smashed’ in the language of the time.

And as Bou Meng told the court, querying why you had been arrested was pointless. The state – known as Angkar – was regarded as unerring, all-seeing and all-knowing.

'I said (to the guards): ‘My wife and I are orphans. What mistakes have we made?’' Bou Meng told the court. 'They replied: ‘You, you contemptible. You don’t have to ask. You know that Angkar has many eyes like a pineapple. If you hadn’t made a mistake, Angkar would not have arrested you.’'

Bou Meng, who survived an extraordinary 18 months at S-21, was falsely accused, as were many of S-21’s inmates including the other two witnesses who spoke last week.

Vann Nath, who is today one of Cambodia’s most famous artists, told the court that the Democratic Kampuchea regime had robbed him of his dignity.

He explained how 60 prisoners were shackled in a large room at S-21. Inmates died regularly, and would remain shackled to the living until late evening when their corpses were removed. After a month of surviving eating just three teaspoons of rice gruel a day, a guard came for him. Vann Nath gave up hope, knowing he would be killed.

But he wasn’t – Duch had heard of Vann Nath’s skills as a painter. Angkar needed people to paint portraits of its leaders, and so Vann Nath was put to work alongside Bou Meng, painting giant canvases. Vann Nath survived for a year.

The third witness, a mechanic called Chum Mey who is now 79, told the court how he was arrested and taken to S-21. He eventually broke under torture and confessed to being part of a non-existent KGB/CIA plot.

But instead of being killed, he was allowed to live because his skill – fixing sewing machines – was useful to Duch, who needed someone who could mend machinery. Chum Mey was put to work fixing sewing machines, a water pump and even typewriters.

The three men eventually got their freedom after the Vietnamese-backed liberation army invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh on Jan. 7, 1979.

The losses suffered by the three survivors represent a microcosm of the larger catastrophe wrought upon Cambodia: Bou Meng’s wife was almost certainly murdered on Duch’s command at S-21. Chum Mey’s wife and four children died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Vann Nath’s wife survived the Khmer Rouge years, but their two children died.

And although none of them will forget their experiences, testifying did bring some relief. Bou Meng told the court: 'Now finally I am before the ECCC, and the ECCC can find justice for me. I feel so happy, even if 100 percent justice cannot be provided. Fifty or 60 percent justice is fine.'

Vann Nath too spoke of his hopes.

'I never imagined that I would be able to sit in this courtroom today to describe my plight and experience to the younger generation,' Vann Nath said. 'This is my privilege and my honour. I don’t want more than that. I want something intangible – justice for those who died. That is my only hope of what can be achieved by this chamber.'

Still, many survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime will never receive a satisfactory answer to perhaps the most important question – why did these terrible things happen to me?

As the former painter Bou Meng said: 'In our cooperative, my wife and I worked hard every day. Even today I cannot think what mistake I made.'

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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