Testimony

At the start of the revolution, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penn (the capital). A school, Tuol Sleng was turned into the most terrifying prison and torture camp (S21). Over 12,000 people were tortured there, and those that didn’t die, would be then taken out to the killing fields. Only 7 men survived, of which now only two are alive.

Chum Mey was a 47 yr old mechanic at the time, and therefore was considered an intellectual and dangerous to the regime. His family were rounded up and he was taken to the prison. He was beaten mercilessly, toe nails pulled out, fingers smashed and he was continually electrocuted.

One of the saddest and most macabre aspects of the Tuol Sleng prison was every prisoner was photographed and their details catalogued. This process required typewriters, which frequently broke. Chum Mey, with his mechanical training was able to fix them and so the only reason he was kept alive was to fix the typewriters.

For over two years he was kept it the most horrific conditions – truly quite unbelievable. All this time, he had no knowledge of his wife and four children.

Then one night, as the KR regime was collapsing, he was moved to another place. Unbelievably, and totally by chance he saw his wife and young son. They were driven out to a remote area, and then the guards started to open fire. His wife’s last words were ‘run they are going to kill us’. She promptly was shot and died, and they killed his three year old son. He escaped into woods and survived.

After he and I had spoken for a while, we went over to the very cell where he had been manacled to a floor. A space maybe 5ft by 2.5 ft – crudely partitioned brick cells, built within the original class rooms. On the balconies, a mesh of barbed wire netting to stop people intentionally jumping to their death, in order to avoid being taken to torture rooms.

As we sat in this cell, I took his picture and he talked further. I asked if any of his family had survived (there were three other children). His eyes filled with emotion; he simply shook his head and said no – no one survived.

It was the most humbling of encounters. Now aged 83, he is the most beautiful and graceful man. Tiny, and yet with an overwhelming aura of calm and greatness.

Between 2 to 3 million innocent victims were murdered.

Chum Mey survived because he could fix a typewriter.

Bou Meng is now in his late ’70s. One of only two men still alive who survived the torture chambers of the Khmer Rouge at the notorious S21 Tuol Sleng school.

Before the Khmer Rouge revolution, he was married with a young wife and a son & daughter. He was a painter and film maker, painting the giant posters that adorned cinemas advertising the ‘film now showing’ within.

During the war both his children were killed in the US bombing, and Buo, a committed communist joined the Khmer Rouge as so many did; simply to free their country of outside rule (the French, the US and the Vietnamese) and for his country to be independent. As Phnom Penh fell, he was a war artist. In the place of a gun, he carried artist materials as the Khmer Rouge marched into the city believing he was on the side of right. However in 1976 the Khmer Rouge started to arrest any educated people, artists, mechanics, even those wearing glasses. Year Zero had begun.

Bou Meng was summoned to an imaginary meeting, but immediately his hands were tied behind his back. Arrested, he was taken to S21 Tuol Sleng by his colleagues, where terrified he was thrown into the giant holding rooms awaiting torture. Surrounded by victims, he describes them as like ghosts of people – sunken eyes, desperate, beaten bodies…living monsters. He confesses to the torture being insufferable – no one can not confess, he tells me. So you agree to being a CIA agent in order to stop the pain; but such is the madness, once you have confessed you are tortured further, twice a day, to name the other CIA agents that you know…and so you say anyone’s names, anything or anybody to stop the agony. Death was guaranteed; either at S21 or the Killing Fields, there could be no escape.

Except one night the guards entered and demanded to know if anyone could paint. Bou raised his hand and he was shown a portrait. Could he, they demanded paint like this? He said he could, and they assured him if it was not good enough then they would kill him. However, satisfied with his work he was segregated, and given oil paints where he began to do portraits (from pictures) of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh and unbeknownst to him, Pol Pot. Imprisoned, but no longer tortured he could daily hear the screams and agony of others as he painted portraits all day. Sustained by his faith and a desperate hope that this would end, and that he would one day be reunited with his wife.

Frequently he asked after his wife, only to be assured that ‘Your wife was sent to work in the field’. It was not until after the collapse of the regime that he learned this was their grim cruel joke; his wife had been executed years before and her ‘working’ in the field meant that she was already fertiliser.

Bou survived because he could paint. The american war took his children, and the Khmer Rouge, his own people took his wife, other family and friends. As I sit with him one early evening in his home, surrounded by an adoring and attentive new wife and young family, street children loiter outside his veranda doors. He is a legend. Everyday he visits S21 and tells tourists and locals alike the history of the khmer Rouge regime.

No one must forget and there must be justice, he tells me.

In 1975, the Khmer Rouge won the war against the US. Under their leader Pol Pot, the KR entered the Cambodian capitol Phnom Penh, and told everyone to flee the city for at least three days as the USA would bomb it and that to leave their homes was for their own safety. They were told to simply go, take no belongings and that they could return when it was safe. With the population dispersed and effectively refugees in the countryside, it proved a classic divide and rule tactic; immediately the Khmer Rouge locked down the city and established their merciless and cruel regime.

Chandararith Ek was seven years old, with an older sister and younger brother, his father worked at the Palace and his mother was a teacher. Within weeks, all families were separated and Chandararith was taken to the work camps for boys aged 6-10 years in the hills. There, from 4.30am to early evening he worked daily either building booby traps used to kill the enemy or work in the rice fields. Stripped of his given name,

beaten, starved, over time he was entirely indoctrinated. Now called Sok (Cambodian for Friday or Monkey) he no longer remembered his family’s names or their faces. Daily his fellow boys died of starvation and illness, and his sole focus was on survival.

Four years later, as the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed, he was approached by a young girl a few years older than himself, and she asked him his name. Replying it was Sok, the girl continued to ask questions. Finally she mentioned a word from long ago, a nickname his parents had given him. He knew that he recognised the name, but could not recall why. “I am your sister” the girl said; incredibly she had recognised him. 

Together they approached one of the liberating Vietnamese soldiers who told them they could go and find their parents. All his sister could remember was their family name, and that they had lived in Phnom Penh. They set out to walk 400km to the city, asking people the way. Sleeping rough and eating what they could find, they walked for days towards the city only to find it closed by the new occupying force. 

For two months they camped outside, until finally the Vietnamese forces allowed people back in. Bombed and destroyed, it was unrecognisable in large part; Chandararith’s sister remembered they had lived near the US Embassy and they finally located the shell of their former home now gutted by fire. As they entered the site, there on the wall was a message written in charcoal. Having been denied any education by the Khmer Rouge, his sister tried to piece together the letters of the first word. Slowly it dawned on her that it was their family name. The message was from their father and it simply read, “I’m still alive. Please wait here”.

They duly made camp in the old house, and waited. For months, even though the city had been closed, their father had crept in under darkness to check the house. Now with the city open, incredibly at noon that day a man approached. Chandararith’s sister said “This is our father”. They hugged and cried, and he described the incredible emotion of so many memories flooding back including suddenly knowing his father’s face.

A local radio station, in a bid to try and reunite families destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, had launched a programme called ‘The voice of the victims’. People went on air, and told their story and whatever memories they had from the past. Chandararith’s father told his story on air, and remarkably his wife heard it and within weeks, all five members of the family had been reunited. They had all survived, when so many, literally tens of thousands had perished.