The Morung Express
An older Cambodian woman looks on during the funeral of a Khmer Rouge leader in Anlong Veng, Cambodia, Saturday, July 22, 2006. (AP Photo)
Phnom Penh, February 16 (Agencies): One of only five children who survived Tuol Sleng, the infamous Khmer Rouge interrogation centre, is to be a witness at the trial of the prison director Kaing Kech Ieu, alias Comrade Duch. Until recently nothing was known of the children who were discovered hiding at the prison by Vietnamese journalists as Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge retreated from Phnom Penh in 1979. But Norng Chan Phal, 38, who has lived in rural Cambodia since he was freed 30 years ago, said that he had decided to come forward to get justice for his parents, who were killed at Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21. Duch will attend a pre-trial hearing tomorrow for alleged crimes against humanity, torture and homicide committed while he was director of Tuol Sleng.
Between 1975 and 1979 about 17,000 men, women and children were sent to the interrogation centre accused of counter-revolutionary crimes. Only 14 adults and five children were found alive. The trial is the first of a major Khmer Rouge official for 30 years, and will be followed by those of four other leaders: Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's "Brother Number Two"; Ieng Sary, the Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister; his wife Ieng Thirith, who was Minister of Social Affairs; and Khieu Samphan, who served as President.
Norng Chan Phal's evidence at the UN-backed trial will provide the first first-hand knowledge of the experience of child prisoners at Tuol Sleng. At an emotional reunion today with his rescuers, the photographer Ho Van Tay and the journalist Dimh Phong, Norng Chan Phal described his arrest and incarceration in the prison's children's unit. He was 8 years old when the Khmer Rouge took him with his mother and two siblings to Tuol Sleng after his father, a Khmer Rouge cadre, had been imprisoned there.
"When we arrived at Tuol Sleng the Khmer Rouge soldiers pushed my mother from the vehicle," he said. "I didn't know what she had done wrong, I didn't understand why they were punching and kicking her and treating her so badly.
"After they photographed her, and weighed and measured her, they put her in a cell. The next morning as they took me to a workshop in another building I looked back and I saw my mum looking through the window at us. I never saw her again. "I miss my mother. When I visited the prison again [yesterday] I was shocked and saddened. I looked at where my mother had looked through the window at me and I pitied her so much.
"Duch has blood on his hands." Ho Van Tay and Dimh Phong were among the first to enter Tuol Sleng in the chaotic days after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, led to the former high school by the stench of rotting bodies. Inside, they found decapitated bodies still shackled to iron beds, and chickens pecking at bloated corpses in the grounds. The instruments of torture – vats of water in which the prisoners were drowned, axe handles and pincers to tear out their fingernails and toenails – were still scattered in the interrogation rooms. Ho Van Tay's film footage of the horrors of Tuol Sleng will be shown in court tomorrow.
Scores of children were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng; under Khmer Rouge rules, when a party cadre was arrested, his wife and children were also taken to be exterminated. In the children's unit, the youngsters were looked after by female soldiers, fed a starvation diet of four spoons of watery gruel a day.
Although they were kept apart from the adult prisoners, Norng Chan Phal said that he often witnessed the cruelty of the guards. "The staff were very brutal," he said. "I saw them punching and kicking a prisoner who was shackled and blindfolded." As the Khmer Rouge fled, they ordered the child prisoners into a truck, but Norng Chan Phal hid with the other children. "A woman came to collect the remaning children but I didn't see my mother so I didn't get in the vehicle," he said. "The Khmer Rouge soldiers came to look for us but they could not find us. We hid and hoped my mother would come and find us.
"I don't know how long we hid for, but we had no food, and we were very weak. One of the other children died of hunger." About 1.7 million people – nearly a quarter of the population – died during the four years that the Khmer Rouge was in power after it overthrew the American-backed government in 1975. Pol Pot died in 1978 and those of his inner circle who survived have until now remained unpunished.
An older Cambodian woman looks on during the funeral of a Khmer Rouge leader in Anlong Veng, Cambodia, Saturday, July 22, 2006. (AP Photo)
Phnom Penh, February 16 (Agencies): One of only five children who survived Tuol Sleng, the infamous Khmer Rouge interrogation centre, is to be a witness at the trial of the prison director Kaing Kech Ieu, alias Comrade Duch. Until recently nothing was known of the children who were discovered hiding at the prison by Vietnamese journalists as Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge retreated from Phnom Penh in 1979. But Norng Chan Phal, 38, who has lived in rural Cambodia since he was freed 30 years ago, said that he had decided to come forward to get justice for his parents, who were killed at Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21. Duch will attend a pre-trial hearing tomorrow for alleged crimes against humanity, torture and homicide committed while he was director of Tuol Sleng.
Between 1975 and 1979 about 17,000 men, women and children were sent to the interrogation centre accused of counter-revolutionary crimes. Only 14 adults and five children were found alive. The trial is the first of a major Khmer Rouge official for 30 years, and will be followed by those of four other leaders: Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's "Brother Number Two"; Ieng Sary, the Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister; his wife Ieng Thirith, who was Minister of Social Affairs; and Khieu Samphan, who served as President.
Norng Chan Phal's evidence at the UN-backed trial will provide the first first-hand knowledge of the experience of child prisoners at Tuol Sleng. At an emotional reunion today with his rescuers, the photographer Ho Van Tay and the journalist Dimh Phong, Norng Chan Phal described his arrest and incarceration in the prison's children's unit. He was 8 years old when the Khmer Rouge took him with his mother and two siblings to Tuol Sleng after his father, a Khmer Rouge cadre, had been imprisoned there.
"When we arrived at Tuol Sleng the Khmer Rouge soldiers pushed my mother from the vehicle," he said. "I didn't know what she had done wrong, I didn't understand why they were punching and kicking her and treating her so badly.
"After they photographed her, and weighed and measured her, they put her in a cell. The next morning as they took me to a workshop in another building I looked back and I saw my mum looking through the window at us. I never saw her again. "I miss my mother. When I visited the prison again [yesterday] I was shocked and saddened. I looked at where my mother had looked through the window at me and I pitied her so much.
"Duch has blood on his hands." Ho Van Tay and Dimh Phong were among the first to enter Tuol Sleng in the chaotic days after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, led to the former high school by the stench of rotting bodies. Inside, they found decapitated bodies still shackled to iron beds, and chickens pecking at bloated corpses in the grounds. The instruments of torture – vats of water in which the prisoners were drowned, axe handles and pincers to tear out their fingernails and toenails – were still scattered in the interrogation rooms. Ho Van Tay's film footage of the horrors of Tuol Sleng will be shown in court tomorrow.
Scores of children were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng; under Khmer Rouge rules, when a party cadre was arrested, his wife and children were also taken to be exterminated. In the children's unit, the youngsters were looked after by female soldiers, fed a starvation diet of four spoons of watery gruel a day.
Although they were kept apart from the adult prisoners, Norng Chan Phal said that he often witnessed the cruelty of the guards. "The staff were very brutal," he said. "I saw them punching and kicking a prisoner who was shackled and blindfolded." As the Khmer Rouge fled, they ordered the child prisoners into a truck, but Norng Chan Phal hid with the other children. "A woman came to collect the remaning children but I didn't see my mother so I didn't get in the vehicle," he said. "The Khmer Rouge soldiers came to look for us but they could not find us. We hid and hoped my mother would come and find us.
"I don't know how long we hid for, but we had no food, and we were very weak. One of the other children died of hunger." About 1.7 million people – nearly a quarter of the population – died during the four years that the Khmer Rouge was in power after it overthrew the American-backed government in 1975. Pol Pot died in 1978 and those of his inner circle who survived have until now remained unpunished.
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