Ka-set
By Duong Sokha
16-02-2009
The Club of Cambodian Journalists organised on Monday February 16th a press conference to present a survivor of the S-21 detention centre, Norng Chanphal – who suddenly decided on February 4th to file an application to register as civil party to the trial of Duch, that is after the deadline of February 2nd – as well as the Vietnamese makers of a documentary shot in the infamous prison in January 1979, when Vietnamese troops arrived in Phnom Penh. A ten-minute film was handed to the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) headed by Youk Chhang and the Khmer Rouge tribunal.
Dinh Phong, now aged 71, talked about the filming of the documentary, which his Vietnamese television crew had the opportunity to shoot in Tuol Sleng before any other foreign reporters. “We arrived together with the Vietnamese army, who came to liberate the country. (…) And we were told that there was a school – Tuol Sleng – where children's cries could be heard coming from. When we got there, the place had a pestilent smell. Soldiers then started mine clearing operations. As we entered the school, we realised it was actually a prison. We heard the children's cries and discovered five of them in the kitchen, hidden behind heaps of clothes. Their bodies were covered with mosquito bites and one of them was already dead. The others were in very poor condition. The oldest one, Norng Chanphal, was also in a very bad shape and was struggling to stand up. We gave them water and food and brought them to the Cambodian army. We continued our visit and discovered the torture room, where the floor was strewn with handcuffs, shovels, hatchets... and decomposing corpses eaten by worms and whose feet were still chained. We also saw a room where prisoners were forced to carve statues of Pol Pot and another covered with photographs of prisoners taken before their execution. Our images were broadcast all over the world from January 1979. Tomorrow, we will show this document at the initial hearing because we want these mass crimes to be condemned,” the Vietnamese recounted.
On the previous day, he said he had gone back to S-21, that has now become the genocide museum. “Everything there has changed, except for the kitchen! (…) We entered the place feeling the same terror that gripped us the first time in 1979...”
His then colleague and friend, camera operator Ho Van Thay, aged 75, has also frozen the gruesome discovery in his memory. “We had to walk on the corpses to move from one room to another... What cruelty... We wanted to share the truth with the world by shooting these pictures. Vietnamese television is the only one to possess the film reel. We also filmed grounds covered with skulls in the countryside and the forests... Tomorrow, I will meet in Siem Reap a child who I had found with a slit throat and was able to survive...”
The two veterans explained that they did not want to testify before the Khmer Rouge tribunal because their documentary says enough on the atrocities perpetrated in S-21.
By Duong Sokha
16-02-2009
The Club of Cambodian Journalists organised on Monday February 16th a press conference to present a survivor of the S-21 detention centre, Norng Chanphal – who suddenly decided on February 4th to file an application to register as civil party to the trial of Duch, that is after the deadline of February 2nd – as well as the Vietnamese makers of a documentary shot in the infamous prison in January 1979, when Vietnamese troops arrived in Phnom Penh. A ten-minute film was handed to the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) headed by Youk Chhang and the Khmer Rouge tribunal.
Dinh Phong, now aged 71, talked about the filming of the documentary, which his Vietnamese television crew had the opportunity to shoot in Tuol Sleng before any other foreign reporters. “We arrived together with the Vietnamese army, who came to liberate the country. (…) And we were told that there was a school – Tuol Sleng – where children's cries could be heard coming from. When we got there, the place had a pestilent smell. Soldiers then started mine clearing operations. As we entered the school, we realised it was actually a prison. We heard the children's cries and discovered five of them in the kitchen, hidden behind heaps of clothes. Their bodies were covered with mosquito bites and one of them was already dead. The others were in very poor condition. The oldest one, Norng Chanphal, was also in a very bad shape and was struggling to stand up. We gave them water and food and brought them to the Cambodian army. We continued our visit and discovered the torture room, where the floor was strewn with handcuffs, shovels, hatchets... and decomposing corpses eaten by worms and whose feet were still chained. We also saw a room where prisoners were forced to carve statues of Pol Pot and another covered with photographs of prisoners taken before their execution. Our images were broadcast all over the world from January 1979. Tomorrow, we will show this document at the initial hearing because we want these mass crimes to be condemned,” the Vietnamese recounted.
On the previous day, he said he had gone back to S-21, that has now become the genocide museum. “Everything there has changed, except for the kitchen! (…) We entered the place feeling the same terror that gripped us the first time in 1979...”
His then colleague and friend, camera operator Ho Van Thay, aged 75, has also frozen the gruesome discovery in his memory. “We had to walk on the corpses to move from one room to another... What cruelty... We wanted to share the truth with the world by shooting these pictures. Vietnamese television is the only one to possess the film reel. We also filmed grounds covered with skulls in the countryside and the forests... Tomorrow, I will meet in Siem Reap a child who I had found with a slit throat and was able to survive...”
The two veterans explained that they did not want to testify before the Khmer Rouge tribunal because their documentary says enough on the atrocities perpetrated in S-21.
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