Detained in S-21 or elsewhere: doubt over the testimonies of other survivors

Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 16/02/2009: The statement made by civil party Phork Khan before the court differed from that he had previously made in writing. “The truth is what I told you orally.” (Photo: John Vink/ Magnum/file picture)

08-07-2009
By Stéphanie Gée
Ka-set

The hearing on Tuesday July 7th echoed that of the previous day. S-21 survivors who were until then unknown succeeded at the stand and gave testimonies that did not always tally the written statements they made in their civil party applications or the way they told their stories to journalists. In addition, they gave details that did not match what is known to this day of the infamous detention centre and, as the defence did not fail to point out, there did not seem to be any record of their stay in S-21. One believed them to be sincere when they told the sufferings they endured, but the doubt was there: were they actually detained in S-21 or in another prison? The embarrassing doubt may discredit their testimonies, but also those of indisputable survivors heard last week, prompting some to wonder about the groundwork that should have been done by their lawyers.

Not much in the file

Like on the previous day, the defence indicated from the outset they expressed doubts over the fact that the forthcoming witness was detained in S-21. Lay Chan, 55 years old, was a farmer who joined the revolutionary forces before 1975 and became a messenger for them. During 1976, he was arrested and imprisoned for some three months at S-21, he said, accused of participating to a “theft of rice for the enemy.” During his stay in what he believed to be the prison directed by the accused, the guards asked him to dig, outside and at night, holes for the planting of banana trees, as he was then explained. Blindfolded most of the time, all he saw was his airless individual cell that smelled of unimaginable stench, in which he could not stand because the ceiling was so low, he explained.

“Were you able to learn the name of your place of detention?”, president Nil Nonn asked him. “I didn’t know it at first. But one day, I overheard a conversation between two guards who said it was Tuol Sleng school. […] That’s how I was able to find out,” the witness, who joined as a civil party, answered. He only returned once to the premises since the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. “The place had already been changed. It did not quite look like what it used to be anymore,” he commented.

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