Former Khmer Rouge Testifies in Duch Case

By Chiep Mony, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
09 July 2009

A former Khmer Rouge fighter who was later arrested and forced to work among the regime’s victims testified in the UN-backed court Wednesday, saying she was held briefly in a second prison administered by Duch.

Duch, whose real name is Kaing Kek Iev, was the chief of Tuol Sleng prison, where prosecutors say 12,380 people were killed, as well as Prey Sar prison, a second facility in Phnom Penh.

Duch is facing atrocity crimes charges for his role at both prisons, as well as administration of Choeung Ek, the site of executions and mass graves on the outskirts of the capital.

Chin Met, 51, said she had been a guerrilla fighter for the Khmer Rouge before it came to power in 1975, but in November 1977, she was arrested, bound and blindfolded. She was detained for 15 days in a Khmer Rouge prison, where she was beaten during questioning and locked in a cell.

She did not know at the time whether she was in Prey Sar or Tuol Sleng.

In response to her testimony, Duch said she must have been held at Prey Sar, because no one who was kept in Tuol Sleng was ever released. Nearly all of the prisons inmates were killed under his supervision, he said, echoing statements made Tuesday.

After her release, Chin Met told the court, she was sent to work in the fields of Kandal province, where she and other women were forced to pull plows as though they were cows.

Chin Met wept as she recalled falling down with fatigue and seeing her friends beaten unconscious by the plowman, who was also a Khmer Rouge soldier.

“When they ordered us to pull the plow, we were discouraged,” she said.

Khmer Rouge fighter relates "killing fields" horror

Wed Jul 8, 2009

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A former fighter for the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s told a Cambodian court Wednesday how he was suspected of turning against the Pol Pot regime, arrested and beaten unconscious, waking up beneath bodies in a burial pit.

Phork Khan, 57, was testifying at the trial of Duch, head of the Khmer Rouge's S-21 interrogation center in Phnom Penh, who faces life in prison if convicted on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and homicide.

Duch has admitted his part in the thousands of deaths at the prison but says he was only following orders. He has also questioned the reliability of some of the witnesses.

Phork Khan said he had become a fighter in 1971. "In Phnom Penh, in 1975, I took part in the liberation," he said. "At first I was quite happy, but after seeing the forced evacuation of the people and spraying of bullets to kill people by Khmer Rouge soldiers, I wasn't satisfied with that change in the situation."

As the regime purged suspected dissenters, he was arrested in 1978 and detained at S-21. "They tied up my legs and hands and put me face down. I was whipped and I could not move freely. I could barely stand the agony," he said.

One day, guards took him to the edge of a pit at the Choeung Ek "killing fields" near Phnom Penh.

"I did not know how many other prisoners were killed after I became unconscious. Only after I regained consciousness, I saw three dead bodies on top of me," he told the tribunal.

TESTIMONY QUESTIONED

More than 14,000 people died at the S-21 prison. Eight people have now provided testimony of their detainment, although Duch has questioned whether all of them really spent time there, and one of the judges has raised some doubts.

Judge Nil Nonn noted Tuesday that Phork Khan had failed to mention his horrific live burial in his pre-trial statement.

Tuesday, another survivor, Lay Chan, said he had been detained at S-21 for two months in 1976 and interrogated twice before his release. Duch responded that nobody was released from S-21 and Lay could therefore not have been held there.

Last week the court heard from two S-21 prisoners who said they had been spared because they were artists and Duch admired their portraits of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

Wednesday the court heard from a female survivor, Chin Meth, 51, who described a routine of forced labor followed by beatings during a 15-day stay at S-21 in 1977.

However, Duch queried her recollection, too, although he said she could have been detained and interrogated elsewhere.

"The fact is that if she was transferred to S-21, she would be dead. She could not be let out," Duch told the judges. "If people were transferred to S-21, they would be smashed."

Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, is the first of five detained Khmer Rouge leaders to face trial."Brother Number One" Pol Pot, whose regime fell after Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979, died in 1998 near the Thai-Cambodia border.

(Reporting by Stephen Kurczy, Editing by Alan Raybould)

Khmer Rouge twisted prisoner's ankles with pliers

Wednesday, July 08, 2009
By SOPHENG CHEANG

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A woman tortured by the Khmer Rouge testified Wednesday that she has spent most of her life trying to forget the horrors she endured in the 1970s and never spoke of the past, even to her husband and children.

Chin Meth, now 51, told the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal that her ankles and wrists still bear scars where she was bound for beatings — attacks that sometimes lasted until she passed out. Her testimony is the first by a female survivor.

"They beat me with a wooden stick. They twisted my ankles with pliers," she said, speaking softly and staring straight ahead. "While they tortured me, they tied my hands behind my back and beat me very seriously. It was terrifying."

Her testimony came at the trial of Kaing Guek Eav — better known as Duch — who headed the regime's notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh. Up to 16,000 people were tortured under his command and later taken away to be killed during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 rule. Only a handful survived.

Chin Meth, a former Khmer Rouge soldier, said she was arrested in 1977 and accused of being a spy for the CIA or Russia's KGB — a common accusation leveled at prisoners. She was sent to S-21 and kept there for 15 days of hard torture, she said.

"I told them I have no idea what the CIA or KGB is," she said.

She was transferred to a different prison in Kandal province, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the capital, where other soldiers from her unit were being kept for "re-education."

At the new prison, she was held in a house not a cell and security guards ordered her to look after fruit and vegetable gardens that fed the Khmer Rouge officers. She stayed there until Vietnamese forces invaded to oust the Khmer Rouge in 1979, and then embarked on three decades of trying to forget.

"I did not want to hear anything about my past," she said. "When I got married, I never told my story to my husband and children."

"When I heard the word 'prison,' I felt so much suffering," she said.

S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng, is now a genocide museum with pictures of prisoners lining its walls. Chin Meth said she visited the prison for the first time in November 2007 after filing her initial testimony with the tribunal, which was seeking survivors' accounts.

"I saw my picture, and the pictures of my friends. I almost fainted, but someone caught me," she said.

Duch (pronounced DOIK) told Wednesday's hearing that he doubted Chin Meth spent time at S-21, because the only survivors were prisoners with skills who could serve the Khmer Rouge. All others under his command were sent for execution. He then suggested she might have survived a different prison, known as S-24, which was more of a "re-education" facility.

Three S-21 survivors testified recently. They included two artists who painted propaganda portraits of Khmer Rouge leaders and a mechanic who fixed the officials' cars, tractors and typewriters.

Duch, 66, is the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to face trial and the only one to acknowledge responsibility for his actions. He is charged with crimes against humanity and is the first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the U.N.-assisted tribunal.

Senior leaders Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary and Ieng Sary's wife, Ieng Thirith, are all detained and likely to face trial in the next year or two.