Grisly experiments recalled in Khmer Rouge court

Friday, 24 August 2012
Joseph Freeman
The Phnom Penh Post

In the Democratic Kampuchea era, killers loyal to the cause devised many ways to extinguish life: the blunt handles of axes, the power of firearms, overwork, torture and, according to a civil party testifying yesterday at the Khmer Rouge tribunal, medical experimentation.

“They did not bring corpses to be operated on. They brought real human beings for this operation,” said Em Oeun, 61, describing what he witnessed in 1977 and 1978 as a medic in Sector 20, a Prey Vang provincial base under the Khmer Rouge.

Recounting anecdotes comparable to the notorious Nazi medical operations and experiments on concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust, Oeun said trainees stood by to watch and learn as digits and limbs were lopped off.

“And the whole body would be chopped or operated and cut into pieces and put into a bag to be discarded,” he said.

Forced marriage in focus as Khmer Rouge leaders face trial

Jun 14, 2011
By Robert Carmichael
DPA

Phnom Penh - When Pen Sokchan was just 16 she was ordered to marry a Khmer Rouge soldier, a man she had never met. Pen Sokchan cannot recall his face but she does remember he was cruel.

She did not want to consummate the marriage, so he was ordered to rape her and did. Pen Sokchan kept the story hidden from her neighbours, her friends and her family for three decades.

'I want to cut the parts of my body my husband touched at the time,' Pen Sokchan says of those terrible few days in 1978. 'I am dishonoured.'

Her words come from a new documentary screened this month in Phnom Penh, titled Red Wedding. Director Lida Chan says the issue it covers - forced marriage - remains relatively unknown among young Cambodians.

A key reason for the lack of knowledge is the conservative nature of Cambodian society: People simply don't discuss it.

Cambodian court to hear impact of forced marriages

Friday, June 10, 2011
Australia Network News

Robert Carmichael

A Cambodian woman is among thousands seeking justice after the Khmer Rouge forced them to marry men they had never met.

In 1978, during the final months of the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule of Cambodia, 16-year-old Pen Sochan was ordered to marry a soldier.

Forced marriage is among charges laid against four senior Khmer Rouge leaders whose trial starts in June, at the United Nations-backed tribunal in Phnom Penh.

A new documentary, Red Wedding, has followed Pen Sochan's story.

Film shows brutality of Khmer Rouge's population policy

June 10, 2011
ABC Radio Australia

In 1978 during the final months of the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule of Cambodia, 16-year-old Pen Sochan was ordered to marry a man she had never met.

A new documentary traces her struggle to find answers to her plight, and comes as the trial of the movement's four senior surviving leaders is set to open later this month.

Among the many charges against them is that of forced marriage.

Presenter: Robert Carmichael

Click here to listen to the audio program (Windows Media)

SFX: CLIP FROM THE DOCUMENTARY "RED WEDDING"

CARMICHAEL: The voice you can hear is that of Pen Sochan, a 48-year-old Cambodian woman from a village in rural Pursat province in western Cambodia.

In this documentary called Red Wedding, Pen Sochan is talking about the secret that she has kept hidden for decades from her friends, her neighbours, even from her family.

When Pen Sochan was just 16 she was ordered to marry a Khmer Rouge soldier, a man who was a stranger to her. She has carried the burden of that time for three decades.

The documentary, which was shown for the first time this month, traces Pen Sochan's efforts to find out who in the local Khmer Rouge hierarchy, who still live nearby, ordered her to be married in 1978, and why. Despite her best efforts she fails in her quest.

‘Red Wedding’ Shows Lasting Scars of Forced Marriage

Son Thann, 58, and now lives in Kandal province was also forced to marry one of the Khmer Rouge soldiers. (Photo: by Say Mony)

Say Mony, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Monday, 06 June 2011

“I wanted the tribunal to make the Khmer Rouge confess why they killed people, tortured and forced us to marry; for what?”

A new documentary film premiered in Phnom Penh on Thursday reveal forced marriages ordered by the Khmer Rouge ahead of the Khmer Rouge tribunal's initial hearing of its four senior leaders late this month.

Red Wedding, which last 58 minutes, follows the current life of a woman who is bitterly describing her sufferings during the Khmer Rouge period when she was forced to marry one of their soldiers. Her unwanted husband raped her under the Khmer Rouge's orders, she said in the film. Pen Sokchan was 16 at that time.

Pen Sokchan has been living with shame and embarrassment since then and suffered from insomnia.

Some viewers of the film could not bear their tears. Son Thann, 58, from Kandal province was one of them.

Premiere Screening of "Red Wedding " on 02 June 2011 at Chenla Theater

Sacrava's Life under the KR: The Wedding Ceremony

Click on the cartoon to zoom in

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Heartache of Khmer Rouge forced marriage victims

Heartache of Khmer Rouge forced marriage victims

3/24/2011
By Agence France-Presse

When the Khmer Rouge ordered Phalla to marry a man she had never met in 1976, the young woman knew she had to obey if she wanted to survive Cambodia's infamous "Killing Fields" era.

Having already angered the superiors in her labour camp by refusing to wed her cousin, she was warned that such defiance would not be tolerated twice.

"I was told I was to marry another man and if I still refused, I would be re-educated," she said, a term she knew meant certain death.

"Then I agreed because I was very afraid," Phalla, 54, told AFP, not wanting to use her real name.

Experts say the Khmer Rouge forced tens of thousands of men and women to wed, often in mass ceremonies, as part of leader Pol Pot's plan to boost the population.

Tribunal To Investigate Forced Marriages

By Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
24 December 2009

Judges for the Khmer Rouge tribunal will begin investigating the practice of forced marriage and intercourse as part of their upcoming case against four senior leaders of the regime, officials announced this week.

Investigating judges Marcel Lemonde and You Bunleng said on the tribunal Website their findings indicate Cambodians were forced to consummate marriage, an act that could be construed as a crime against humanity.

In a Dec. 18 decision posted on the Web site Tuesday, the investigating judges said they had considered requests by civil parties and prosecutors and would “grant the request to conduct investigations into forced marriage throughout Cambodia.”

In its bid to create a utopian society, the Khmer Rouge dismantled much of the fabric of Cambodian life. Banks and schools were destroyed, and children were separated from their parents in work collectives.

Another policy was to gather men and women together and pair them off in forced marriages, according to complaints filed to the tribunal’s Victims Unit. Since 2008, victims have filed complaints from various provinces claiming they had been forced to marry under the Khmer Rouge.

The decision followed a request by civil party lawyers earlier this year that the forced marriages be added to the upcoming case against Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith.

All four are expected to be tried jointly for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

Khmer Rouge victims say they endured forced marriage

Wednesday, 07 October 2009
Sam Rith and Robbie Corey-Boulet
The Phnom Penh Post

THE Victims’ Unit at the Khmer Rouge tribunal last month received civil party application forms from 10 victims who say they were subjected to forced marriage during the regime, according to a press release issued Tuesday by the Cambodian Defenders Project (CDP).

The release states that the applications, from victims in Kampong Cham and Pursat provinces, “show striking similarities” to four applications submitted last October by victims in Kampot province.

In groups of up to 20, the victims were gathered in community halls and told to marry strangers, according to the release, which adds that “nobody dared to refuse openly for fear of punishment”.

The CDP release goes on to argue that the regime’s “population policy” amounted to a crime against humanity.

The 2004 law establishing the tribunal does not include forced marriage in a list of possible crimes against humanity, though that list is not exhaustive.

UN court spokesman Lars Olsen noted Tuesday that the decision on whether to recognise forced marriage as a crime against humanity would be up to the Trial Chamber.

Failing that, civil party lawyer Silke Studzinsky said it could also be subsumed under crimes against humanity such as rape and enslavement.

She noted, though, that the Special Court for Sierra Leone in February found three former leaders of the Revolutionary United Front guilty of the crime.

Lawyers for civil parties request new preliminary investigations in Duch case

16-02-2009
By Stéphanie Gée
Ka-set in English

Lawyers for the victims who registered as civil parties to the first trial due to open at the Khmer Rouge tribunal – that of the former chief of interrogation centre S-21, Duch – have requested the launch of “immediate and serious” supplementary investigations to document the crime of forced marriage organised under the control of Duch. They filed this request last week with the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), after collecting evidence that at least one mass wedding was organised in a re-education camp that was directly subordinated to Duch. Their submission was made public in a press release on Saturday February 14th.

Forced marriage under the KR: Four victims lodge their complaint with the KRT

Mass wedding ceremony under the KR regime (click to zoom in) - Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at his new website http://khmerrouge-toons.blogspot.com)

October 20, 2008
Ka-set
Unofficial translation from French by Luc Sâr Click here to read the article in French Click here to read the article in Khmer

Four victims of the KR regime, all from a village in Kampot province, lodged their forced marriage complaints to the ECCC Victims Unit on Tuesday 14 October. In 1978, the four victims – then aged between 19 and 22-year old – were married without their consent among a group of 23 other arranged-marriage couples by the then-powerful Angkar which provided a facade for the leaders of the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime.

The four victims said that their respective community chief told them that it was imperative for them to obey the Angkar’s laws by displaying their faithfulness through these forced unions, otherwise, the victims would be sent to a re-education camp, i.e. a certain death. Married to total strangers, the victims said that they were spied upon by men belonging to the Angkar who were posted under their huts to verify that the newly wed had consummated their freshly proclaimed union.

In a communiqué sent out on Sunday 19 October, the victims’ lawyer explained that they will make it known that “these mass marriages, ordered by the KR officials, were aimed at increasing the population and they constituted a tool of the demographic policy as more children were needed for the revolution.”

Lawyer Ny Chandy and Silke Studzinsky will call on the KRT “to see in these facts as an order given by high-ranking officials of the Democratic Kampuchea to rape women, as well as a sexual aggression perpetrated against men, and as such, they constitute crimes against humanity.” The rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy, etc… are crimes stipulated in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – an article which is referred to in Article 9 of the agreement concluded between the UN and Cambodia to establish the ECCC, the lawyers reminded.

The new complaints shed light on an aspect of the DK history which has not been investigated yet by the ECCC and, according the victims’ lawyers, they are subject to a more thorough examination.