Cambodian construction workers find remains of Khmer Rouge victims

Tuesday, September 11, 2012
By Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Workers building a house for a Buddhist monk in Cambodia have discovered the remains of 18 people believed to have been killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Laborer Nhoung Snieng said Tuesday that they started finding the remains, some shackled, when they began digging last week at Kes Sararam temple in the northwestern province of Siem Reap.

Westerner in Photograph Identified as American Sailor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Df4ybZNOs

In this photo taken on Aug. 20, 2012, Director of Documentation Center of Cambodia, Youk Chhang arranges photos, a part of about a thousand of newly-discovered photo collection of detainees at the former Khmer Rouge main prison S-21, in his office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. More than three decades have passed since the Khmer Rouge ultras orchestrated the deaths of nearly 2 million, one out of every four Cambodians, and turned the country into a slave labor camp.

The photographic evidence proves there were more than just four Westerners detained, tortured and ordered executed at the Tuol Sleng prison.

04 September 2012

Men Kimeng, VOA Khmer

WASHINGTON DC - Researchers at the Documentation Center of Cambodia have identified one of two Westerners who appeared amid more than 1,400 photographs donated to the center last month.

Researchers say one of the men photographed was American Christopher DeLance, who was seized by the Khmer Rouge as he sailed off the coast with three other foreigners.

The photographic evidence proves there were more than just four Westerners detained, tortured and ordered executed at the Tuol Sleng prison, known to the Khmer Rouge as S-21, which was supervised by jailed torture chief Duch.

“This finding is testimony against what Duch has always claimed, that there were only four westerners who died at S-21,” Chhang Youk, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, told VOA Khmer. “On the contrary, there were 12 of them, and one life is already important, not to say 10,000 or 20,000 lives. It adds to more responsibility for Duch.”

Western inmate identified in S-21 portraits

Recently identified S-21 victim Christopher Edward DeLance. Photograph: Documentation Center of Cambodia

Monday, 03 September 2012
Joseph Freeman
The Phnom Penh Post

One of two Westerners whose portraits were found among a recently uncovered cache of S-21 inmate portraits has been identified as American sailor Christopher Edward DeLance, who was seized by the Khmer Rouge while boating off the Cambodian coast in 1978.

After receiving photographs of the two Westerners in a cache of 1,427 anonymously donated S-21 inmate portraits last month, Documentation Center of Cambodia director Youk Chhang suspected the two were DeLance and former Phnom Penh French Embassy employee Andre Gaston Courtigne.

To find out if one of the photos was DeLance, Youk reached out to author Peter Maguire, who researched the killing of Westerners at S-21 in his book Facing Death in Cambodia.

Maguire told Youk he had confirmed from two independent sources that the photo shows the face of DeLance.

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.

S-21 photo leaves husband's search futile

Kim Vun, 53, looks through S-21 prisoner photos yesterday at the Documentation Centre of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. Vun learned at the Khmer Rouge tribunal on Wednesday that his wife had been held and executed at the notorious prison in 1978. Photograph: Meng Kimlong/Phnom Penh Post

Chim Nary, Kim Vun's wife

Friday, 24 August 2012
Bridget Di Certo and Chhay Channyda
The Phnom Penh Post

After learning the fate of his wife while giving testimony at the Khmer Rouge tribunal on Wednesday, Kim Vun yesterday sat with Documentation Center of Cambodia S-21 file photos trying to find the last living photo of his wife.

Flipping through the thousands of passport-sized photos collected by DC-Cam, an anxious Vun paused, his forefinger resting on an unnamed photo of a young woman with short-cropped hair, marked only as “1226” by the organisation.

“Her hair was just like this,” Vun, whose wife ,Chim Nary, was taken for re-education in 1977 and never heard from again, said.

“But in this photo, she is so skinny, it is hard to know absolutely,” he said, his eyes lingering on the black and white mug shot.

Tuol Sleng photos recovered, Khmer Rouge prisoners remembered

Fourteen newly discovered photographs of people incarcerated at the notorious S-21 prison are displayed at the offices of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia yesterday. Photograph: Hong Menea/Phnom Penh Post

Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Bridget Di Certo and Chhay Channyda
The Phnom Penh Post

To Sochanthy made an unusual discovery when his family packed up their home on Monivong Boulevard to relocate four months ago.

The 47-year-old government official was overwhelmed with a rush of memories as he stumbled upon 14 photographs of S-21 prisoners he had found as a teenager and kept stored in his post-1979 family home.

“I lived [after 1979] near the health university, and in 1983, I saw those photos and some other documents scattered under a tree on the corner of the street,” Sochanthy said, describing a Khmer Rouge bulletin, handwritten books and some photographs of Lon Nol soldiers marching.

“I chose only the photos to keep, because they looked like prisoner photographs I had seen at Tuol Sleng museum when my family visited after the Pol Pot regime,” he said, recalling a deserted building with clothes and torture implements strewn across the grounds.

The Red Heart of Dam Pheng - DC-Cam

https://www.box.com/s/60829ee4fdc8542b1b6e

Cambodia recovers photo cache of missing Khmer Rouge victims

10 August 2012
ABC Radio Australia

The story of the Khmer Rouge years in Cambodia continues to unfold, with the discovery of more than 1,200 photographs of former prisoners at the notorious Tuol Sleng jail and torture centre.

Cambodia recovers photo cache of missing Khmer Rouge victims (Credit: ABC)

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The photos have been handed over to the Documentation Centre of Cambodia which researches the atrocities committed under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

The collection was donated by an unnamed former government worker.

It appears she had held on to them since 1992, when she feared they may be destroyed ahead of UN-backed elections in the name of peace and reconciliation.

Presenter: Richard Ewart

Speaker: Peter McGuire, author, Facing Death in Cambodia

In Latest Work, French Author Bizot Asks ‘Frightening’ Questions of Humanity

François Bizot and Duch (Photo: AFP)

"Facing the Torturer," the most recent book by the only Westerner to survive Khmer Rouge imprisonment, explores the philosophical notion of evil.

10 August 2012

Nash Jenkins, VOA Khmer

"On one hand, I met the man who was responsible for the entire state’s killing, full of so many horrors committed that I can’t imagine taking his place today. On the other hand, I met a young man in whom, I confess, I was afraid of recognizing myself." - FRANCOIS BIZOT

Click here for the text of VOA Khmer's exclusive interview with Francois Bizot.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - On May 8, 2009, Francois Bizot approached the stand at the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal, in a courtroom just outside Phnom Penh. He was the first witness called forth in the trial of Kang Kek Iev, better known as Duch, who was on trial for supervising Tuol Sleng prison, where thousands of people were tortured and sent to their deaths.

Bizot was to testify before the judge to begin the thirteen-month inquisition. The French writer was the only Westerner to survive Khmer Rouge imprisonment, at a jungle prison called M-13, run by Duch before he was promoted to Tuol Sleng. There, Bizot met frequently with his jailer, before he was eventually freed. In court testimony, Bizot referred to his time at the prison.

“Today it’s Duch who is accused and he is the one bound to the bar, so to speak,” Bizot said, alluding to the rods to which he was chained during his imprisonment. “On this occasion may I evoke the memory of the M-13 prisoners… who were later executed in another camp because they had worked with me. It is in their name that I wish to testify today.”

Book spotlights life for children under Khmer Rouge rule

Friday, 06 July 2012
Chhay Channyda
The Phnom Penh Post

“One day, two boys caught a cat and banged its head to a tree trunk. They then set it on fire and tore the meat to eat by sharing with me, but this was to be a secret, otherwise we would be accused of being thieves . . . We looked like vampires eating such things,” journalist Chhay Sophal recounts in his book Mom & Angkar’s Kid, which was launched yesterday.

Sophal was 12 when Phnom Penh was was evacuated and he was sent to live in the Khmer Rouge’s child mobile unit.

His book intertwines his memoirs with interviews and research of the regime.

“I made the book’s title Mom & Angkar’s Kid because in that period, they trained us to hate our parents,” the former Reuters reporter said.

Another version of the death of Singer Sin Sisamouth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCMT1MdDXbY

Case 004 suspect Im Chem sets retirement for June

Khmer Rouge tribunal Case 004 suspect Im Chem speaks to the Post at her home in Oddar Meanchey province in 2009. Robbie Corey-Boulet

Wednesday, 18 April 2012
May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

Though the crimes against humanity suspect has rarely come to work for the past few months, Im Chem yesterday denied a local media report that she had resigned as deputy commune chief, saying she would retire after commune elections on June 3.

The 70-year-old, who served as governor of Preah Netr Preah district in the Khmer Rouge’s northwest zone from 1978 to 1979, said she would end her decade-long position as deputy commune chief of Trapaing Tav in Oddar Meanchey province’s Anlong Veng district.

“I am not resigning from my position. I am retiring because I am too old, so I want to take my old age to respect to Buddha,” she said.

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: The Top Killers

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

Remember 4/17 - By Khmerican

Commemoration for victims of the KR regime organized by the SRP at Choeung Ek Memorial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vniZMHt5oTE

Opposition Leader Sam Rainsy's Speech on 17 April 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uctJVVHMvw

SRP Commemoration of 17 April 1975 at Choeung Ek Memorial on 17 April 2012

A city’s nightmare revisited

A barefoot Khmer Rouge cadre carries a rocket launcher down Monivong Boulevard during the fall of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. (Courtesy Al Rockoff)

Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Chhay Channyda
The Phnom Penh Post

Cambodians will gather today to pray for the souls of some 1.7 million of their countrymen brutally killed by the Khmer Rouge on the 37th anniversary of the day that the regime seized power and began forcibly evacuating Phnom Penh.

At the Choeung Ek killing fields, the mass grave in Phnom Penh’s Dangkor district where thousands of skulls are stacked as a reminder of the scale of the regime’s atrocities, 50 monks will be joined by some 500 members of the opposition Sam Rainsy Party.

Ke Sovannorth, secretary general of the SRP, said yesterday it was a time to remember the awful three years, eight months and 20 days the regime ruled the country.

“It is a historic day. We will remember and never want it to happen again, because this regime made women widows and separated children from their parents,” he said.

Comment: A day we must never forget

Confronting images: visitors contemplate pictures of a Khmer Rouge victim at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Photo by Sovan Philong

Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Ly Sok-Kheang
Letter to The Phnom Penh Post

In addressing the post-conflict situation in Cambodia, individuals, states, civil society and other stakeholders have taken into account culture, religion, politics and other contexts.

Their efforts have served the objectives of preserving memory, truth and justice.

But Thursday, April 17, 1975, which marked a tragic turning point in Cambodian history, has received less attention.

On that day, an ultra-Maoist group known as the Khmer Rouge fought its way into Phnom Penh and Lon Nol’s regime surrendered power.

Many city-dwellers expressed joy that the war would end and peace, security and nation-building would begin. This excitement was immediately replaced by extreme fear, bewilderment and shock.

The same day, the Khmer Rouge began evacuating people from cities and provincial towns to rural areas. These and other Khmer Rouge policies led to the deaths of nearly two million Cambodians.

Cambodia's ability to forgive, forget the past is awe-inspiring

March 04, 2012
Kristin Lynch
Guest Columnist
The Gazette (Colorado Springs, USA)

When he let me try it on, it was the turning point.

I was in Prey Veng province 90 kilometers east of Cambodia’s capital. Despite the hustle and bustle of Phnom Penh, 80 percent of the country’s population lives in the provinces; this is the real slice of Cambodian life: chickens clucking in the background, children unabashedly staring at you, the wind sweeping through a never-ending horizon of rice paddies.

I was doing a story on rice farming. Oxfam is educating Cambodian farmers in more efficient ways to grow their staple crop. Because Cambodians have been growing rice for generations, they’re understandably skeptical of NGOs telling them a “different” way is better.

A few farmers had taken a risk, devoting a small portion of their farms to the experimental farming techniques. One of them was village chief Chab Heoung who reported great success.

Chab Heoung treated us to a lunch of rice and fish amok, Cambodia’s unofficial national dish. During the meal he displayed one of his most prized possessions, a helmet that one of the Vietnamese soldiers had left behind when they invaded the country and ultimately overthrew the despotic and genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.