Khmer Rouge military forces, on the march in Cambodia, in this 1975 file picture. Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok, whose zeal in the bloody Khmer Rouge regime earned him the nickname The Butcher, died at age 80 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday 21 July 2006. He became commander-in-chief of the Khmer Rouge army in 1977, coinciding with the period when the Khmer Rouge regime's bloody purges gained momentum. Survivors remember Ta Mok's South-western Zone recruits, as the most ruthless and brutal of all the Khmer Rouge fighters. EPA/DCCAM
Deceased top Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot sits with his grand children in this file picture taken about 1976. Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok, whose zeal in the bloody Khmer Rouge regime earned him the nickname The Butcher, died at age 80 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday 21 July 2006. Unlike other former Khmer Rouge leaders, Ta Mok never defected. The movement's leader, Pol Pot, died in murky circumstances while a prisoner of Ta Mok in 1998 and Ta Mok became the movement's final leader. He became commander-in-chief of the Khmer Rouge army in 1977, coinciding with the period when the Khmer Rouge regime's bloody purges gained momentum. Secrets many had hoped would come out at a long-delayed trial of Khmer Rouge leaders have died with him. The trial's initial prosecutions began this month, even as Ta Mok was fading away in the military hospital in Phnom Penh, undergoing treatment for high blood pressure, tuberculosis and the respiratory failure which seems to eventually have killed him EPA/DCCAM
Khmer Rouge military forces, on the march in Cambodia, in this 1975 file picture. Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok, whose zeal in the bloody Khmer Rouge regime earned him the nickname The Butcher, died at age 80 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday 21 July 2006. He became commander-in-chief of the Khmer Rouge army in 1977, coinciding with the period when the Khmer Rouge regime's bloody purges gained momentum. Survivors remember Ta Mok's South-western Zone recruits, as the most ruthless and brutal of all the Khmer Rouge fighters. The secrets he kept have died with him as he has escaped standing before a UN backed genocide tribunal. EPA/DCCAM 
Khmer Rouge military forces, in action in Cambodia, in this 1975 file picture. Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok, whose zeal in the bloody Khmer Rouge regime earned him the nickname The Butcher, died at age 80 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday 21 July 2006. He became commander-in-chief of the Khmer Rouge army in 1977, coinciding with the period when the Khmer Rouge regime's bloody purges gained momentum. Survivors remember Ta Mok's South-western Zone recruits, as the most ruthless and brutal of all the Khmer Rouge fighters. The secrets he kept have died with him as he has escaped standing before a UN backed genocide tribunal. EPA/DCCAM Jul 21, 2006
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Phnom Penh - For one of the most infamous killers of the last century, former Khmer Rouge military commander Ta Mok, who died Friday in Phnom Penh, remained mysterious to the end.
Many secrets about him and the shadowy Khmer Rouge regime he came to embody have died with him.
Even his real name is unclear. Most historians have accepted it as Chhit Choeun, although there are at least two other versions. However, he is universally known by his sinister nom de guerre, Ta Mok - Ta is Khmer for 'grandfather.' Mok means to punch.
The history books say Ta Mok was born in 1926 in the south-western province of Takeo to a peasant family. His lawyer, Benson Samay, insists that his client was actually 82 upon his death.
Like many bright children from impoverished families at the time, Ta Mok's only option for an education was to study to become a Buddhist monk.
It was almost certainly during his sojourn in a Phnom Penh pagoda that he first met the Khmer Issarak - nationalists involved in armed struggle against colonial France. He eventually joined the Cambodian Communist Party.
Nominated as a member of the Central Committee of the Cambodian Communist Party in 1963, by 1968, he had become secretary of the Southwestern Zone, and exploited this position to lever himself onto the party's Standing and Military Committees of the Central Committee and cement his growing authority and dominance.
Ta Mok was not typical of the cast of the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge movement. Most of them had come to communism as students in France. Brother Number 2, Nuon Chea, studied politics alongside the best and brightest in neighbouring Thailand.
But Ta Mok, although a brilliant military strategist and a ruthless commander, was no intellectual. In fact, historian David Chandler, in his book Voices from S-21, which documents the atrocities committed at Pol Pot's secret prison of that name, describes Ta Mok as 'a tightly focused, xenophobic anti-intellectual.' His hatred of the Vietnamese was all-consuming.
Ta Mok became commander-in-chief of the army in 1977 - coinciding with the period when the Khmer Rouge regime's bloody purges gained momentum. His zeal earned him the nickname The Butcher.
Despite his final public statement, released through Samay a week before his death, claiming he was an innocent who had whiled away the revolution raising chickens, Ta Mok's name is steeped in blood.
Survivors remember Ta Mok's South-western Zone recruits, dubbed the Nearadey, or 'south-western people,' as the most ruthless and brutal of all the Khmer Rouge fighters. This mostly illiterate peasant army from Ta Mok's own heartland were and remain fiercely loyal to their former master to this day.
They prefer not to speak of what happened in those final years of the regime's 1975 to 1979 reign. They prefer to remember him instead as an environmentalist zealot.
'Ta Mok loved the law and the country,' one former Nearadey turned fisherman said in an interview shortly after Ta Mok's capture on the Thai border in 1999. 'If anyone was caught fishing out of season, they died very quickly. In those days, therefore, the fishing was very good - much better than today.'
In his book, The Gate, former Khmer Rouge prisoner Francois Bizot recalls the man who later ran S-21, Duch, making a flippant remark about Ta Mok as he was freed. 'I think Comrade Mok wanted you dead just so he could keep your watch,' Duch quipped.
Ta Mok fled victorious Vietnamese-backed troops in 1979 unrepentant and eventually settled in the remote northern stronghold of Anlong Veng. He lost a leg in a landmine explosion during the protracted guerrilla war against the Vietnamese.
Unlike other former Khmer Rouge leaders, he never defected. The movement's leader, Pol Pot, died in murky circumstances while a prisoner of Ta Mok in 1998 and Ta Mok became the movement's final leader.
From the day he was finally captured by Cambodian government troops, Mok was held under tight security at the military prison in Phnom Penh. With the exception of some notes taken by military court prosecutors early in his incarceration, secrets many had hoped would come out at a long-delayed trial of Khmer Rouge leaders died with him.
The trial's initial prosecutions began this month, even as Ta Mok was fading away in the military hospital in Phnom Penh, undergoing treatment for high blood pressure, tuberculosis and the respiratory failure which seems to eventually have killed him.
In the final days, the director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam), Youk Chhang, found himself in a strange position. Chhang, who has dedicated the past decade to collecting hundreds of thousands of documents expected to form the backbone of evidence in the trial, hoped for the survival of a man whose movement had disemboweled his starving sister because she was suspected of stealing a few grains of rice.
'I am praying for him. I have only heard one side of the story - I would dearly like to hear his,' Chhang said.
But prayers could not save The Butcher. His death is a wrenching loss to a tribunal which is expected to rely very much on testimonial evidence - testimony that Ta Mok would have been in a unique position to give, and which will now never be told.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Phnom Penh - For one of the most infamous killers of the last century, former Khmer Rouge military commander Ta Mok, who died Friday in Phnom Penh, remained mysterious to the end.
Many secrets about him and the shadowy Khmer Rouge regime he came to embody have died with him.
Even his real name is unclear. Most historians have accepted it as Chhit Choeun, although there are at least two other versions. However, he is universally known by his sinister nom de guerre, Ta Mok - Ta is Khmer for 'grandfather.' Mok means to punch.
The history books say Ta Mok was born in 1926 in the south-western province of Takeo to a peasant family. His lawyer, Benson Samay, insists that his client was actually 82 upon his death.
Like many bright children from impoverished families at the time, Ta Mok's only option for an education was to study to become a Buddhist monk.
It was almost certainly during his sojourn in a Phnom Penh pagoda that he first met the Khmer Issarak - nationalists involved in armed struggle against colonial France. He eventually joined the Cambodian Communist Party.
Nominated as a member of the Central Committee of the Cambodian Communist Party in 1963, by 1968, he had become secretary of the Southwestern Zone, and exploited this position to lever himself onto the party's Standing and Military Committees of the Central Committee and cement his growing authority and dominance.
Ta Mok was not typical of the cast of the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge movement. Most of them had come to communism as students in France. Brother Number 2, Nuon Chea, studied politics alongside the best and brightest in neighbouring Thailand.
But Ta Mok, although a brilliant military strategist and a ruthless commander, was no intellectual. In fact, historian David Chandler, in his book Voices from S-21, which documents the atrocities committed at Pol Pot's secret prison of that name, describes Ta Mok as 'a tightly focused, xenophobic anti-intellectual.' His hatred of the Vietnamese was all-consuming.
Ta Mok became commander-in-chief of the army in 1977 - coinciding with the period when the Khmer Rouge regime's bloody purges gained momentum. His zeal earned him the nickname The Butcher.
Despite his final public statement, released through Samay a week before his death, claiming he was an innocent who had whiled away the revolution raising chickens, Ta Mok's name is steeped in blood.
Survivors remember Ta Mok's South-western Zone recruits, dubbed the Nearadey, or 'south-western people,' as the most ruthless and brutal of all the Khmer Rouge fighters. This mostly illiterate peasant army from Ta Mok's own heartland were and remain fiercely loyal to their former master to this day.
They prefer not to speak of what happened in those final years of the regime's 1975 to 1979 reign. They prefer to remember him instead as an environmentalist zealot.
'Ta Mok loved the law and the country,' one former Nearadey turned fisherman said in an interview shortly after Ta Mok's capture on the Thai border in 1999. 'If anyone was caught fishing out of season, they died very quickly. In those days, therefore, the fishing was very good - much better than today.'
In his book, The Gate, former Khmer Rouge prisoner Francois Bizot recalls the man who later ran S-21, Duch, making a flippant remark about Ta Mok as he was freed. 'I think Comrade Mok wanted you dead just so he could keep your watch,' Duch quipped.
Ta Mok fled victorious Vietnamese-backed troops in 1979 unrepentant and eventually settled in the remote northern stronghold of Anlong Veng. He lost a leg in a landmine explosion during the protracted guerrilla war against the Vietnamese.
Unlike other former Khmer Rouge leaders, he never defected. The movement's leader, Pol Pot, died in murky circumstances while a prisoner of Ta Mok in 1998 and Ta Mok became the movement's final leader.
From the day he was finally captured by Cambodian government troops, Mok was held under tight security at the military prison in Phnom Penh. With the exception of some notes taken by military court prosecutors early in his incarceration, secrets many had hoped would come out at a long-delayed trial of Khmer Rouge leaders died with him.
The trial's initial prosecutions began this month, even as Ta Mok was fading away in the military hospital in Phnom Penh, undergoing treatment for high blood pressure, tuberculosis and the respiratory failure which seems to eventually have killed him.
In the final days, the director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam), Youk Chhang, found himself in a strange position. Chhang, who has dedicated the past decade to collecting hundreds of thousands of documents expected to form the backbone of evidence in the trial, hoped for the survival of a man whose movement had disemboweled his starving sister because she was suspected of stealing a few grains of rice.
'I am praying for him. I have only heard one side of the story - I would dearly like to hear his,' Chhang said.
But prayers could not save The Butcher. His death is a wrenching loss to a tribunal which is expected to rely very much on testimonial evidence - testimony that Ta Mok would have been in a unique position to give, and which will now never be told.
3 comments:
Another one bites the dusts.Of all things,all return to creator'dust.'
Funny all people who revered Sihanouk or royalty proudly equated themselves as dust under his highness feet...
When will feet be covered by dust?
I think you are the same Dummy who make comment before.
you are ennemy of Sihanouk , I doubt you are paid by CPP to do this!
I want your answer if you are Khmer!
Ta mok was a bulky & loved to eat happy pizza
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