Prisoners Given ‘Aspirin’: Tuol Sleng Nurse

By Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
13 July 2009

Prisoners in the notorious Khmer Rouge prison of Tuol Sleng received little or no medical attention, except for receiving occasional mild painkillers, a former nurse at the sight to a UN-backed court Monday.

Nam Mon, now 48, told the Khmer Rouge tribunal that she had no real training in medicine before she was sent to the prison, which was administered by Duch, currently facing an atrocity crimes trial.

“I learned and cured patience at the same time,” she said. “I didn’t know how to write the names of medicines, so I had to recognize and remember them by heart.”

Nam Mon was one of three nurses at the prison, where prosecutors say 12,380 people were brutally tortured and later to their deaths.

“There were some treatments for prisoners in S-21,” Nam Mon said, referring to the prison by its Khmer Rouge code. But the treatment only included “paracetamol and aspirin.”

Witness says she saw Duch kill Cambodians

Nam Mon, a former medic at the Khmer Rouge's S21 prison, testifies on July 13 2009, at the Cambodia war crimes trial of Comrade Duch. [ABC]

Mon, 13 Jul 2009
Robert Carmichael, Phnom Penh
ABC Radio Australia

A former medic at Khmer Rouge's S21 prison has testified at a trial in Cambodia that she saw the prison warden bludgeon two men to death.

Nam Mon, a civil claimant at the United Nations-back war crimes trial in Phnom Penh, is the first witness so far to speak of seeing the warden, known Comrade Duch, killing inmates.

Her testimony is significant to Duch's defence because he has said he simply followed orders and did not personally torture or kill any of the 15,000 people murdered at the prison between 1975 and 1979.

Uncles bludgeoned

Nam Mon told the court that while working as a medic at S21, she watched from the third floor as Duch beat both of her uncles to death under a palm tree outside the prison gate.

But Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, rejected her testimony entirely.

He said none of the names she had provided were on the list of S21 prisoners and said there were no women medics in the prison.

He said he was shocked that all of Nam Mon's family had died under the Khmer Rouge.

Duch is charged with crimes against humanity and faces life in prison if convicted.

Four other former Khmer Rouge leaders will face the court once Duch's trial ends later this year.

KRouge victim says brother forced to kill father

A livefeed video grab shows Chin Meth, a Khmer Rouge survivor

Thursday, July 09, 2009
By Patrick Falby

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — A woman who said she survived the Khmer Rouge's main torture centre told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court Thursday that one of her brothers was forced to kill their father at the prison.

Nam Mon, 48, was testifying at the trial of prison chief Duch, who is accused of overseeing the torture and execution of around 15,000 people who passed through Tuol Sleng prison during the regime's terrifying 1975-1979 rule.

Nam Mon told the court her two elder brothers were guards at the notorious jail, while she initially lived and worked there as a medic before being interrogated herself.

"My first brother, Nuon, killed my father and later on he was executed," Nam Mon said. "They accused him of hesitating to kill my father."

Recognised as a civil claimant in the case against Duch, Nam Mon was revealing her story in public for the first time, said her lawyer Silke Studzinsky.

However, judges have cast doubt on the authenticity of several civil claimants who have this week testified that they were at Tuol Sleng, castigating their lawyers for not being sufficiently prepared.

Nam Mon described to the court how her father was brought into the prison blindfolded, before being stripped, tortured and killed, and said the rest of her family was later rounded up and executed.

"My mother also died at Tuol Sleng with my younger brother but they died at different times," she said, adding she was then interrogated there for three months in 1978.

"During my interrogations I was not beaten with a stick, but they tightened the shackles on my ankles," Nam Mon told the court.

She then described being transferred to the nearby S-24 "re-education centre" where she was forced to dig graves for the corpses of children, adding she was freed by invading Vietnamese troops after being sent to another jail.

She told the court that she had not been able to find her prison mugshot, but had discovered all the photos of her family members who were executed at Tuol Sleng.

The 66-year-old Duch, real name Kaing Guek Eav, begged for forgiveness from victims near the start of his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity after accepting responsibility for his role overseeing the jail.

But he has consistently rejected claims by prosecutors that he held a central leadership role in the Khmer Rouge, and says he never personally executed anyone.

Led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia's cities in a bid to forge a communist utopia. Up to two million people were executed or died of starvation, overwork or torture.

Four other former Khmer Rouge leaders are currently in detention and are expected to face trial next year.