25

A report from a former prison

p A. Levin

p Komsomolskaya Pravda, February 2, 11, 1979

p No eye-witnesses of the crime are left alive. The last inmates of the prison housed in the former Tuolsleng school were murdered by the Pol Pot security forces shortly before the liberation of Pnom Penh. A similar fate befell the inmates of other Pnom Penh jails. They were killed by shots fired at point blank range, or with crowbars and rocks. This orgy of murder engulfed all the other Kampuchean cities too.

p The Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime marked the last few hours of its existence by massacring innocent people. This was the finale of the horrible tragedy, the script written in Peking, that had lasted almost four years on the blood-soaked soil of Kampuchea.

p On victory day, red banners fluttered over Pnom Penh, but the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army and the few inhabitants of the capital were very subdued in their joy, for they had yet to perform the last rites, burying the remains of their murdered countrymen. It is not yet clear how many thousands of people were killed in Pnom Penh on the eve of the regime’s downfall. At the Tuolsleng school alone, scores of corpses have been found.

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p In its death throes, the regime killed the last living eyewitnesses of its crimes, following the rule of all murderers caught in the act and beating a hasty retreat: dead men cannot speak.

p But the dead did not just speak—they accused, providing incontestable evidence of the regime’s cruelty, a cruelty that was as fantastic as it was inhuman.

p It took us only a short time to get there. One of the largest schools in Pnom Penh, with hundreds of classrooms, stood a short distance from the centre. Narrow unpaved streets steeped in the greenery of coconut palms, papaya and thick brush with red, violet and yellow flowers led to that school off the thoroughfares. A solid two-metre, duralumin sheet fence was supplemented by rows of barbed wire entanglements: one outer and two inner. Such a place would normally be referred to as being lonely or isolated, but in a city without people, such epithets lose their meanings. At first, we even thought it strange that the Pol Pot secret police had established one of its hornets’ nests here. From whom were they trying to hide the secrets of this prison in an empty city? Who could hear the moaning of the tortured victims? Nobody.

p But why was that particular site, that school, turned into a prison? I think the choice was made neither by accident, nor by design. It was made by instinct—for criminals always seek to conceal their dirty work from outsiders. It is also possible that they were not so much afraid of eye-witnesses (although they certainly preferred not to advertise their doings), as revelled in the sufferings of their victims.

p There was a time when boys in white shirts and blue trousers, and girls in white blouses and blue skirts used to run about the playground.

p But that was all in the past. The Pol Pot regime forced them to put on black uniforms and sent them to village “ communes" to work 16 hours a day. Everything that was even slightly reminiscent of education was removed from the Tuolsleng school. Instead, new “equipment” was brought in: crowbars, manacles, shovels, chains, tongs and fetters. There was nothing very sophisticated about this equipment, but since all industry in Kampuchea had been liquidated, all of it had 27 to be imported from China. While this grim load was on its way to Kampuchea, the school building was surrounded with barbed wire entanglements, the walls between the classrooms broken down, and brick partitions hastily put up. Thus every classroom now accommodated about ten or so solitary confinement cells. These cubicles measured about one metre by one and a half metres and also had chains cemented into the stone floors. Thus the Tuolsleng school became a real prison.

p Those who were brought to Pnom Penh were regarded as “especially dangerous criminals”—and that included anyone who, according to the village elder, had shown dissatisfaction with the new order or in any way sympathised with Vietnam. The authorities did not bother about clues or evidence of any kind. All they wanted was for the village elder to report his suspicions to a “superior body”. Petty “crimes” such as poor work and complaints about the inadequate food, were dealt with on the spot. Thus only “especially dangerous offenders" against the regime were taken to the prisons in the city.

p There “confessions” were wrung out of them, using the most sadistic and brutal torture methods.

p That was what all that equipment—crowbars, tongs and electric storage batteries (also used for torture) had been brought here from China. Even now they can be seen standing in every classroom. I saw a pair of tongs in one of the cells. Traces on them made it obvious that they had been used to flay a person alive. A crowbar in a neighbouring solitary confinement cell had caked blood on its tip, and there were several bloody shovels that nobody had bothered to wash.

p In the courtyard I came upon a pile of irons and handcuffs. Many of these consisted of chains with semi-circular clips that were fixed to prisoners’ wrists and ankles to stop them escaping. A real classic of prison organisation. Also here I saw solid steel rods as thick as one’s thumb and about a metre long, with steel nooses attached to them. These were no mere leg fetters. The nooses slid easily up and down the rods. The leverage thus obtained was used for twisting and breaking the victims’ legs. I had heard about such rods from 28 some of the prisoners who had been kept in the dungeons of the puppet regime in South Vietnam.

p One of the rooms I came across was the prison warden’s office. Standing by the wall was an iron cabinet with many drawers. In these were hundreds of small-sized photographs: men and women, old and young—front view and profile, all of them clad in black shirts with tags sewn on them. The photographs were attached to forms containing the names of the prisoners, their age, place of birth and information about their families.. .. My attention was caught by the heading: “reason for arrest”. In most of the forms, this space was left blank. Some of them gave the reason as “the liquidation of a section in such and such an area".

p This meant that the suspicion on the part of the security forces had fallen on villagers whfc were thought to be dissatisfied with the regime. The residents of every Kampuchean village had been divided into sections, squads and even companies in military fashion. A section that voiced even a hint of complaint was pinpointed for extermination. Most people were killed on the spot, while the ring leaders were taken to Pnom Penh for an “investigation”. How this investigation was carried out is easy to see from the crowbars, tongs and shovels. The results of the investigation were later found under the schoolyard, where the murdered victims were buried.

p Sometimes the heading “reason for arrest" contained just two words “dangerous criminal”, without comment.

Careful records were kept not only of the live prisoners, but also of the dead victims. In a room adjoining the prison warden’s office there were many photographs strewn on the floor showing executed men with their stomachs ripped open and their heads cut off. The tag number of every victim lay on his body, wrapped carefully in a cellophane bag.

p It looks as though the Tuolsleng school was not just an ordinary prison, but rather the nazi-style Gestapo headquarters of the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime. What else could explain the accuracy and precision of the book-keeping, that meticulous registration of every death. For elsewhere, all over 29 Kampuchea, people were exterminated in their hundreds and thousands, leaving no record of their identity.

p The former school was most likely subjected to the deposed leaders’ closest attention. It was probably here that they got rid of not only “rebels”, but also those thorn-in-the-flesh eyewitnesses who knew too much about Pol Pot and his retinue—for many revolutionaries who had honestly fought against the French colonialists and US aggressors disappeared without trace in the years that Pol Pot and Ieng Saiy were in power. Gould it be that they met their tragic death at Tuolsleng?

In their haste to save their wretched skins, however, the jailers failed to destroy the prison files. My Kampuchean friends told me that a commission would soon be set up to investigate the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique’s crimes. I am sure that even many more facts will yet be brought to light from Tuolsleng prison’s grim files. One of the darkest pages in the history of the Kampuchean people must be read in full. In memory of the dead, and as a warning to the living.. . .

p On July 7, 1978, Pol Pot held a reception for a group of Chinese “experts” at the Chamkarmon Palace. The visitors smiled, exchanged toasts and the Chinese ambassador made a long speech that was later broadcast over the radio. He said:

p “During the time we have been working in Kampuchea we have seen with our own eyes how the Kampuchean people, under the leadership of the party, is accomplishing the socialist revolution, how it is building socialism under conditions of independence and sovereignty, how it has enriched the revolution with new experience. We, dear comrades, have worked making sacrifices and overcoming all difficulties and obstacles, in an effort to raise the material and cultural levels of the people. And. ..”

p Of the whole family only Rum Soth remained alive. All the others had been killed.

p I saw Rum Soth in a street in Pnom Penh. She was sitting 30 on the doorstep of her house, hunched over, hugging her knees. I thought, at first, that she was cold, though it was at least 30° C in the shade. Rum Soth was looking silently at a broken wicker rocking chair lying nearby that was where her father had met his tragic end.

p Here is the story of Rum Soth’s family as she told it to me. : She is now 24, though she looks 10-15 years older. In the spring of 1975, she was a student in the philology department of Pnom Penh University. Her fiance was a teacher in the same department. Rum Soth and Mean Phim had both taken part in the student movement against the pro-American Lon Nol regime.

p At that time there was a wide-spread feeling that the regime would soon collapse. The students did not conceal their joy as the boom of artillery drew closer to Pnom Penh. They were making ready to greet the liberators, and for that purpose they were learning revolutionary songs, and making holiday posters. On the morning of April 17, the girls at the university were making bouquets out of the most beautiful flowers they could find.

p Rum Soth and Mean Phim were planning to mark the day of liberation in their own way. They decided right away to ask the revolutionary authorities to register their marriage. When they set out to greet the soldiers of the liberation forces, Rum Soth’s father, with tears running down his cheeks, said he was sorry that illness prevented him from going with his daughter and her fiance.

p The enthusiastic crowds filled the streets of Pnom Penh. Flowers, smiles and colourful costumes were everywhere.

p Yet suddenly... At first nobody understood what was happening. The armed men who entered the city began to disperse the people with rifle butts and bayonets. “Cattle! Pigs! Traitors! American minions!" they shouted. Then a military car swept down the streets with an army officer announcing through a megaphone: “Everybody must leave the city. Soon the bombardment will start. All residents must leave the city immediately and for good.”

p Panic broke out. People rushed home to get their personal belongings. They were followed by armed men who ordered 31 them to leave everything intact on pain of death. The first shots were fired. A wholesale massacre began in the capital.

p Rum Soth and Mean Phim ran home, bewildered. Rum Soth’s father, who did not know what had happened, smiled and asked about how the liberators had been welcomed. Rum Soth had no chance to explain for the liberators dressed in black were coming into the front garden. Rum Soth’s father jumped up, called his wife, and asked everyone to come into the house to mark the great event. He thought that his daughter and Mean Phim were already married and that the people in black had come to congratulate them.

p “Out of the house!" said one of them. “Out of here immediately! Right now!”

p He saw that Rum Soth’s father was ill and could not walk. He came up and asked what he had been doing before the liberation.

p “I am a doctor,” replied the father. “And I am prepared to give all my knowledge and skill to the revolution, I am....”

p He did not finish. “You were treating the traitors, so you are a traitor too,” roared the man in black. Then he whipped out his pistol and shot him point blank....

p Rum Soth remembered only vaguely what happened after that. A heart-rending scream from her mother from far away. Everything went hazy. All she remembered was walking along a village road, in a crowd of people. She saw Mean Phim a short distance away, her mother, her ten-year-old sister and two younger brothers. She wanted to hold back to wait for them, but a heavy blow on her back sent her flying forward.

p While Rum Soth spoke she did not weep. There were no tears left. She had cried them all out when she saw all those dear to her die right before her eyes... . Her mother slumped down on the ground near a palm tree. They had been walking under a scorching sun for three days, and the old woman had no strength left. A guard came up to her and ordered her to get up, but she said she could not.

p Somebody had left a hoe nearby... The guard pushed the mother’s body into a road-side ditch. After that, Rum Soth saw other people being killed. Tens, hundreds of them.. ..

p Finally they came to a village in the Siem Reap Province. 32 All the local residents had been evicted. The new arrivals were told that, from now on, this would be their home. Here they would “work for the good of the country and the people”. The entire management of the “production, social and cultural life of the commune”, they were told, would be exercised by representatives of Angka Loeu (the organisation). This word struck terror into the hearts of Kampucheans all those years.

p People worked in the rice fields from 5 am until 11 pm digging irrigation dikes. There were no days off, no holidays. In addition, they often had to work all night on Saturdays as a “voluntary contribution".

p Soon disease became rife among the villagers—-a result of exhausting work, constant malnutrition and very poor sanitary conditions. One of the most widespread diseases was mental derangement. Mentally ill people were killed on the spot. The men from Angka Loeu used to repeat that “the society that the Kampuchean people embodied must be healthy and strong".

p But it was not only the sick who were killed. Death was the most widespread punishment in the “commune”, and it soon overtook all the other members of Rum Soth’s family. One of her brothers tried to escape into the jungle. He was caught and had his throat cut with a rough jagged palm leaf. The other brother was also killed, because he was a criminal’s “relative”. A similar fate would certainly have befallen Rum Soth if she had not managed to escape. She and her tenyear-old sister arranged to meet on the edge of the forest so they could go away as far as possible before the next morning. As a rule, the morning after an offender’s execution the Angka Loeu men killed his whole family. Rum Soth came to the arranged place late in the evening. She waited for five minutes, but then heard the piercing scream of her little sister. ...

p All that happened much later. Until that day, Rum Soth lived in constant fear of her life, suffering both physically and mentally.

p Every day the authorities punished several members of the “youth shock brigades”. This was the so-called light 33 punishment for those who had allegedly worked badly, laughed (nobody had laughed in that village for a long time), or for crying (a much more frequent event). Tears and sighs were considered signs of “low” morale.

p “Light” punishment included a beating with a bamboo stick. The number of blows was determined by the Angka Loeu men, and was sometimes to as many as 150. Everyone came in for such punishment, even children. It took this form: the guards formed several “companies”, and lined up in rows. The “culprit” was stripped naked and laid on the ground, with his legs and arms tied. Two guards rolled the victim on the ground while the third one followed hitting with a stick. When the guards finished rolling the 16-year-old daughter of Rum Soth’s neighbours, she was dead. . . .

p Once Rum Soth was ordered <to come to the room where meetings were generally held. When she came, it was filled with young people, about forty in all, among them her fiance Mean Phim, whom she had not seen for six months. (They worked in different teams and never had a chance to meet). Everybody was ordered to sit on the floor.

p A few minutes later a senior Angka official came in and announced that the time had come for those present to get married. That meant that the young men and women who were sitting closest to each other at the moment were proclaimed man and wife. One girl sitting near Rum Soth said timidly that she was already married. The official gave a sign and two guards dragged the girl out into the street. Two minutes later her screaming stopped. ...

p Rum Soth lifted her head and saw her “husband”. He was a stranger of about forty. Further away sat Mean Phim with his “wife”.

p “Live happily”, continued the same monotonous voice. “Beget children in order to strengthen the Khmer race.” The wedding ceremony was over, and everybody was sent back to work. The Angka men killed Mean Phim four days later. It turned out that the man who had been appointed Rum Soth’s “husband” had for some time been an agent provocateur and an informer. Later Rum Soth found out that he had informed against Mean Phim. He must have guessed that Rum Soth 34 and Mean Phim were in love. The girl who had been appointed Mean Phim’s “wife” was also killed.

p Rum Soth saw her “husband” once more, six months later. He and several other men, tied by a single rope, were being led towards the forest by armed men. Among those tied up was the former village elder. He, just as much as his informer, must have lost the confidence of his superiors.

p ”. . . In your effort to raise the material and cultural levels of the people,” continued the Chinese ambassador at that reception in Pnom Penh, “you have made great progress in agriculture, industry, culture, in education and public health, which inspires every Kampuchean and fills him with great enthusiasm....”

p The ambassador said that China regarded Kampuchea’s successes as its own. Nobody would doubt the truth of that. The patent on the “new experiment" in Kampuchea undoubtedly belongs to Peking. Using Pol Pot and his clique as their tool, the Chinese Government sought to develop a new race of Kampucheans, a race of morally damaged specimens, only capable of reproducing.

But the Kampucheans had other plans for their future. The terrible regime was finally overthrown. Yet it will take a long time for the Kampuchean people to forget the days when Maoism cast its sinister shadow over their country.