101

Isao Takano  [101•** 

Akahata, Tokyo, January 27, 1979

A Secondary School Transformed into a “Human Slaughterhouse”. Suppression of the Population by the Pol Pot Regime. Bloodstains on the Floor, the Stench of Corpses

p On January 25, 1979, a group of foreign journalists visiting Pnom Penh saw evidence of the criminal actions of the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime.

p The public of Japan and the world at large condemn the Pol Pot regime, which ordered the arrest and execution not only of persons with different views, but also doctors, teachers and other intellectuals, who were classified as dangerous elements, since they knew the country’s history. The journalists 102 who examined the Tuolsleng secondary school on January 25 saw for themselves that the public exposure of the former regime was in no way exaggerated, but based on actual facts: even then the correspondents in the school building could smell the heavy odour of human flesh and saw a wealth of material evidence.

p The Tuolsleng school was Pnom Penh’s largest joint primary and secondary school, consisting of four three-storey buildings, each with thirty classrooms. This centre of learning was transformed by the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime into a gigantic prison, moreover, a huge human slaughterhouse. One of the bloks was tightly fenced in with barbed wire and the walls of the classrooms on all the floors had been knocked down, to be replaced by tiny, brick solitary-confinement cells. There were 60 of them on the ground floor; and 80, even smaller ones on both the first and second floors. This is were dozens of people considered to be the most “dangerous” by the Pol Pot regime were apparently confined, chained to the floor.

p The terrible stench of human flesh emanated from the southern block of the school. The thirty rooms (ten on each of the three floors) had been transformed into torture chambers. Each of them contained an iron bed, a chain, and also a table and a typewriter (the purpose of the last two is not clear). The bed was 50 cm high with a piece of sheet metal shaped like a net lying on it. Dried bloodstains were clearly visible on the floor, with tufts of hair stuck in them—evidently torn out during interrogations.

p What were the authorities, on whose orders people were brought here to be tortured, trying to achieve? People were arrested and tortured simply because they knew the alphabet, were familiar with history and were respected by their neighbours. The whole purpose of all this was simply to subject people to terrible suffering until they actually died. Not one of the prisoners here survived.

p The list of those killed records the names of two senior revolutionaries—Hu Nirn and Hu Yun. Earlier they had occupied top posts in the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary administration. Also among the prisoners here was Chea Don, editor-inchief of the party organ, the newspaper Prachegon (The 103 People), who fought the American aggressors together with Hu Nim and Hu Yun.

p On January 6, when the liberation army appeared on the outskirts of Pnom Penh, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary ordered all the prisoners to be killed, and this was done. On January 7, the day the city was liberated, human corpses with smashed heads or even completely decapitated, slashed throats and stomachs ripped open were heaped in the prison courtyard. The large yard was literally filled with bodies. On January 6, people had been brought out into the yard, one after the other, and beaten to death with picks, spades and other objects.

What happened on January 6 alone is sufficient for history and the people of Kampuchea to condemn Pol Pot and Ieng Sary as criminals for all time. Those who, even today, still support and whitewash the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime, which collapsed precisely as a result of its cruelty, must be condemned as serious accomplices of the crimes committed—the attempt to exterminate the Kampuchean nation wholesale.