PHNOM PENH: A rare survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime's main
jail told Tuesday how torturers ripped out his toenails and gave him
electric shocks to try to make him confess to being a CIA agent.
Former mechanic Chum Mey told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes
tribunal how he pleaded for his life as he was tortured for 12 days and
nights at the 1975-1979 communist movement's Tuol Sleng detention centre.
The 63-year-old is the second survivor to give evidence at the
trial of prison chief Duch, who is accused of overseeing the torture and
extermination of 15,000 people who passed through the facility.
Chum Mey said he had been working at a sewing machine factory in
1978 when he was brought to Tuol Sleng to be tortured on suspicion of
espionage.
"While I was walking inside I said (to a guard), 'Brother,
please look after my family.' Then the person kicked me on to the ground,"
Chum Mey said, adding the man swore at him and told him he would be
"smashed".
Chum Mey told judges he was photographed, stripped, handcuffed
and yanked by his earlobes to interrogators.
"They asked me to tell them the truth - how many of us joined
the KGB and CIA," Chum Mey said, referring to the Soviet and US intelligence
agencies. "I told them I did not know any CIA or KGB. Truly, I did not know
those terms."
He went on to describe how interrogators beat him as he pleaded
for his life, and proceeded to torture him for 12 days and nights.
He trembled in pain after they removed his toenails and heard
"some sort of sound" after they electrocuted him, he said.
"The method used was always hot. It was never cold, as Duch has
said," Chum Mey said, describing degrees of torture.
Earlier in his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity,
the 66-year-old Duch begged forgiveness from the victims after accepting
responsibility for his role in governing the jail.
But he has consistently rejected claims by prosecutors that he
had a central role in the Khmer Rouge's iron-fisted rule and says he never
personally executed anyone.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, and many believe the
tribunal is the last chance to find justice for victims of the communist
regime, which killed up to two million people.
- AFP/yb
Copyright © 2009 MediaCorp Pte Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
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About Me
- Duong Dara
- Dara Duong was born in 1971 in Battambang province, Cambodia. His life changed forever at age four, when the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975. During the regime that controlled Cambodia from 1975-1979, Dara’s father, grandparents, uncle and aunt were executed, along with almost 3 million other Cambodians. Dara’s mother managed to keep him and his brothers and sisters together and survive the years of the Khmer Rouge regime. However, when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia, she did not want to live under Communist rule. She fled with her family to a refugee camp on the Cambodian-Thai border, where they lived for more than ten years. Since arriving in the United States, Dara’s goal has been to educate people about the rich Cambodian culture that the Khmer Rouge tried to destroy and about the genocide, so that the world will not stand by and allow such atrocities to occur again. Toward that end, he has created the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, which began in his garage and is now in White Center, Washington. Dara’s story is one of survival against enormous odds, one of perseverance, one of courage and hope.
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