As Duch Trial Begins, Two US Women ‘Stand Witness’

By Brian Calvert and Men Kimseng
Original report from Washington
02 July 2009

[Editor’s note: When it opened in March, the trial for Kaing Kek
Iev, the infamous Khmer Rouge torture chief better known as Comrade Duch,
returned the world’s attention to Cambodia and the horrors of the failed
regime. In 1976, two American women helped care for a group of 114
Cambodians in the US who were determined to return to their home, now
controlled by the Khmer Rouge. The two recently spoke with VOA Khmer to
ensure the stories of those Cambodians, nearly all of whom perished, would
not be forgotten. This is the first of a two-part series.]

When the trial began, from her home in a small, remote town in
the US state of Michigan, Cynthia Coleman, a 67-year-old volunteer
librarian, tuned in to an Internet video stream of the proceedings, as Duch
described his role as prison administrator.

“And then one day I was watching it, and he was talking about
Tuol Sleng, and he started saying that he was really just reporting to
somebody else and was making himself sound like a pencil pusher, basically…
I just looked at that face, and said, ‘I can’t stand one more minute of this
weasel, and turned it off’,” Coleman recalled recently.

Such a vitriolic reaction might be expected from a Cambodian
survivor of the regime. But Coleman had never even been to Cambodia, except
for a brief trip the year before. In March 2008, she had traveled with
another American to file as a witness for the UN-backed tribunal, to tell
the story of 114 Cambodians who’d found themselves under her care in the
United States 32 years earlier.

“Both of us felt strongly that we needed to stand witness,” said
Coleman.

Save for that testimony and a small chapter Coleman wrote in
book published in 1987, the story of the 114 Cambodians remains little
known. They were a small group of expatriates who found themselves in the US
when the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and implemented Year Zero.

They all wanted to return, and ultimately all but two found
their way back to their homeland. All of those who did return, 112 people,
perished. The two survivors could not be reached for this story.

In 1976, Coleman was not a librarian. She was the director of a
refugee project created by an organization called the Nationality Service
Center. Her program was funded by the US State Department through the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees. Her job was to provide support for the 114
Cambodians and to facilitate their return.

A second American woman, Mary Beach, then a fresh college
graduate, worked for Coleman and lived with the Cambodians for weeks, then
months, in the winter and spring of 1976, developing a deep bond with the
families and finding herself devastated after they left.

Both women were deeply affected by their time with the
Cambodians, and the grief they’ve borne for more than three decades
underscores the scope of the Cambodian tragedy, demonstrating that its reach
went well beyond Cambodia.

Coleman and Beach, whose testimonies are now filed at the
tribunal, both agreed to share their stories with VOA Khmer. Through
multiple phone interviews, they described their involvement with the
Cambodians, the friendships that grew from it, and the interminable sadness
that followed, as hope that their friends had survived eventually dwindled
to nothing.

The Cambodians arrived late at night in the cold and the dark of
winter, on Dec. 9, 1975. They came with bags, cases and trunks; men, women
and children. They were housed at a local civic organization called the
YMCA, in a dormitory of cramped rooms and a shared communal area.

It was Beach’s first job after college, one she had readily
taken after searching for work as a French teacher and falling into a
position with the Nationality Service Center. One of the first people she
met was Capt. Keo Keam, who had already unpacked, settled in and even
adjusted the lighting to give his room a homier feel. He was looking for a
partner to play an English-language spelling game called Scrabble.

“And I thought, wow, most of these people are still in the midst
of trying to get things to their room, and he’s already settled in and wants
to play,” Beach recalled. “So I did play just a couple of rounds of Scrabble
with him, and he beat me.”

Keo Keam was among 81 military personnel who had served Lon Nol’s
US-backed government. They had been training in the US when their republic
fell to the communists. Beach said at first she was young and afraid to be
housed with military men of any nation, but the Cambodians soon changed her
mind.

“They were just so polite, and so considerate, and so proper in
everything that they did, that it was just not a problem at all,” she said.

Before long, Beach found herself immersed in Cambodian culture.
She had but one friend in Philadelphia and one uncle in the suburbs. She
spent days and nights at the YMCA, among the Cambodians. She ate with them,
took them shopping, and continued to play Scrabble with Keo Keam, who had
become a friend.

“I never beat Keo Keam, even once,” she said, fondly remembering
their time together.

Despite these moments of levity, it was an uncertain time for
all Cambodians. While many were undergoing the horrors of the Khmer Rouge,
others were settling into new lives, having escaped the war and the
guerrillas.

Yuth Hean, a former captain in Lon Nol’s navy, came to study in
the US in 1974. He said, like other Cambodians, he considered going home,
but was told by a senior Khmer Rouge official, Chan Youran, to stay on till
he finished his studies.

“In late 1975, Ieng Sary and his delegation came to New York. I
met with Chan Youran and asked him if it was the right time for me to go
back and help the country,” Yuth Hean told VOA Khmer by phone. He asked me
what I was doing. I told him that I was a student at Virginia Tech, in
Virginia, and he then told me to finish my study.”

This advice saved his life.

In the US, Khmer Rouge sympathizers recruited overseas
Cambodians to return and rebuild the country.

Prom Saunora had come to the US study electrical engineering. He
heard of the recruitment but decided not to return until he finished his
studies. He also feared the motives of the communists.

“I asked those whom I knew not to go back yet and wait and see
how the situation developed,” he told VOA Khmer. “I knew the communists very
well, so there was no need to rush back. But most of those I knew who went
back never returned.”

There were no such doubts among the 114 in Philadelphia. They
were determined to go home and help their families.

“I think that everyone and everything they loved most in the
world was in Cambodia, and that’s where they wanted to be, and it was worth
it to them to take the risk… They didn’t quite believe something like this
would be happening in Cambodia,” Beach recalled.

Eventually, the group decided to undertake its own communist
purification, holding secret meetings, watching communist propaganda films,
she said. They wanted to make themselves presentable to the Khmer Rouge
cadre awaiting them, and they worried, much as their Khmer Rouge
contemporaries would, that informers lurked among the group.

“In the general foyer there, they had a television, and
sometimes I would watch television with them, but when they started having
these meetings of course, they were closed meetings,” she said.

Meanwhile, Coleman set about taking care of her new wards. In
her position, she too got to know the Cambodians, including the leader of
the group, a man named Maj. Kim Pok Tung.

“He was a very funny guy, and he was making jokes about wearing
his three new Philadelphia custom-made suits while working in the rice
fields in Cambodia,” Coleman said. “He also had a wife and I believe three
or four children, including a five-year-old son who had had polio and was
disabled from the polio. And he told me… that he was going to go back home
to see if he could find his son and protect him.”

The soldiers and the other Cambodians at first had no idea how
they might return.

“The UN looked worldwide to see what government agency there
might be outside of Cambodia that could advise these people; and the only
place in the world that had any kind of a Cambodian Khmer Rouge mission
outside of Cambodia was in Paris, in France,” Coleman said.

The UN contacted the Paris-based Khmer Rouge, which worked
through the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea, or GRUNK, to
facilitate the repatriation of the 114 as UN-protected refugees.

“At that point the United Nations was told that the government
of Cambodia did not want any involvement by the United Nations or by the US
government, that they the Khmer Rouge would deal directly with the
repatriates,” Coleman said.

By February 1976, the first group was ready to go.

“They were told that when they did go back home, they would go
for a couple of weeks to a re-education center, but then they would be
reunited with their families out in the countryside where they could be with
their family growing rice,” she said.

Keo Keang was among the first to leave, as well as his friend,
Hu Chheng Kuoy. Beach was too anxious to speak to Keo Keang about leaving,
but the night before the group left, she found herself in the room of Hu
Chheng Kuoy. It was not a joyful moment.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” she told him, and as she
recounted the story she paused to compose herself. He didn’t say farewell.
“He just hugged me.”

Bit by bit, the other groups left for Paris, to be processed by
the Khmer Rouge mission for their return to Democratic Kampuchea.

The last group to leave was in April 1976. Maj. Kim Pok Tung was
among the last to leave.

“Like a captain of a ship, I think he was in the last group to
go, and it was primarily the leadership of the group who left last,” Coleman
said.

Coleman took the major to the bus station, where he would travel
to New York, Paris and his fate.

“And they went from being extremely happy and jovial about
finally moving and getting to Paris and eventually be able to get back home,
to being kind of shy and nervous,” Coleman said.

“We hugged each other, and sniffed. I don’t if Cambodian men and
women kiss, but they would sniff me, and I would do that back,” she said.
“And we were hugging each other, and then he pulled his head and the top of
his body back and looked at me with just a great big smile and said, ‘We’ll
see what happens,’ and then he got on a bus.”