THERE IS NO JUSTICE FOR MY FAMILY

I continue to remember and hold close to my heart the events of 17 April 1975. At that time I was about 11 years old. My father was a government official in the Department of Cadastre of the Khmer Republic. He was a supporter of Sihanouk because he wanted to drive out the U.S. imperialists who invaded the country. My mother was a gem trader and my older brother and sister were students.

On the morning of 17 April 1975, while I was sitting on the stairs in front of my house watching my father fix his car, I heard the sound of an explosion and I saw smoke fluttering into the sky. Soon after, three soldiers dressed in black walked to my house and screamed for us to open the door of our gate. They said that if anyone did not listen, they would be shot and killed. One of the soldiers asked my father, “Were you a Lon Nol soldier?” My father told them, “I was not a soldier. I worked in the Department of Cadastre.” But these people did not even understand what the Department of Cadastre was. My father told them he acted as a hidden force, donating food and medicine to the movement. The soldiers nevertheless told him to prepare his belongings and a lot of food, because everyone in the city of Phnom Penh must evacuate for three days or longer.

When the soldiers left my house, the youngest removed his gun into the air and screamed out to all the residents in the area to leave within the day. At that time my father’s face became dark and he did not utter a word. I felt like I had no weight because I witnessed tears on my parent’s faces staring at one another. My neighbors began to gradually leave their homes. Within four or five hours, the area around my house became silent and deserted. Once in a while I saw the soldiers dressed in black holding soda or liquor bottles. They drank and laughed, one hand grabbing a bottle of liquor and the other waving a gun shooting anything they pleased.

In the morning, my family left in one car. We traveled without any idea of where we were going. We just followed others. If people stopped to rest somewhere, we also stopped and rested with them. If soldiers dressed in black pointed guns at us and forced us to continue our journey, we would continue our journey. From the outskirts to the rural areas there were corpses along the road.

Because of the events that passed on 17 April 1975, my family and hundreds and thousands of other families were forced to separate from each other. Nearly 3 million people were killed without reason. Among those killed were my parents and my brother and sister. Hundreds and thousands of orphans were left without any understanding of why their parents were killed or why they cannot remember their parents’ faces. Among all these orphans, I am also one.

Sampeou

** After the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime on 7 January 1979, more than two hundred thousands of children were left orphaned.

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Look at the Day the Khmer Rouge Took Power
Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer | Phnom Penh Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Photo: AP
A Khmer Rouge rebel frisks a civilian in downtown Phnom Penh hours after the rebel forces led by Pol Pot took control of the Cambodian capital April 17, 1975.

The Documentation Center of Cambodia is preparing a permanent exhibition of photographs marking the day the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh and began their devastating four-year rule 36 years ago.

Chhang Youk, director of the center, said the exhibition, which opens next Monday, is to remind people of the beginning of the Khmer Rouge atrocities.

The exhibition showcases 17 rare photographs taken by American photographer Al Rockoff and French photographer Roland Neveu.

The center receives between 600 and 800 visitors each month, Chhang Youk said, and the exhibit is meant to be a discussion point that provides a look back at Phnom Penh.

In the exhibition, one can see victorious Khmer Rouge soldiers, Lon Nol troops protecting the evacuation of the US Embassy, Phnom Penh residents leaving the city, and a woman who weeps near her dead husband on the side of the road, among other images of the day.

April 17, 1975, is annually marked as the day the Khmer Rouge took over, instituting ultra-communist policies that lead to the deaths of up to 2.2 million people.

This year, a survivor of the Tuol Sleng prison commemorated the day with a ceremony there, while members of the opposition visited the mass graves of the Choeung Ek execution site outside the city.

“Any activity to remember this day is necessary,” said Dim Sovannarom, a spokesman for the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal. “And that’s why the [tribunal] is operational under its mission here to bring those responsible to trial.”

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Former Khmer Rouge Recalls Fall of Phnom Penh
Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer | Phnom Penh Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Photo: by Chun Sakada
Him Huy, 54, a former Khmer Rouge soldier.

On April 17, 1975, Him Huy, an 18-year-old soldier within the Khmer Rouge revolution, found himself on Road 24, passing Kandal province’s Sa’ang district as part of a concerted attack on the capital, Phnom Penh.

“That day, all units and divisions came from every side into Phnom Penh,” Him Huy told “Hello VOA” Monday, recalling the day 36 years later. “Heavy weapons and light weapons both were used by Khmer Rouge in the attack.”

By the end of the day, the city had fallen to the revolution, and Year Zero had begun. Him Huy, who led a group of 12 soldiers into the city for the attack, would find himself assigned to a former high school the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison, S-21, or Tuol Sleng.

More than 12,000 people were tortured there and sent for execution at the nearby killing field of Cheoung Ek. Last year the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal sentenced Duch, Him Huy’s supervisor, to a commuted 19 years in prison for crimes committed at the prison.

Now 54, Him Huy said Monday he had been recruited as a young man the year before the capital fell. He had joined, he said, to overthrow the US-backed regime of Marshall Lon Nol and to put Norodom Sihanouk back on the throne.

“Back then, people loved the king,” he said.

He’d rejoiced at the fall of Phnom Penh, he said.

“We knew that there would be no more war, and that we would not be killed,” he said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t know it had turned into a communist regime.”

The Khmer Rouge emptied the city, frightening residents by saying the US bombers were coming. “This is all that I knew,” he said.

In 1976 Him Huy was instated at the head of security guards at S-21, he said. He led arrests of “enemies” of the regime, he said, but it was Duch, or Kaing Kek Iev, who ordered their torture.

By that measure, he said, Duch deserved imprisonment of up to 40 years, with no deduction.

END.
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