Tuesday, 07 August 2012
May Titthara and Bridget Di Certo
Phnom Penh Post 
Police examine remains found in a suspected Khmer Rouge mass grave
discovered in Siem Reap’s Kralanh district yesterday. Photograph:
supplied
Commercial soil excavators in Siem Reap province’s
Kralanh district made a grisly discovery over the weekend when they
stumbled upon human remains in a suspected Khmer Rouge-era mass grave.
Authorities yesterday said they had sealed the area and were working on protecting and conserving it as best they could until expert provincial officers from the Ministry of Cult and Religion could arrive to begin collecting the bones for proper burial rituals.
Twenty adult skulls and an array of human bones were initially discovered in the pit suspected to contain the remains of many more hundreds of Khmer Rouge victims, deputy provincial military police commander Nhim Sela told the Post yesterday.
The remains had been buried under six metres of topsoil and showed evidence of wilful killing, he added, describing skeletons with decomposing blindfolds, arms bound behind backs and others weighed down by large rocks in the five-by-six-metre hole.
“The killing of the bodies occurred in the Pol Pot genocidal regime. Now we put an embargo on all [excavating] activities pending the management of the relevant authorities to decide to make either a stupa or worship site for all the victims,” he said. “They are all victims, so we should keep them at a suitable place to calm [their spirits].”
The discovery was made in Du Dantry village, Kampong Thkov commune at the base of Trung Bat Mountain – the site of a prison and crematorium during the Khmer Rouge regime where prisoners were taken to be executed and/or cremated and their remains ground down to make fertiliser for the regime’s utopian, delusional rice production projects.
A Documentation Center of Cambodia article You Will Be Soil for the Rice Field surveys reports gathered by the 1979 Vietnam-backed government into the atrocities committed at Trung Bat Mountain and describes the practice of incinerating both dead and alive prisoners to create fertiliser for implementing the three-tonne-per-hectare rice production policy.
One survivor reported that she was also made to dig up human bones and grind them with urine to make manure for the fields, according to the article.
DC-Cam executive director Youk Chhang said teams of his researchers had first identified the recently-excavated site in 1998 as a place of mass atrocities.
“We estimated 35,000 and more deaths at the site through local documents and interviews with one hundred villagers,” he said by email yesterday.
“But we did not excavate the mass grave site in the hope that the [Khmer Rouge tribunal] may look into this as physical evidence,” Youk added.
So Phearin, Siem Reap provincial governor, said that provincial officials from the Ministry of Cult and Religion as well as the Cultural Department are searching for more bodies in tandem with local authorities, who are performing religious ceremonies as a sign of worship for the spirits of the victims.
“We will dredge for all bodies while consecutively making the traditional ceremony for them as well,” Phearin said.
Authorities yesterday said they had sealed the area and were working on protecting and conserving it as best they could until expert provincial officers from the Ministry of Cult and Religion could arrive to begin collecting the bones for proper burial rituals.
Twenty adult skulls and an array of human bones were initially discovered in the pit suspected to contain the remains of many more hundreds of Khmer Rouge victims, deputy provincial military police commander Nhim Sela told the Post yesterday.
The remains had been buried under six metres of topsoil and showed evidence of wilful killing, he added, describing skeletons with decomposing blindfolds, arms bound behind backs and others weighed down by large rocks in the five-by-six-metre hole.
“The killing of the bodies occurred in the Pol Pot genocidal regime. Now we put an embargo on all [excavating] activities pending the management of the relevant authorities to decide to make either a stupa or worship site for all the victims,” he said. “They are all victims, so we should keep them at a suitable place to calm [their spirits].”
The discovery was made in Du Dantry village, Kampong Thkov commune at the base of Trung Bat Mountain – the site of a prison and crematorium during the Khmer Rouge regime where prisoners were taken to be executed and/or cremated and their remains ground down to make fertiliser for the regime’s utopian, delusional rice production projects.
A Documentation Center of Cambodia article You Will Be Soil for the Rice Field surveys reports gathered by the 1979 Vietnam-backed government into the atrocities committed at Trung Bat Mountain and describes the practice of incinerating both dead and alive prisoners to create fertiliser for implementing the three-tonne-per-hectare rice production policy.
One survivor reported that she was also made to dig up human bones and grind them with urine to make manure for the fields, according to the article.
DC-Cam executive director Youk Chhang said teams of his researchers had first identified the recently-excavated site in 1998 as a place of mass atrocities.
“We estimated 35,000 and more deaths at the site through local documents and interviews with one hundred villagers,” he said by email yesterday.
“But we did not excavate the mass grave site in the hope that the [Khmer Rouge tribunal] may look into this as physical evidence,” Youk added.
So Phearin, Siem Reap provincial governor, said that provincial officials from the Ministry of Cult and Religion as well as the Cultural Department are searching for more bodies in tandem with local authorities, who are performing religious ceremonies as a sign of worship for the spirits of the victims.
“We will dredge for all bodies while consecutively making the traditional ceremony for them as well,” Phearin said.
Khamboly Dy, a Khmer Rouge regime researcher at DC-Cam, said he
estimated the prison operation at the Trung Bat mountain to be bigger
than the notorious S-21 interrogation and detention facility.
“The recent discovery of bones in the old area is a good source for our further research; it is bigger than S-21,” he said.
Eng Mara, 52, who was a former detainee at the Trung Bat security department, said that she and others were sent there in 1978 on the same allegation of being the revolution’s enemy and spies.
She described her torture and detention there, recounting that her neck was chained and she was kept standing up for three days straight.
“From day to day, I smelled of burnt human flesh, because hundreds of people were killed daily, but I was fortunate to survive because the security department was dissolved [before they took me],” she said, recalling other stories she had heard of botched executions in which beaten prisoners were thrown into the crematorium alive.
“I am extremely shocked at the number of bodies found in that location.
“I don’t want to recall the suffering which they caused me, because my neck was chained and even my legs were tied with clothes for eight days after I just delivered my children,” she said.
Youk said it was difficult for villagers to escape these haunting memories as years of rains and flood usually bought the bones of the dead to the surface from where they had been buried.
“The bones cannot find peace, until the truth they hold in themselves has been revealed,” Youk said. “After all, this is the memory that they live with for the rest of history.”
“The recent discovery of bones in the old area is a good source for our further research; it is bigger than S-21,” he said.
Eng Mara, 52, who was a former detainee at the Trung Bat security department, said that she and others were sent there in 1978 on the same allegation of being the revolution’s enemy and spies.
She described her torture and detention there, recounting that her neck was chained and she was kept standing up for three days straight.
“From day to day, I smelled of burnt human flesh, because hundreds of people were killed daily, but I was fortunate to survive because the security department was dissolved [before they took me],” she said, recalling other stories she had heard of botched executions in which beaten prisoners were thrown into the crematorium alive.
“I am extremely shocked at the number of bodies found in that location.
“I don’t want to recall the suffering which they caused me, because my neck was chained and even my legs were tied with clothes for eight days after I just delivered my children,” she said.
Youk said it was difficult for villagers to escape these haunting memories as years of rains and flood usually bought the bones of the dead to the surface from where they had been buried.
“The bones cannot find peace, until the truth they hold in themselves has been revealed,” Youk said. “After all, this is the memory that they live with for the rest of history.”
To contact the reporters on this story: May Titthara at titthara.may@phnompenhpost.com
Bridget Di Certo at bridget.dicerto@phnompenhpost.com
Bridget Di Certo at bridget.dicerto@phnompenhpost.com
7 comments:
I still don't unerstand why khmer rouge killing khmer each other..? What about those 200 khmer soldiers that was capture on film, they involved in killing Lon Nol's soldiers and civilian...remembered those khmer rouge soldiers? Where are they now? Roaming freely? They kept saying their superior told them to kill, I think they lied...
The 200 hundred former khmer rouge soldier who took part in killing khmer civilian and Lon Nol soldier after they liberated Phnom Penh...These khmer rouge soldiers were capture on films interviewing....They need to be prosecuted...
I hope this was the work of Cpp coup de'feat 1997.If these were the victims of coup de'feat 1997 Hun sen regime is in hot water,this could be used as evidences to bring Cpp regime Hun sen to justice.
Khmer
Its foreign country policy who working inside khmer rouge's regime to get rid of khmers people...
No others than Yuon's agents like Heng Samrin and Hun sen clans...Chea Sim?...
Viets infiltrated into the real Khmer Rough ranks in the 60s and early 70s. Some KR cadres are Vietnamese who took Khmer fake names but many Vietnamese agents are actually Khmer Viet Minhs which is CPP leaders. It's our own peoples who served foreigners and betrayed their own country. These Viets's agents created an atmosphere of deeply distrust among Khmer Roughs and it's peoples. So the Vietnamese used Khmer's hands to kill millions of Cambodian because a lot of Khmer Rough leaders and foot soldiers are not educated and ignorant. This how they succeed in ruined our country. Khmers, Viretnamese, Chinese, American, Thai, Soviets, English are all got their hands on our peoples blood. Some more and some less and some indirectly involved.
We all should pay respect to, but please not do business with the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime.
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