Of all the words that could be used to describe the seminal
experiences of her life, Denise Affonco frequently repeats one: Hell.
Denise
Affonco dabs her eyes during the trial of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary in
Phnom Penh on August 15, 1979. Her husband and daughter died during the
Khmer Rouge regime. (Documentation Center of Cambodia)
It is in the title of her book, “To the End of Hell,” and it was a
central theme of the grueling yet richly detailed testimony the
68-year-old civil party witness gave to the Khmer Rouge war crimes
tribunal yesterday.
Seated with her lawyer in a dimly lit room and speaking to the court
via video link from France, where she now lives, Ms. Affonco was
composed as she recounted how her life unraveled under the death grip of
Pol Pot and his ruthless regime, reducing her from a career woman to a
widowed “animal” who ate cockroaches to survive and buried her young
daughter and niece on the same day.
Ms. Affonco told the court how she had worked as a secretary for a
condensed milk-producing company in Phnom Penh before going to work for
the French cultural attache at the embassy in 1973.
When General Lon Nol toppled then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970,
Ms. Affonco, whose father was French, said “life became increasingly
difficult” as Khmer Rouge forces battled for control of the country.
“I was receiving news dispatches,” she said, speaking in French. “We
were being told that soldiers and warriors were displacing the
population and villages.”
Ms. Affonco’s then-husband, who was ethnic Chinese and a “staunch
communist,” welcomed the news of the Khmer Rouge offensives, and in
doing so cemented the course of their lives.
“He was listening to radio broadcasts from Peking,” Ms. Affonco said
of her former husband, who she frequently referred to in her testimony
as “the father of my children.”
“He said that people were happy, and that the situation only worsened
when the French authorities began instructing citizens to leave
Cambodia.
“I didn’t, and stayed with the father of my children in Cambodia. My
husband believed and was totally convinced that the communist regime
would not cause any harm unto its people; therefore, we stayed and
remained stuck in hell.”
Hell began for Ms. Affonco when Khmer Rouge soldiers finally entered
Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, to a backdrop of cheering crowds and the
sound of gunfire.
“Everybody was glad, but these so-called liberation forces were
dressed in black and had extremely callous expressions and red eyes, and
I thought—there’s danger here,” she said.
Her husband, she said, felt differently, and went outside to
congratulate the communist troops with beer. The next day, they were
being instructed to leave their home and hand over the keys.
“‘Here’s your house,’” Ms. Affonco remembered telling Khmer Rouge soldiers.
Ms. Affonco, her husband and their son and daughter, then 10 and 8,
respectively, along with her sister-in-law and three nieces piled into
their Ford but were prevented from driving north to the French Embassy
because roads were cordoned off by Khmer Rouge troops.
When they ran out of gas, three Khmer Rouge soldiers in green
fatigues who had just raided and pillaged a shop helped fill it up—then
clambered onto the roof and fired their guns as the car moved onward.
The family reached a checkpoint where soldiers tore up Ms. Affonco’s
passport along with her children’s books and family mementos. A Khmer
Rouge soldier then imparted a chilling message that she remembers to
this day: “As of today, there are no French, Chinese, Vietnamese;
everybody is Khmer. Go forward, Angkar is waiting for you.”
What lay ahead was death and despair.
The family was sent to Koh Tukveal, a Mekong River island, where the children were forced into hard labor.
“It was an open prison because we had no freedom; we were being spied upon,” she said.
As a result, Ms. Affonco’s husband, despite having loyally believed
in the Khmer Rouge cause, was arrested and denounced. She never heard
from him again, and does not have any details of his fate.
The rest of the family were then forced north over a few days on a
series of miserable journeys by truck and train—with only
excrement-soiled water to quench their thirst—to a village near
Sisophon, which during the regime was in Battambang province.
“There was a man with glasses. A soldier asked, ‘do you need them?’
and he said ‘I can’t see clearly.’ The soldier snatched them and
trampled on them. From the beginning, I knew this was the start of hell.
We had been promised paradise, but were made to work nonstop,” she
said.
The “genuine hell” Ms. Affonco endured was exacerbated by verbal
abuse on a daily basis, a lack of food—she said people scrabbled around
for scorpions and cockroaches to eat—and having to bury her daughter and
young niece on the same day.
“The morning she died, the only thing she asked me was ‘Mummy, I want
one more bowl of rice,’” Ms. Affonco said of her then 9-year-old
daughter.
Her testimony continues today.
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