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She recalled that in around June1975, the East Zone
designated her and about 100 others from Po-2 to go to the Centre,
chosen according to their expertise. Her husband, who had expertise
in the production of ampoules, was selected, and she was assigned
first to the Pasteur Institute in Chroy Changvar, codenamed Ph-2,
helping to manufacture animal and human vaccinations, as she also
had some experience with ampoule production. The Ph-2 chairman was
Seum Savan, a native of Ta Poung in Lovea subdistrict of Kah Sautin.
It had about 100 workers and was under the Ministry of Social
Action, which was headed by Ieng Thirith. According to this source,
Thirith frequently visited Ph-2 – once a month or every two months
-- to ask after the workers' welfare and about production levels.
Thirith discussed their experiences with them, and they reported to
her about how things were going. The source commented that the Ph-2
ration was initially one meal of rice and one of gruel a day, which
was great, but one could eat one's fill. This was accepted at first
as a temporary hardship resulting from the fact that the country was
just coming out of a war.
In 1976, the source was in great distress and ill, because she had a
newborn of only three months and really should not have been doing
heavy labour, but she felt sorry for the others. They asked her to
speak on their behalf about their complaints. She said she could
not, because she was not well, but she began cursing the office
chair for not allowing the masses to have a right to say anything.
At the same time, she was accused of ideological sickness and even
of being crazy, and even her husband no longer believed she was
normal. She was transferred from one hospital to the next, until
finally Ieng Thirith ordered she be given a special examination to
ascertain what was wrong with her. Eventually, after seeing a Khmer
healer, she returned to work.
Meanwhile, amidst arrests at Ph-2, this woman attended a conference
at which Ieng Thirth was present, and where the interviewee spoke
out against Ph-2 Chairman Seum Savan, declaring he had over-worked
the workers in order to increase his own status, making the workers
exhausted, almost working them to death, or causing them to fall ill
and die, while also threatening them. The source explained that
during previous meetings at the office level, before Savan fell from
grace, she had never dared say anything much about this, fearing the
consequences. However, she spoke out at this conference of the
finance and social action ministries, convened in today's ministry
of interior building. Ieng Thirith took an interest in what she
had to say, asking her to speak again and again to express her
views. According to this interviewee, Ieng Thirith had convened the
conference in order to assess Seum Savan's "activities," and that
her criticisms led to his removal, only then herself to become a
victim of the breaking up of ex-East Zone elements that ensued.
Regular monthly conferences continued, with major
conferences every three months, at which Ieng Thirith constantly
announced that this person or that person was a traitor. This
stupefied the source, who kept trying to figure out what all these
mystifying pronouncements could possibly mean, and in her heart she
concluded that they meant Cambodia was about to crash, because its
leaders did not trust one another. Thirith's earlier announcements
of the treason of Hu Nim, Leng Sei (the wife of Tiv Ol, who had done
propaganda work in Prey Veng) and Pov Sou was followed by her
declaration that Sao Pheum was also a traitor, and all this
convinced the source that they country was headed for disaster. She
recalled that Leng Sei chaired the Democratic Kampuchea Women's
Association and was Thirith's deputy on the Social Action Ministry
committee, saying Sei often appeared in newspaper stories. She
identified Pov Sou as the member of the committee.
The conferences the source described would start out with
discussions of how the work within the ministries and offices was
developing, but Thirith's she declared during her summations as the
cadre in charge of the Social Action Ministry that everyone must
struggle to work harder, because this or that person had committed
treason, adding that no one should put any faith in such traitors.
According to the source, what "treason" meant was not explained or
elaborated. However, she stated that she knew that those arrested
and accused of treason, like Leng Sei and Pov Sou, were tortured and
killed. She said that in 1975-1976, she did not know of executions,
but she did by 1977-1978, which was when she concluded that Pol Pot,
whose leadership of the Party was announced in 1976, owed a blood
debt to the Cambodian people.
In 1978, after Sao Pheum was accused of treason and
those associated with his East Zone regime were arrested, the
negative influence of this resulted in this interviewee being
subjected to tempering. Like others with specialist knowledge, she
was no longer needed, and she was sent to transplant rice and grow
vegetables on the outskirts of Phnom Penh to supply various places.
Others were sent to work on in the railways or to break rocks in
Veal Renh, on the seacoast. Hau's husband was sent to do
construction work at Po-1 hospital (Calmette). They were able to
see each other occasionally, on rest days. They were also able to
receive visits from their children, who were kept at the Ph-3
factory.
One day, one of the children had an accident and was
taken by the interviewee for hospital treatment. She ran into Po-2
Chairman Minh, Ieng Thirith's daughter. When Minh learned that the
interviewee's husband was already at Po-1, Minh said the source
should be there, too. She told Minh that was impossible, because
the whole of the East Zone had been declared traitorous, and there
was no hope of her returning to the capital, as all the Easterners
were being sent into the rural outback for tempering. However, Minh
promised she could arrange things. With Minh's intervention, the
source was thus also reassigned to Po-1. Minh recognised her as
having a knack for cooking and put her to work in the kitchen, where
she learned what foods were right for what patients and how to make
deserts. They became quite close, with Minh paying attention to her
welfare, consulting her on various problems, and talking to her
about Minh's two infant children. Minh's husband, Peuan, was the
chairman of another hospital. Another daughter of Ieng Thirith,
Neat, was the chairwoman of the Ph-4 pharmaceutical factory.
The source commented that almost all the hospital personnel came
from the Southwest, with some from the Central Zone and only a
handful, ten or so, from the East. They had all just been
transferred over from construction, otherwise, there would have been
none, as all the other ex-Easterners who had been sent to break
rocks were not sent back. She also heard from a trooper in Phnom
Penh, with whom she pretended to be a Southwesterner, that a lot of
ordinary people in the East were traitors, people in the
cooperatives, even the base people. This made her think members of
her own immediate family had been killed, which turned out to be
true. Together, she and her husband lost ten immediate relatives.
According to the interviewee, Po-1 hospital received
patients from zone and sector hospitals throughout the country,
those who could not be successfully treated at these lower levels.
Ieng Thirith visited Po-1, too, asking after the health of the
patients. Chinese medical experts were attached to the hospital,
making up for the lack of technical capacity among Cambodians,
treating patients the Cambodians couldn't treat. However, they did
not participate in meetings.
Just before everything ended in war with the Vietnamese,
Ieng Thirith's daughter asked the source to help her maintain her
flow of breast milk for her suckling child, explaining that Thirith
had told her the situation was precarious, and she should therefore
be preparing for a situation in which she would have no hot water
with which to make formula. (The source also recalled that
Thirith's daughter referred to Thirith as "auntie," not "mother.")
Finally, she commented that she regularly did and redid
her biography throughout, maybe every six months, for conferences
and for going through life outlook sessions, during which
biographies were routinely rewritten, this being one of the purposes
of those sessions.ions.
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