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GRANDMOTHER OF “FERTILIZER”
Sophearith Chuong
During the Khmer
Rouge regime, Chhay Rin was an old woman the Khmer Rouge soldiers evacuated to
live in a jungle area known as Po Penh, situated in Phnom Srok District, Banteay
Mean Chey Province. That remote area was far from the national road, and barely
accessible by vehicle. If we walk down the country road leading to the area it
will take us at least half a day to get there. She told us about her life in the
area during the Khmer Rouge regime. She and her female unit of 40 women were
required to make fertilizer out of human bodies and excrements. The Khmer Rouge
simply referred to her as “Yeay Chi”, meaning “Grandmother of fertilizer”,
because she was appointed Chief of the female unit responsible to produce
fertilizers. In spite of the fact that she did not like the kind of nauseous
work she was doing and the hard conditions she was in, she managed to endure it,
trying to live her life as if she were not able to see and smell. That was
because she wanted her family to be safe from persecution or execution by the
Khmer Rouge.
The first day she
was brought there, she was so lonely and pitiful about herself that she dropped
her tears while she was begging for God to safeguard her family. Young Khmer
Rouge soldiers, some as young as 10, each of them equipped with a gun, came and
said to her, “Do not cry, mother! You are brought here not to die but to live.
You are not left in Phnom Penh eating stones”. Yeay Chi replied, “My children,
there are only bushes. There is nothing but tree leaves to eat, so why did you
bring me here?” Suddenly, one of the young, armed soldiers pointed his gun at
her and threatened, “Mother, you are vicious and dare to oppose Angkar”. She
immediately begged to them in her quick response, “Mother dare not oppose
Angkar, my children!”. Fortunately, she was spared her life at that moment due
to her sincere and kind pleading.
Chhay Rin
continued, recalling that, “After one year living in Po Penh, the whole area was
inundated. As the flooding reached the area, the Khmer Rouge evacuated the
people to Snuol Village, Poay Char Sub-district, Phnom Srok District, Banteay
Mean Chey Province. “Life here is very difficult. We were provided a thin rice
gruel, made from five cans of rice and some water flowers for the entire unit.
As the days passed, people kept dying, either from disease, starvation, or food
poisoning from eating various leaves. The Khmer Rouge took people to Po Penh to
be killed”.
She confirmed to
us that there was a site in Phnom Srok District, where people were forced to
make fertilizer from human bodies and wastes. She told us that she was required
to excavate graves and get the bodies to make fertilizer. As far as the making
of fertilizer is concerned, she said that her unit was supposed to go out
looking for graves and pits, unearth them and get the bodies out. Then, they
pealed the flesh and things from the bodies, and took the cleaned bones to burn
and make fertilizer out of the ashes. She stated that every day she was required
to collected human remains and bones in order to make fertilizer.
Yeay Chi went on
explaining about the hard times and all difficulties she encountered, “In the
beginning, I could not stand the smell of corpses, but as time passed it would
not really matter to me. However, I did not try to remove the flesh from the
corpses immediately after I excavated them, because it smelled too bad. No
matter how bad the smell was I never had any objections since the Khmer Rouge
constantly kept their watching eyes on me. If I did not do it, it would be a
problem. Making fertilizer was my routine task, and I did it for over one year.
Every time we were out to work, we were always accompanied by a group of four
armed Khmer Rouge soldiers.
She further
stressed, “During my first time at the task, I saw people die miserably. At one
site, among the dead bodies were two to three monks the Khmer Rouge tied up with
a rope before they killed them and put them in a pit. I found a lot of people
killed and the bodies were piled up in big stacks. Mass executions were carried
out in 1977. Evacuees from Southwest [Zone] were all executed. People in the
village were also butchered. Bodies were buried in bigger pits than those at
Choeung Ek. Anyone found to have some reservations about anything was taken by
the Khmer Rouge to be killed”.
She recalled, “If
anyone was as active as me and was quick to come when called, he or she would
survive. I did anything; sometimes some of the Khmer Rouge cadres called me to
perform a traditional coin treatment on them, and I always did it without any
objections as long as they would spare my life”. In 1978, large-scale executions
were carried out, in which both base and new people alike were killed. There
were only a few surviving families. Among members of my female unit responsible
for producing fertilizer, only half survived. The survivors had swelling
diseases because of malnutrition. My family was the first the Khmer Rouge wanted
to take to be killed because they were told by those who were not happy with my
family that we were educated and used to work for Americans”. But in fact, Chhay
Rin was just an ordinary Christian disciple.
She felt very
miserable to witness many of the people close to her taken to be killed by the
Khmer Rouge, usually after being told that, “Angkar needed them to be educated”.
A total of 26 people including her children, nephews and nieces, were killed
under the Khmer Rouge regime. Her
brothers and sisters were taken to be killed near a big tree in Po Penh before
her family moved to Poay Snuol Village, Poay Char Sub-district, Phnom Srok
District. She expressed sadly, “Every time I think of it, my tears drop. I am so
full of sadness.”
Thouny is one of
Chhay Rin’s daughters. She was also a victim under the regime. She was taken to
be killed by the Khmer Rouge soldiers under the order of the collective chief,
named Chhin, who was very brutal. He beat her until she lost consciousness in
front of the edge of a pit. Luckily, seeing her laying there unconsciousness,
they thought she was dead and left her out of the pit. They did not have the
time to check to see if she was dead or alive because there were many more to be
killed at that time. But she was still alive, and has survived until today. She
was left with two scars, one on her the lower, right part of her chin, and the
other on her right foot. She showed them to us, while saying, “......These scars
always remind me of an unforgettable history, an extremely hurtful one. I can
retell the whole story of “One Thousand and One Night”, but there could not be
time enough for me to relate the history of the period of three years eight
months and twenty days under the Pol Pot regime. The more we think and talk
about it, the fresher our memory and the more our tears. It is so much pain that
words cannot describe”.
The Khmer Rouge
took Thouny to be killed on the grounds that she was a KGB agent because she had
spoken back to some Khmer Rouge cadre while laboring at a work site. She said
indirect words meaning something critical of her superiors by expressing them in
general terms. But, she did not do it in a meeting. She said, “If everybody is
to work that much, they all will die. Does it work that someone with a very thin
rice ration can handle the earth hoeing work for 125 cubic meters?” Immediately
after she finished her words, the Khmer Rouge exchanged a threatening question,
“How dare you! You want to oppose Angkar? You know Angkar?” She then responded
honestly, “I do not know Angkar because I do not know what form it takes; all I
see that you are wearing black clothing with a beret on your head and a scarf
around your neck. I do not who Angkar is”. Then, the Khmer Rouge reacted by
saying, “This is some kind of underground intellectual.” “I do not know the term
‘intellectual,’” she replied. They further asked her, “Is it true that you lived
in Phnom Penh previously?” She lied to them saying that, “No, I was not a city
resident; I am an simple street vendor and lived at Kien Svay”. Later, they
threatened to “smash her”. With such a threat, she replied inquisitively, “How
come you want to smash me because Angkar said it would train people to labor to
give them employment”. The Khmer Rouge, said “You oppose Angkar”. They just said
that, but did not do anything to her at that time. However, at 12pm of the same
day, they took her out from the concentration camp to be killed. She was walked
away, her face blindfolded, both of her hands tied up behind her back. As she
was blindfolded, she could see nothing, thus did not know where she was taken.
But, after a while, she felt a blow and lost consciousness.
After regaining
consciousness, she attempted to remove the blindfold, and untie the rope on her
hands. Then, she decided to run away from the camp for fear that they would take
her to be killed once again. She had nothing with her, except a black dress and
a scarf. It was from that time that she was away from her parents with a new
mobile brigade in another region. She was going to Spean Sreng, in Kralanh
District, Siem Reap Province.
She estimated that
a majority of the evacuees from cities were executed because hundreds of
thousands of people were evacuated there, but there were about ten thousands
left and returning to the province. At Kork Romchek, Srah Chik Sub-district,
Phnom Srok District, Banteay Mean Chey Province, the Khmer Rouge took people to
be killed in the rice fields. At Poay Trach, especially in 1979, near the fall
of the regime, the Khmer Rouge killed people indiscriminately and scattered
bodies everywhere. During that time, people evacuated from Phnom Penh were taken
to be killed immediately. She used to see piles of bodies; and she said she was
very scared.
She concluded
that, “When the country was liberated in 1979, there was only a small number of
people in my collective who survived.” She thought that, “It would have been
ideal if the Khmer Rouge had not treated people badly, and instead had provided
them with all necessary supplies for living. During that time, if Angkar had not
attempted to make such ‘Great Leaps Forwards’ and had given people enough to
survive, people would not have died no matter how hard they were worked, except
for those taken to be killed.” |
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