|
|
|
I SHED TEARS IN PRISON
Vannak Huy
Chhim Sam Ol, a 45
year-old farmer living in Ta Cho Village, Sarikakeo Commune, Sva Em District,
Kandal Province, was a Khmer Rouge prisoner in the Eastern Zone in 1974 and
1975. Describing the anguish he experienced during his detainment, Chhim Sam Ol
said: “I wept when they shackled me. I felt so miserable for this life-changing
suffering - sleeping on the ground like animals, fleas all over the body, skin
diseases, etc. During the Phchum Ancestor Festival, I could see numerous people
carrying offerings to the pagodas through the window. As for me, I cried in
custody.” Chhim Sam Ol relates the story of his detention below.
“After the 1970
coup ousting King Sihanouk from his post, I was selected to join a militia unit
[Kang Svay Tran] in order to increase village security. One night in the early
1974, the liberation army of the Khmer Rouge assaulted my village, and captured
thirty villagers and me for serving the old regime [the Khmer Republic, led by
Field Marshal Lon Nol]. At about 10 p.m., a few guerrillas called me,
‘contemptible Ol, come down here!’ Sensing
serious trouble, I decided not to come. So I stayed still in my house.
When I did so, they used their bayonets to stab me from beneath my house Then
they shot at me three times. Because they roared fiercely and I was afraid I
might get hit by some of the bullets, I surrendered, raising my hands and
walking slowly down the stairs. As I reached the ground, they immediately took
my watch, tied me up and walked me away.
“As they were
leading me and the other villagers to the edge of the village, Lon Nol soldiers
shelled from the Chroy Changva area with their six-cannoned artillery. The Khmer
Rouge then ran away, leaving us behind. Panic stricken, we cut the ropes binding
us and ran to hide in pits that had been made by previous bombings. After the
bombardment was over, the Khmer Rouge soldiers returned, pointed their guns at
us and called us to stand up. They tied us up once again and led us to a river,
where they began to strip-search us for money. They said, ‘Any money or
belongings must be confiscated. They will be returned to you when you are
re-educated.’ After searching, they continued their march along the river. As we
were walking, planes from Phnom Penh attacked again. But they strafed at the
Khmer Rouge only. A few minutes later, the planes disappeared. The Khmer Rouge
then brought us to a reeducation camp in Prek Rey, Lvea Em District. I was
detained there for two weeks. When they escorted us, I was not afraid. But when
they shackled us, I began to fear, shedding tears.”
At this point in
the interview, Sam Ol took a huge breath, looked at his wrists, and continued,
“Life in the prison was harsh. The utensils we ate with were the open containers
used to feed pigs, and we used crab shells as spoons. During this time, the
prison’s security guards called me to write my autobiography three times. A
guard banged the table and said, ‘You are all members of the militia unit!’
Because they intimidated me, I told them the truth. Every one of us was
questioned. Of the three times I was called to be questioned, I told them a lie
that ‘I don’t have any relatives.’ Previous captives told me that if I told them
the truth about this, the Khmer Rouge would search for my relatives.
“In addition to
questioning us, the Khmer Rouge guards ordered all the prisoners to work at
farms, collect firewood, move earth, and carry water to the tanks with our hands
and shoulders. The prisoners were forced to work continuously all day long, and
were provided insufficient food.”
During his one
year of detainment, Sam Ol was moved to three different reeducation camps. He
revealed: “After being detained at Prek Rey prison for two weeks, the Khmer
Rouge moved 15 prisoners including me to Snay Pol reeducation camp in Pea Reang
District, Prey Veng Province for one day before continuing to Prek Kralanh
reeducation camp. Prisoners who were relocated from Prek Rey prison to Snay Pol
prison were not shackled. Instead, the Khmer Rouge tied them using only sewing
thread. ‘Anybody who causes the threads to detach will be shot immediately!’
Luckily, the guards did not mean what they said, because as we were walking, if
someone walked too fast, the person behind him had to remind the person in
front: ‘Don’t walk too fast, the thread will be detached.’ Whenever the threads
broke, the prisoners spoke in fright, ‘Help! Help connect the threads together.’
The Khmer Rouge soldiers roared with laughter when they heard that.
“When we reached a
village consisting of approximately ten families, the villagers came out. They
were carrying sticks, knives, axes, and hoes. They gathered around the prisoners
saying, ‘Comrades! Exchange chickens with us! These men are imperialists! Take
our chickens!’ All of the prisoners were scared stiff of being slaughtered by
the villagers. Fortunately, Santebal prohibited them. They led us for three more
days until we reached Snay Pul prison. In fact, the distance from Prek Rey to
Snay Pul was only a day’s walk. At night, the guards led the prisoners from Snay
Pul to Prek Kralanh prison, which was my final prison.”
Sam Ol was
detained in Prek Kralanh for almost a year. On 17 April 1975 when the Khmer
Rouge occupied Phnom Penh, he was allowed to farm for the new regime, which he
called a “prison without walls.”
Sam Ol talked
further about his life during his year of captivity in Prek Kralanh: “When I was
detained in Prek Rey prison for a week, the chief of the prison told us in a
meeting that ‘We’ll move on in order to live with our people.’ I was very glad
to hear about living with ordinary people, but in reality they brought us to
another prison, Prek Kralanh. At Prek Kralanh the prison chief said that ‘We
come here to get conditioned. So, try hard to rebuild yourself from today on.’ I
was always wondering, ‘How do I temper and build myself?’ The Khmer Rouge
conditioned the prisoners on every aspect of their lives from sleeping to
walking to eating: ‘Train and train until the prisoners became skinny and bony.’
The Khmer Rouge turned schools into prisons. There were about 30 prisoners at my
prison. Five inmates were kept in a single room. We were provided two meals a
day-at 11 a.m. and at 5 p.m. A ladle of porridge was given to each prisoner and
a bowl of crab sour-soup for five prisoners in a meal. The soup had half a crab
and five slices of giant cactus tree as a vegetable. Each person was allowed
only one spoon of soup. We did not have real bowls for our rice or porridge;
they were made instead from palm leaves. We had to gulp our thin boiled-rice
immediately after the cooks poured it into our leaf bowls; otherwise it would be
gone in seconds through leaks. We gulped down the boiled-rice first and drank
the soup later.
“At dawn, the
deputy chief of security assigned us to do various jobs. Some were appointed to
transplant rice. Others were told to pull rice seedlings or fill water tanks.
The chief prohibited all inmates from communicating with villagers. When meeting
villagers, a prisoner was not to tell them about his or her miserable life in
prison, for this was ‘a secret of Angkar.’ What a prisoner should tell them was
that ‘food is plentiful and life in prison is fine.’
“One day in Phchum
Ben season, I fetched water from a well at a pagoda. Just when my bucket reached
the water, a monk arrived and asked me, ‘Do you have enough food to eat in
prison?’ Then I replied frankly that ‘I don’t have anything to eat, except a
bowl of boiled-rice.’ With pity, the monk handed me three ansam chruks [a kind
of traditional cake with a combination of pork and sticky rice made especially
during Phchum Ben season]. ‘Eat carefully, do not let them know,’ he said. To me
the cakes were like gold. I thought that ‘this time I would have a chance to eat
delicious food.’ I kept one in my pleat, another one folded into my trouser
waist, and held the third one in my hand. Just as I was about to eat the one I
was holding, a Khmer Rouge guard appeared from nowhere and shouted at me,
‘You’ve stolen them from other people!’ Then the guard hit me four times with
his gun butt. I fell flat to the ground close to the well, and then the guard
took my cakes away. The villagers preferred to feed the prisoners, but the Khmer
Rouge not only took the food away, they blamed the villagers if they wanted to
give food to them.
“What I’ve never
forgotten was the time when I met my older brother as the guards were leading me
and other inmates to transplant rice. When I saw my brother, I asked him,
‘Brother! Where have you come from?’ After my brother had walked past, a Khmer
Rouge soldier asked me, ‘Who did you talk to?’ ‘I called my brother,’ I told
him. Suddenly, he hit violently three times using the butt of his gun and warned
me, ‘Do not do this again! If you want to ask him, ask me first.’ The Khmer
Rouge guards working at the prison were mostly teenagers between the ages of 16
to 17, yet the prisoners did not have enough physical strength to revolt. As an
example, a strong gust of wind could easily knock me down if I did not walk
carefully outside the prison.
“All prisoners had
the same fate. The difference was just a matter of time. Some died of swelling
caused by lack of food. Other died attempting to escape.”
Sam Ol emphasized
the causes of death: “Most prisoners were too weak to work under the sun,
because they were provided very little food to eat… They were pale and easily
infected by disease, causing the body to swell and fluids to flow out. One night
five prisoners attempted to escape through the door. Unfortunately, the chief of
the unit knew and informed the security chief. In the morning, the security
chief called all prisoners to attend the meeting and asked, ‘Listen! Who made an
attempt to escape last night?’ All prisoners replied that they did not know
anything. ‘You all conspire to lie to me! You wanted to escape last night!’ said
the chief. However, the chief had known everything, since the chief of the unit
who had informed him was a former prisoner assigned to keep a lookout on the
activities of other prisoners and report on them to the security chief. We did
not know where this lookout worked in the daytime, but he returned to sleep
inside the cell with other prisoners at night. When the meeting ended, the
security chief ordered the guards to tie five prisoners’ hands behind their
backs until their elbows almost touched. They were all blindfolded. Then they
were led to the north behind the prison, while the remaining prisoners were
allowed to go back to their cells. The security chief closed the door and
warned, ‘If anyone causes chaos upon hearing gunshots, they will be killed.’ A
moment later I heard him counting: ‘One! Two! Three!’ followed by the sound of
several gunshots.” Nevertheless, Sam Ol added that he did not hear the cry of
the prisoners, but “when I looked to the front, I could recognize some clothes
belonging to the prisoners hung on the fence.”
What he saw was
three prisoners being executed using the sharp edge of a palm tree branch. It
was “carried out before our very eyes three months after I first arrived. A
group of Khmer Rouge soldiers brought these prisoners from Prek Rey to Prek
Kralanh prison to be slaughtered for attempted escape.” Sam Ol said, “Punishing
prisoners for breaking rules was a way to warn others against repeating the same
crime.”
He stated: “I’ll
never forget the punishment imposed on me by the Khmer Rouge. I wonder how these
people, who spoke the same language as us, could kill their own race? During
each Phchum season, I’ve always thought about what happened 25 years ago in
which ‘I shed tears in prison.’” |
|
