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A KHMER ROUGE REGIME’S MIDWIFE
Sophal Ly
Ung Vuth, a former
Khmer Rouge midwife, is now 56 years old and living in Ta Reap, a village in
Cheang Torng Subdistrict, Tram Kak District, Takeo Province. (During the
Democratic Kampuchea regime, Takeo province was in the Southeast Zone, which was
controlled by Ta Mok. There were mass killings in this area.) She was the third
child of a middle-class family. Ung Vuth now lives with her husband, the chief
of Ta Reap Village, and her mother-in-law. She has no children. She makes her
living by farming and is occasionally invited by the local people to help
deliver their babies. She has been a skillful midwife since the 1960s.
As a 16 year old
with a fifth-grade education (under the old educational system), she began
working as a nurse in about 1962, and worked in different hospitals for 25
years. First, Ung Vuth worked at Ketomealea Hospital in Phnom Penh for three
years, where she was responsible for nursing and delivering babies. After
perfecting her skills, she was transferred to the Chinese Hospital for another 7
years.
She told us that
she did not take any exam to study nursing. She was chosen by Doctor Chuon
Choeun, called Ta Pen, who, along with Khieu Samphan, Hou Nim, and Hou Yun, used
to have a good relationship with her father. “My father was at Chuon Choeun’s
side and his friends are now very old. Khieu Samphan at that time was single and
used to stay at my house [O Russey] for a few nights in a rusty iron bed, until
Phnom Penh was liberated by the Khmer Rouge,” said Ung Vuth.
Due to the chaotic
situation in 1970, one month before the coup, she left Phnom Penh along with
Chuon Choeun and approximately 60 other hospital staff members. They fled into
the jungle on national road number 3 towards Ua Ral Stream, Kampong Speu
Province (Region 13) according to their pre-designed plan. She added, “We left
the city without regret, for we were convinced. Chuon Choeun told us that if we
wanted freedom, we must go to work in country hospitals...The so-called Sihanouk
was now in the forest and wanted people to live under an atmosphere free from
oppression.”
Upon her arrival
at Ua Ral Stream, she saw Ta Mok, Khieu Samphan, Hou Nim, and Hou Yun. Ta Mok
and Khieu Samphan used to encourage hospital staff to struggle for people’s
freedom. At Ua Ral she worked in surgery for about a month, and after that there
was a meeting to relocate nurses to various provinces. She was appointed to work
in Pheak Hospital (Hospital 22). During 1973-1974, Region 13, which did not have
enough hospital staff members, asked Chuon Choeun to let her work there. At the
Region 13 hospital, Ung Vuth was ordered to ensure the survival of all mothers.
“They demanded that the mothers of babies be kept safe. A midwife responsible
for any death during the delivery of a baby would be imprisoned,” said Ung Vuth.
She noted that she resisted this order, stating that, “I cannot ensure the
survival of the patients if the hospital uses rabbit-dung tablets as medicine,
because I am accustomed to using modern medicine, such as serums.
“In response, the
organization fulfilled our request so that we could teach people from various
communes about nursing and patient care.” Ung Vuth was the chief midwife at the
Region 13 hospital, where her duties included delivering babies in all of the
region’s villages and subdistricts. She also taught new staff from many regions
in Takeo Province, but the teaching involved only clinical practices, not
theoretical approaches.
Ung Vuth was a
hard-working nurse, who tried her best to please the chiefs of villages,
subdistricts and districts. She was always admired by subdistrict and district
chiefs for her excellent work and for not having had any deaths during
childbirths. She said, “The chiefs admired me and said that I was a diligent and
prolific nurse.” However, she was usually criticized for wearing long-sleeve
shirts (in the revolutionary forces short sleeves were preferred).
In 1977, Ung
Vuth’s marriage was arranged by Ta Mok. Laughing, she spoke about this, saying
that she did not want a husband yet, but she could not reject the organization’s
orders. “One day, a Chinese-made truck came to pick me up, lying to me and
saying that I was called to join a party at the provincial town of Takeo. But
when I arrived they told me I was about to get married.”
She did not live
with her husband after marriage. Recalling the troubles in her marriage, Ung
Vuth said: “Within a few days after the wedding, we did not get along with each
other, but the organization coerced us to compromise. Nevertheless, it took us a
long time to do so.” After that, she requested technical training on abortions
at April 17 Hospital (Russian Hospital) for a year, but after only six months
she was called by the regional chief to return to Takeo because she had not
lived with her husband since their marriage. Ung Vuth told us that she
eventually loved her husband because of his actions after the organization detained
her at Sanlong Mountain prison at the end of 1977 under a pretext that she was
required to attend a session. Her husband was ordered to do self-criticism for
one night and told to divorce her. The organization told him that they would
find him a new wife. But her husband refused. He packed his clothes and rode a
bicycle to meet her at the prison.
Ung Vuth said that
she was imprisoned because the organization had accused her parents of
involvement in a traitorous network, and that all of the relatives of such
people would also be imprisoned. She stressed that Ta Mok was the one who both
arranged her marriage and the arrests of her parents. She was certain that many
killings were the act of Ta Mok. “Ta Mok was a sweet-talking person.” Thinking
about this, she began to sob and spoke with sadness that “All of my brothers and
sisters perished. I’ve never heard about them. All twelve members, including my
parents... Only I am still alive.” All her siblings were hospital staff. She
still remembers the name of one of the people who arrested her: Khem.
Ung Vuth described
her conditions at Sanlong Mountain. Most of those arrested were base people.
Entire divisions and mobile units were accused of being members of traitorous
networks and brought there to be imprisoned. Even worse, at Sanlong there was
another jail, which was mainly utilized to detain people with purported serious
violations. Five to seven days after their arrival, prisoners in this jail would
be executed. Large pits had been dug beforehand around each cell. Ung Vuth
stated that later, “I heard only two words: Yoy! Help!, then silence. In the
morning everyone observed the sight, but no one dared to say anything.” She
continued, “Sanlong’s inmates were sent to break rocks. April 17 women were
ordered to excavate a cubic meter of soil a day. This was agonizing work for
them, because they were starving and could barely take a breath. They would eat
anything within their sight. Of eggplant leaves, only stems remained, the other
parts were eaten with salt. Baby-frogs were skewered with a piece of stick, then
put on a tiny fire. If they were seen grilling frogs or eating leaves, they
would be forced to eat raw frogs or be punished by forcing masses of leaves into
their mouths.”
At the beginning
she was directed to grow crops, after that to cure inmates’ illnesses without
being allowed to go outside, and finally she was sent to harvest and thresh
rice. She stressed that, “I hadn’t known how to thresh rice with sticks.
Instead, I threshed using my hands. A Khmer Rouge shouted at me that if I did
not do it properly, he would hit me with his pair of sticks.” She told us
proudly that, “I strongly confronted them. I had determined that before I died,
I must knock those people to the ground with my shoulder pole if they dared to
hit me, for my relatives had died. I could truly have done so.” Later, the Khmer
Rouge carried out numerous experiments against her with an attempt to find her
weak points to entangle her in crimes. She added that, “The KR sent me to
embroider a hundred scarf margins per day in various units, then they told me to
sew 100 elastic trousers for the youth per day... I did all that work on time
and the result was also guaranteed... I had to finish it, if not the KR would
punish me... Being unable to find my weaknesses, they sent me back to hospital.”
Two to three
months later the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia. At that time she fled with
several high ranking officers to Koh Kong, and eventually returned home by
travelling through the Pich Nil mountain pass. She stressed that her efforts to
help the organization were useless. What she received instead was the deaths of
all ten of ten siblings and her parents, and her own imprisonment. Ung Vuth will
never forget these experiences. “It’s all enough. I don’t want to participate in
any political movement anymore, no matter how hard they try to convince me. Even
if the former Khmer Rouge at Anlong Veng need me, I’ll never join them again,”
Ung Vuth insisted. The thing that truly causes her grief is the death of her
family. She said she had never been afraid that people hated her during the
Khmer Rouge period because she had done good things for them. All people loved
her. Wherever she goes, she is always warmly greeted. People often say that
jack-fruit and mango trees are “the legacy of nurse Vuth!!” because she planted
them. |
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