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CHEY SOPHEARA TELLS HISTORY OF THE MASS
GRAVES BEHIND TUOL SLENG
Pongrasy Pheng
Mr. Chey Sopheara,
aged 51, is currently Director of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Sopheara said
that the mass grave uncovered very recently in the front yard of the resident, a
stone throw from behind the Museum fence of the Museum, is in fact related to
what had happened at the Museum after the liberation.
Sopheara was one
of the guides at Tuol Sleng between 1979-80, when the State (the People’s
Revolutionary of Kampuchea) established a people’s court to try the Khmer Rouge
regime, in which many delegates from the socialist nations. During that period of the 1979’s Khmer
Rouge trial, his team was told to exhume the above grave to show the delegations
that the Khmer Rouge killed actually people everywhere in the compound of S-21
Office during their rule between 1975-79.
Sopheara knew
there were graves behind Tuol Sleng because he had been told by a soldier not
long after the liberation day.
However, he forgot the name of the soldier. “In 1979-80, wherever his
team dug the earth, we saw human bones”, he recalled. His team chose to dig the
grave, which was now in the front yard of Mr. Ay Siphal, who is a shoe maker. At
that time, there was no peoples’ residence behind the Museum like now. There was actually debris of a ruined
house next to the grave and there were many banana trees behind the infamous
S-21. The grave was located at a cluster of the banana trees. When his team dug
it, he saw strings, bones, and skulls…. The Ministry of Health and the competent
authorities came and joined Sopheara’ s team in the exhumation process. The
exhumation was stopped after a while due to the very bad smell from the bodies
in the grave. He said that the bones were boiled in a big pot and hairs remained
to be seen on some of the skulls. Some of the skulls after being boiled and
cleaned were put together to shape like a map and some were kept there for an
exhibition. He said his team kept suspecting that the big skulls and long sight
bones were the remains of some foreigners.
Sopheara said he
himself was told to bring some of the bones from Svay Rieng province and some
from Tuol Kok gravesite (Radio Station situated north of the city). He estimated
at 10 bodies in that grave. After that, his team took a large piece of glass to
cover the grave and a fence was made around the grave for other foreign
delegates or journalists to come and see. His team believed that the glass could
also protect the remains from being eaten by animals and from being covered up
with earth.
In 1993, the
political trend changed, the grave was covered up with earth (over the glass)
and the fence was destroyed. Just recently, as Ay Siphal was preparing to build
an extension to his house, he dug up the grave and intended to take the bones to
a pagoda. Sopheara asserted that some of the houses built behind Tuol Sleng
Genocide Museum must have been standing on the graves. House owners knew about
this but they kept building and living there. The glass that we saw broken into
pieces now was the old glass his team put to cover the bones in the late 1979,
it was not the frame of the grave.
Sopheara referred
to the recent finding of the grave behind Tuol Sleng as being merely an old
story. “Mr. Ay Siphal actually knew of the grave beneath where he lives and he
did not do anything to the bones until he was prepared to build an extension to
his house. He had to first dig the grave and took the bones to the pagoda for a
religious ceremony according to the Khmer tradition. So, do not be so
surprised.”, said Chey Sopheara, “It is an old story.”
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