Survivor Allegedly Spent Hours Under Corpses in a Mass Grave Before Escaping from Duch’s Killing Field

Today, Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch) refuted the testimony of a third alleged survivor of Tuol Sleng prison (S-21). While Duch acknowledged the suffering of civil party Lay Chan, he argued there was no evidence the suffering happened at S-21. Duch’s defense counsel stood to announce his challenge just after Lay began his testimony.

Lay, now a 55 year old rice farmer, was arrested sometime in 1976 while working as a messenger for the Khmer Rouge. After being stripped, blindfolded, and thrown into a few different vehicles, Lay arrived at a detention facility that he now believes to be S-21. During approximately three months there, he was interrogated and tortured twice. He was accused of stealing rice for “the enemy” and conspiring with two of his former superiors. He was detained in an individual cell and only guessed there were other detainees due to the screams and footsteps he heard. Any time he was taken out of his cell, he was blindfolded. He was often taken outside at night to dig pits that he was told were for banana trees. In the most disturbing moment of his testimony, Lay started sobbing as he described being so thirsty that he drank his own urine.

One day for unknown reasons, he was thrown into a vehicle and dropped off on the outskirts of Phnom Penh all alone. Eventually, he hitched a ride back to Phnom Penh where a comrade instructed him to go to the railway station. Once there, he learned it was a re-education facility and he was put to work collecting firewood used for cooking palm sugar. After about a year, he was sent back to his original farming unit to grow vegetables and rice. He remained there until the Vietnamese seized Phnom Penh…

Read more: ctm_blog_7-7-2009