Tears Shed During Civil Party Witness Cross-Examination On Horrors Suffered
The parties were present; Nuon Chea was in his holding cell, his obligatory rights waiver had been processed and the President stated Nuon Chea’s counsel had advised him that following the proceedings from downstairs was not prejudicial to a fair trial. All was well but further cross-examination had to wait until the bench clarified some of the statements made yesterday by Civil Party Chou Koemlan.
After cautioning the witness not to guess after forty years, Judge Fenz went over in detail the encounter with Pol Pot, Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea and Ta Mok. Ms. Chou was emphatic that this was the only time she saw tham. She got a good look at them after they stepped out of their vehicle and walked along the edge of the canal on which she was working, she estimated about nine meters away from her. She was close enough to “hear everything,” and related how the men were discussing among themselves that the workers should dig the canal deeper, that the water was needed to irrigate the rice fields in order to meet the production quota of three to six tons of rice per hectare. One man commented that the palm juice they had been given to drink needed to be sweeter. Only Ta Mok talked to the workers and the unit chief. Ms. Chou said that they were not especially assembled for the visitors but were just at work as normal when the dignitaries came.
Under Judge Fenz questioning, Ms. Chou said it had been several years since she had seen Khieu Samphan’s picture but that she could recognize him during the visit as his face had not changed much. She added that she saw him again in 1992 and his face still had not changed much. Mr. Chou said that at the same time as she independently recognized Khieu Samphan, the chief had identified him to her. Ms. Chou did not know Nuon Chea before the unit chief and the village chief told her who he was. The chiefs referred to the men again in the lunch time meeting and told the workers that “the upper Angkar had just visited us.” The leaders’ names were given and that “their status was equivalent to king in the previous regime.”
Judge Lavergne asked her to describe her living conditions in the commune. Ms. Chou drew a picture of differential lodgings according to position. The commune committee lived in a “model house” with wooden walls and a tiled roof whereas the workers slept crowded close to each other in a dwelling without walls, with coconut or sugar palm leaves for a roof. She reiterated her prior testimony that “new people” also received less in food rations. Ta Mok lived in a nice house complete with garden by a lake in Takeo province. There was a teacher at the cooperative but not a proper school. The children were taught “to make commitments with the Khmer Rouge” rather than learning such subjects as literature. She did not count how many people ate communally; some people took their meals home to eat. Males and females had the same amount of rations.
Ms. Chou confirmed under the court’s statement that the three leaders were the only visitors to the cooperative in the time she was there. At first she said she had seen no Westerners, Chinese or other expatriates but then remembered a time when she a foreign photographer had come. The chief had prepared them for the visit saying that they had “to work orderly” (translation?) so the photographer could take his photographs. But the district committee visited frequently and she was able to name the various senior members of the committee and the village chiefs. Ms. Chou also could recall that when the Chinese Circus came only the unit chiefs and commune chiefs could go and see it. And Ms. Chou knew the pagoda at the cooperative had housed children and a school, and then it became a prison.
Nuon Chea’s Defence Counsel, Suon Vital, began by reviewing with Ms. Chou’s recollection of communal eating. The witness said that there was no communal eating when she first arrived, that it began in August, 1975. She did not know the exact break down but many of the workers had come from Phnom Penh while others were from Takeo province. Six or seven members of her family were there. There were only a few “base people.” They “were in charge of the 17th April people.” The “base people” had the same living conditions as “new people” but they had extra food rations. Ms. Chou confirmed that, when she had just arrived at the commune, she was able to barter her sarong for rice that she would cook at night in secret. By 1976, bartering was disallowed and they would be killed if found out. The “base people” worked with the “new people” on whom they “would keep an eye.” If they heard complaints, the complainants would be sent for a study session or to be “refashioned” (translation?). If they rested more than half a day when sick, they would be “in danger”. When her baby was sick, she was allowed to rest but then would not get any food. At those times, she ate the food given to the baby. Maternity leave initially amounted to twenty-seven days off work. She knew of a woman who later on was permitted to take one month or one month and a few days maternity leave. As well, a mother only had to work until 10 A.M. or 10:30 A.M. so she had time to look after her baby.
Ms. Chou had not seen her nephew disemboweled but his grandmother had seen it and then told her about it. He was killed because of his connection to the former regime. Her father was a village chief, a civil servant in the former regime. He was taken for two study sessions and then assigned to make earth baskets for the workers. The village chief asked her father to work for Angkar but he refused on the excuse that he had high blood pressure. As to arrests, she had only seen two people arrested in her K3 unit but knew of many more arrested in the commune. Along with unit chiefs and village chiefs, she had attended three marriage ceremonies wherein “new people” had to marry “base people” by making “resolutions.” Spouses were designated by discussion between the unit chiefs and the village chiefs. The couplings were mainly between widows and widowers. Ms. Chou knew that the marriages were forced because the newlyweds were unhappy the next day. They complained about their partners but said they had to do it to survive.
The Civil Party related how the Vietnamese were “cleansed.” Ms. Chou said they were told that they were to be sent back to Vietnam but that this was a lie. The “base people” said they were sent for “study sessions:” to be killed. She did not know this personally but she had been told in a meeting “not to interfere with historical will.”
After the break, the President announced that a new trial schedule of four sitting days a week would be issued starting the first week of February. Further, Nil Nonn stated that the Trial Chamber would make a decision on the fitness of Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea to stand trial in due course.
Mr. Koppe canvassed Ms. Chou about what relatives she had that were also living in the commune or the general neighbourhood at the time. She testified that her father was born and grew up in the commune where he later became a village chief. Likewise, her mother also was born and grew up there. Her parents both had siblings. After Lon Nol, the family was separated. Some were taken to the jungle. Only older members of her family and people from Phnom Penh had attended her 1972 wedding (which was held in Phnom Penh). She was related to her husband. Her husband had worked in two other provinces before he moved to Phnom Penh. He had been a captain in the Lon Nol army and then, “after Phnom Penh failed,” a major.
As she was born, brought up and lived most of her life in the same place, Mr. Koppe wanted to know how it was determined that she was a “new person” rather than a “base person.” Ms. Chou said it was known that they had lived in Phnom Penh. If they had gone and lived in the jungle instead, then they would have been “base people.” And they were “new people” because her husband had just been arrested for being “an enemy.”
Next came a necessary part of the cross-examination that generally made those in the courtroom uncomfortable, not least of all, the defence counsel. Mr. Koppe empathetically asked Ms. Chou about the death of her daughter who, the witness said, had died of starvation in 1976, age 3. Her mother soon became distraught remembering how the child had become sick because she did not have enough to eat and died, she said, because of the lack of food. Mr. Koppe explored the issue of why Ms. Chou had not been able to find food when she had so many family members in the area. Ms. Chou said the cause of death was that the child got the measles and then lost her hair. There was no medicine. This mother explained her daughter was so weak from lack of sustenance that she could not recover from the disease and, consequently, died. Weeping, Ms. Chou said she was “saddened by this tragic event.” Other children in the children’s unit also did not have enough to eat. Mr. Koppe gave her time to regain her composure after the painful exploration of her daughter’s death.
Moving on, Mr. Koppe then asked Ms. Chou when her husband was arrested. She could remember they had only been back in the village three or four months. He asked her to define what the term sending her husband to be “re-educated” meant. “Re-education was a lie, she said. It meant he was killed. She cried so much when the “base people” told her that her husband had been shot that they transferred her to K3. She had not known what “re-education” meant before that. The “base people” explained to her that having been a high officer was considered a serious crime. Serious criminals were killed close by. Those with less serious offences were taken off to work some and then killed. Her husband had been taken out west of the pagoda, made to dig his own grave and then shot three times. It was not until after the fall of the Khmer Rouge that she learned from someone who had seen her husband shot exactly what had happened. The accomplice would not talk until then out of fear of revenge. Ms. Chou said she “do(es) not want to commit the sin of revenge.” But she “was left behind as a widow.”
Defence counsel returned to the important issue of the visit of Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea and the others. Ms. Chou explained that the chiefs had identified the men both by name and as “upper echelon” Angkar, “the leaders of the country with a rank equivalent to king in the previous regime.” She said she did not remember the names Vorn Vet, Son Sen or “Sao Phim.” Neither did she know that the Communist Party of Kampuchea was ruling Kampuchea and not the Angkar, a development announced in 1977. Ms. Chou said they just talked about who the three senior leaders were who were running the country. She added that Ta Mok was at the provincial level; the other three men were at the ministerial level.
Mr. Koppe asked her if it would surprise here that “prior to November, 1977, almost nobody in the world knew about Nuon Chea until then.” The President quickly interrupted telling the witness that she did not need to respond to a “proposition,” which the defence counsel acknowledged.
Ms. Chou could not tell Mr. Koppe where Klai Kroaeum was but said her husband would not have been sent there: the militia who came for him were carrying a hoe and a rifle and he had a high rank. In contrast, she said her brother likely would have been sent to Kraing Ta Chan.
Mr. Koppe wondered if Ms. Chou could clarify the “alleged harm” done to her physically during the regime. Dramatically, she held up her left hand, evidence enough that she was missing her middle finger, lost, she said, when a rice grinder broke sometime after January, 1979.
Ms. Guissé, Khieu Samphan’s defence counsel tried to jog Ms. Chou’s memory as to exactly when the leaders visited but the best she could do was to say it she dug the canal at that site 14 to 15 days during the dry season and then was moved to a different worksite. She could not remember if it was closer to February or to May. Ms. Chou dismissed Ms. Guissé’s implied discrepancies in a statement she made to Legal Aid Cambodia on several matters with the credible explanation that the information was taken down over the telephone and she did not think the interviewer could hear her very well. For instance, when Ms. Guissé challenged her that she had told Legal Aid that a unit chief told her that the leaders were coming before they arrived and that she had mentioned Ta Mok, Ms. Chou said it was “inconsistent with what she had said.”
She had known Ta Mok for a long time and had seen him frequently before the leaders’ visit. She did not “think that the person on the other side could hear (her) so mistakes were made.”
Ms. Chou said that they would not have been told in advance about the event because the local leaders “would have been afraid that the 17th April people would have had issues if they had known they were coming.” Similarly, Ms. Guissé’s exploration of Ms. Chou’s memory concerning the position of the cars, whether they had tinted windows, which way the men were walking once they had exited the vehicles, the unit chief’s report of meeting with the important leaders under a mango tree after the workers’ meeting in which they were exhorted to work harder to fulfill the Leap Forward Principle, and what the unit chiefs had said about the visitors, showed that the witness was not to be swayed from her prior testimony. Ms. Chou also was able to give a reasonable outline of the duties and responsibilities of each of many local leaders.
Khieu Samphan’s National Co-Lawyer, Kong Sam Onn, asked if Ms. Chou could explain the meaning of the phrase: “mind your own business.” The Civil Party said it was used frequently during Khmer Rouge times and that it was always mentioned in the ordinary meetings held every ten days and at the monthly meetings. She termed it “a scary phrase. No one can help others. Fathers, mothers, siblings, no one could help anyone. If someone made a mistake, they would be taken away.” She did not know who invented the term but it was in use from 1975.
Delving back into the loss of Ms. Chou’s family members, Ms. Guissé learned that her husband had been in the police before he was a soldier. The villagers had all known of his background because it was his birth place and he had grown up there. When they had returned to the village from Phnom Penh, they had just said in their biographies that he had been a medic so he had no initial issues. But in a search of her husband’s clothing, a photograph of him in a uniform which indicated his rank was found in the pocket of a shirt. (“‘Base people’ searched their belongings before they could live in an area.”) “Base people” were also known as “18th April people.”
After the break, Kong Sam Onn had some supplementary questions concerning the positioning of the visitors’ parked cars and the reception party but Ms. Chou stayed on point. Civil Party Lead Co-Lawyer, Marie Guirard finally rose to object that the examination had gone from repetitive questions to “super repetitive questions.” The President reserved his ruling and Mr. Kong continued establishing the geography of the visitor siting but failed to sway the witness from her prior testimony.
The cross-examination concluded, President Nil Nonn invited Ms. Chou to make a personal statement concerning her understanding of the facts and the physical and mental injuries that she had suffered. He reminded her that she had a right to ask questions of the accused but that the accused, thus far, were exercising their right to remain silent.
Ms. Chou described how she was cooking rice when the Khmer Rouge came in vehicles with loudspeakers to announce that everyone was to vacate Phnom Penh for three to five days. They were not allowed to take any valuable, just some rice, clothes and their mosquito nets. Her aging parent (her father had hypertension), elder sibling, her children and other family members walked for twenty days to reach Tram Kok. She had seen decomposing bodies along the road. They had run out of rice en route and were given maize when they arrived at the cooperative. In a few days, her husband was killed. She went through labour only to be forced back into the fields to harvest rice just twenty-seven days after giving birth. Ms. Chou said she “couldn’t describe (her) sufferings.” She scavenged for food on the ground and collected leaves for medicine. She carried fertilizer and dug canals. She had a foot infection when she worked transplanting uprooted plants in order to plant potatoes, beans and sugar. Her sibling, nephew and niece were killed. She lost everything: her belongings, her vehicle, and her three houses.
Ms. Chou spoke of how “saddened” she was that the revolution gave them nothing but “hardship and suffering.” She wanted to know how “Khmer could kill Khmer.” They had a revolution so people could have equal rights, “to liberate the country from U.S. imperialists.” She demanded to know why the people were killed. She questioned the accused about why they did not have more food, why was the culture destroyed? Why did they destroy schools and Buddhism? Why did they turn pagodas into prisons? She wanted to know “what have they considered in their actions?” And she wanted to know why they have not confessed to what they have done, how they could say they did not know what was happening over the long period of “three years, eight months and twenty days?” Ms. Chou ended on a plea to the Trial Chamber “implore(ing)) the court to find justice.”
Ms. Chou’s answers may be long in coming. President Nil Nonn reminded her that, as he had received no word from them to the contrary, the accused were exercising their right to remain silent and were not required to respond to her questions of them.
After Ms. Chou was dismissed with the thanks of the court, Em Phoeung was escorted to the witness stand. The President efficiently verified that he is an eligible witness by confirming that he had taken an oath and that he had no conflicting affiliations. Further questioning elicited the witness’s date of birth, his address and his present position as Provincial Monk Chief of Kampot. Em Phoeung agreed that he had had an opportunity to review prior written records of his interviews with investigators.
But then there arose a scheduling problem as, due to a prior commitment, the Reference is not able to attend the hearing on Thursday to give his evidence. The court arranged to consult with him and, working around the Buddhist holidays in February, set an alternative date for him to give his testimony. Adjournment was called.