Testimony Relates Gruesome Details of Victims Tortured as Examples to Other Prisoners
With the exception of an ill Khieu Samphan counsel, Arthur Vercken, all parties to the proceedings were present (either in person or remotely) today to hear the completion of testimony of civil party Cheang Sreimom and the start of the disturbing testimony of witness Kev Chandara.
Before Ms. Sreimom was questioned, Trial Chamber President Nil Nonn had an announcement. In reference to International Co-Prosecutor Koumjian’s prior request of last week, the President clarified that the Trial Chamber’s practice is to brief witnesses about the protective measures that are available to them before they give testimony. He said that this issue was even more relevant with the current witnesses because of the increased likelihood of sexual violence being discussed. The Witness and Experts Support Unit (WESU) has been charged with instructing witnesses as to their right to have a closed hearing. Then the cross-examination recommenced with defence counsel for Nuon Chea.
Nuon Chea’s International Co-Lawyer, Victor Koppe began by examining Ms. Cheang’s knowledge of the type of education that was offered to the children in the commune during the Khmer Rouge regime. Ms. Cheang did not recognize a textbook from the Ministry of Education published in 1977 that the counsel presented to her. She had taught “letters and the alphabet.” Ms. Cheang said that “there were no real textbooks at the time.” So Mr. Koppe went back to the basics to investigate exactly what teaching Ms. Cheang had done. Apparently, not much, definitely “not full time,” and only in 1975 and 1976. Her assigned task was “to look after the children, to feed them and to lead them to labour.” She knew the teachers had taught spelling, “word pronunciation,” songs and encouragement to “engage in labour.” Mr. Koppe asked if it was part of the curriculum in 1975 to 1976 to teach which people belonged to the Kampuchea nation, and was the answer of “all ethnic origins, including all Khmer and other ethnic groups” taught? As Ms. Cheang’s primary duties were carried out in a different location, she was not able to listen in on classes to hear the subject matter being taught.
The defence counsel moved on to enquire as to the guidelines Ms. Cheang had received from Angkar in relation to “family building.” She could not be of help on this topic either saying she had received “no such advice from the leaders. They didn’t tell (her) anything about that.”
She was most emphatic that there had been no “choice” about a spouse. They were told during meetings to “sacrifice self” to Angkar. Whatever assignment Angkar gave they were not to oppose because they had given themselves to Angkar. Mr. Koppe asked her if she was cautioned by the leaders (quoting) “not to choose recklessly, helter skelter in a rush and to choose someone with the proper political feelings.” Ms. Cheang was steadfast that her spouse was “solely organized by upper Angkar. We were not told we were allowed to choose a spouse. Even on the wedding day, we were not aware when called to a meeting that we were to be married.” It was a particularly cogent point.
Mr. Koppe tried again. Explaining he could not understand because he came from a different culture, he asked how she could remain happily married to a man who was forced on her. Ms. Cheang emphasized that it was not her husband who had forced her but that, pragmatically, they had decided to get along, to be together, because they could not oppose the marriage. “Inside our feeling was different but because of fear, we followed Angkar and because of the implication of my family background.” She reiterated her prior reference to the Cambodian saying that “to dig out the grass, you have to dig out the root too.” Because of her father, she knew she was being monitored and she felt she could also have been killed if she exhibited any opposition to authority.
Co-Prosecutor Lysak arose to dispute that Mr. Koppe was asking questions about the availability of choice in spouses based on information that “came from a Revolutionary Youth issue that would only go to party members and cadres.” The implication was that the witness would have no knowledge from such a publication. Mr. Koppe asked how Mr. Lysak knew that. The Co-Prosecutor retorted that, if evidence from the document had been submitted ahead of time, then Mr. Koppe would know it, that “we already know that this document would only go to party members.”
Khieu Samphan defence counsel Kong Sam Onn was up next. He returned to the topic of Ms. Cheang’s teaching. She had only done so for about one year; there were fewer than ten colleagues in the children’s unit. (She said she “did not take notes. (She) did not know (she) would be testifying.”) She knew the unit leaders name and that he supervised everyone else, but not any more detail about the structure of the unit. Ms. Cheang said her “specific position” was in the economic section, collecting vegetables and other food for all of them. She helped with the teaching when one of the teachers was absent, and she supervised the children while they were doing labour.
As to receiving guidance through prayer concerning her imminent marriage, Ms. Cheang said she “was in shock. (She) had been given such a short time to dress before (the ceremony). Thought, cannot oppose it so prayed to Buddha. If he is a bad person, please help not to make marriage happen. (She) knew for sure (she) had no choice.” For one to two weeks, the newlyweds lived in a stilted house, about a meter off the ground, with bamboo walls and a wooden door, surrounded by mango and coconut trees. It was ‘furnished’ with a mat and a bag for a pillow; no mosquito nets. She saw a military man below the house around 8:00-9:00 P.M. but she does not know for how long he was eavesdropping. She could only see him when he was below the house and he could have hidden elsewhere and listened. Ms. Cheang did not ask anyone about the eavesdropper. She “pretended to know nothing because of fear.” She and her husband lived apart most of the time but could meet on the 30th of each month.
Ms. Cheang said that in the children’s unit, each group would eat communally but separate from other groups. Teachers would eat at a different table than the children; the ten leaders, unit chiefs, would eat together. After she had left that unit and was living in the village, they ate collectively. There was an equal distribution of food between members. At the beginning, “Candidate people” would eat together but separately from the “full rights people” who would eat in their own unit. Some “full rights people” would be in charge of the “candidate people” but would not eat with them. “Candidate people” would be in a different cooperative from “full rights people” and each cooperative would have their own separate dining locations. Later on, “full rights people” and “candidate people” all ate together. Both groups received the same food rations. For those “who ate less, the food was sufficient; for those who needed more food, the amount was not sufficient.” Other than it was someone in “upper echelon” Angkar, Ms. Cheang did not know who had arranged that they could eat until full on the 30th day of the month.
At that, Ms. Cheang finished her testimony. She was dismissed with the court’s thanks. Kev Chandara, the next witness, became the center of attention.
The President quickly qualified him. Mr. Chandara was born in 1942, in Tram Kok, Takeo province. He is married. His parents and two of his seven children are deceased. He is now retired from the police. Mr. Chandara has no conflicting affiliations to either the accused or the civil parties to the case, and he had taken the oath. Judge Nil Nonn explained his right against self-incrimination and his duty to answer all questions except those that would incriminate him. Mr. Chandara had been interviewed “at least five or six times,” by investigators and had had the opportunity to review his prior statements. He declared that the record of some of his prior testimony was inaccurate but that he would correct this in court.
A fresh face to the Trial Chamber, Co-Prosecutor Travis Farr established Mr. Chandara’s background. In 1970, Mr. Chandara had joined the maquis when former King Sihanouk had made an appeal for people to support his movement. He had been a medical student in Phnom Penh and gave it up “to build (himself) as a revolutionary.” He knew Ta Mok well as he was a good friend of his mother’s and would often come to their home for lunch when Ta Mok had been a student studying at the nearby pagoda.
Because of belonging to the resistance movement, Mr. Chandara had been deprived of certain rights. Then, in 1975, he was arrested and spent 29 days (from the end of February to the end of March, 1975), in Kraing Ta Chan security office. He thinks that he was arrested because he was needed to teach medical skills to other people using his medical equipment. He thought he was being taken to a re-education center and “was shocked” when the door was shut and he realized it was a detention center. Before he had arrived at Kraing Ta Chan, he had been interrogated about what CIA or KGB training he had undertaken and with whom, but he testified that he had no such involvement. He does not know why they thought he might be a spy. He “didn’t dare ask them.” Mr. Chandara said he “assumed” that it had to be an order from upper echelon Angkar that caused him to be transferred to the prison. The President interrupted him to warn him not to make assumptions and to only testify as to what he knew of his own experience. Mr. Chandara said the other prisoners in Kraing Ta Chan “were a mixture of everything, not only soldiers and cadres.”
After that background, Mr. Chandara’s revelations became gruesome. He testified how he would drag people bloody from torture to the killing sites. He said he saw people killed by being hit by clubs; he saw people having their throats cut; and he saw swords used to cut off people’s heads.
A man named “Dam” and twenty others were the executors and the pit diggers. Mr. Chandara related a chilling story of how, about 5:00 P.M. one day, he watched as a mother and her two children, a newborn and a three-year old were walked to the pits. The baby was smashed against the tree first, then the three-year old. The mother collapsed. He did not know why they were all killed. “There was no court; they simply killed people.” Mr. Chandara feels that, in 1975, the killing was “more intense,” and that he saw “not less than 50 victims a day.” There were four loudspeakers that played revolutionary songs to drown out the sounds of the killing: “The more songs, the more victims.” All the officials from the old regime died, “no one survived.”
Mr. Koppe objected to Mr. Farr’s method of examination: “There is no point in reading a statement to a witness and then asking him to confirm it…but I know you will overrule.” The Co-Prosecutor argued that it is the practice of the Chamber to put a witness’s previous statement of testimony to them and asking for a further response. Mr. Koppe countered that there has already been a ruling on that to the effect that, when contentious, the inquiry should be by an open question, that there has to be a limit on leading questions. After a bench consultation, the President said that when the question is put for clarification or additional to the statement, the objection would not be sustained.
And what a statement it was! Mr. Chandara had witnessed the torture of three women who were made examples of to a group of ten other prisoners who were forced to watch the torture to terrorize them. The women were striped and seated on the ground. Pincers were used to pull off their noses and ear lobes; acid was poured on their bare skin; water was poured into them. Then they were hung up by a hook through their jaws, and their livers, heart and gall bladders cut out. Orders were given to fry up the livers. The torturers touched the faces and foreheads of the other prisoners with the excised organs to add to their trauma. A much needed break was called.
On resuming after the lunch break, Mr. Chandara was questioned about the circumstances that led to his release after only 29 days in custody. He said Ta Mok had come to the prison to get him, and then taken him 22 kilometers away to a zone hospital where he was needed to operate a radiography machine. The only other leader Mr. Chandara remembered seeing at Kraing Ta Chan was Nuon Chea. A district cadre had identified Nuon Chea for him. On another occasion, he again saw Nuon Chea when the Khmer Rouge leader gave a speech. He remembered the speech because Nuon Chea had said “Cambodia would be transformed into an agro-industrial country and this thought had made (him) very happy”.
Mr. Chandara also saw Ta Mok on various occasions during the material years. He saw him at a pagoda housing evacuees from Phnom Penh and frequently at the village and worksites. He said that Ta Mok, so he could observe what was really going on, would visit the worksites dressed in such a fashion that he would not be recognized. He remembers one day Ta Mok beat a unit chief with a pole for being lazy and not working alongside the people he was supervising. This was at a time when Mr. Chandara was no longer a medic but driving a tractor hauling a water pump for irrigating the rice fields. Ta Mok would castigate him that he was “an intellectual and a petit bourgeoisie” and he was to change his attitudes or he “would be sent to be ‘refashioned’ again.” Ta Mok had cautioned Mr. Chandara to move away from the pagoda that housed “17th April people”. The implication was that it was unhealthy to be associated with people from the prior regime. Mr. Chandara and his mother moved to the north of the province.
After 1979, Mr. Chandara became a village chief. During his duties, he learned of various pits related to Kraing Ta Chan. Eventually, he found eight pits. He said Khmer Rouge cadres, French, German, monks, royal families, all had ended up at the prison.
Mr. Kong interjected to object to Mr. Chandara’s habit of reading from a piece of paper and ticking on the paper. The President explained that he had already questioned Mr. Chandara about this habit. It is just a blank piece of paper and the ticking is Mr. Chandara’s way of responding to things.
Mr. Chandara said Oxfam initially reported that the remains were those of cattle, not human remains. But Oxfam did support his organization with rice rations to help them with the exhumation. Originally, the chief monk, Mr. Chandara and some others counted 12,132 skulls, but then dogs and some other animals stole some of the bones that they had stored by the pits. Then, when relatives of the dead came to pray over the remains, they prayed that they would chose the skull of a relative which they then took away for their own rituals. The number of skulls dropped to 12,012 as a result.
Civil Party Lead Co-Lawyer Marie Guiraud began the cross-examination by asking Mr. Chandara for an explanation of whom the “18th April people were”? He explained that these people had lived with the Khmer Rouge in the liberated zone before April 17, 1975. They had the same food and did the same labour as the “17th April people” but the trust in them was different. As a result, they would be the group chiefs and unit chiefs.
Nuon Chea defence counsel Suon Visal reviewed the history of Mr. Chandara’s arrest and his release, “11 or 12 days in April after the country fell.” Mr. Suon also elicited from the witness a description of Kraing Ta Chan as “the prison without walls.” Security was insured by three layers of barbed wire edging the top of the coconut tree leaf walls around the buildings in which the prisoners were jailed. Further, the interrogation area also had coconut tree walls but one could see in through the decayed leaves.
After the afternoon break, the President announced that he would give an oral ruling on three objections concerning the examination of parties that Mr. Koppe had lodged: that witnesses were reviewing statements prior to testifying and then answering questions based on the statement; undue restrictions on testimony; and undue reliance on civil party testimony. Judge Nonn dismissed all of the objections and stating written reasons would follow.
And then began a series of difficulties for Mr. Koppe as he tried to get the witness to directly answer his questions, with even the court repeatedly reprimanding Mr. Chandara for not doing so.
Mr. Chandara did admit to finishing his studies at the Faculty of Medicine in Cambodia. He practiced as a General Practitioner and sometimes obstetrician, but said he was not an expert in radiology. He had not only seen the stupa at Kraing Ta Chan but claimed it was because of his fundraising and administrative efforts that the stupa had been built. He confirmed that there had been 12,132 skulls originally but some had been lost to wild dogs and relatives of the deceased. He did not know how many there were now. Mr. Koppe suggested that the number might be closer to 1,500 to 2,000 skulls. At this, Mr. Farr was quick to object on the grounds that counsel was testifying. The question was rephrased and Mr. Chandara said that the last time the skulls had been counted there had been 10,013. Mr. Chandara denied Mr. Koppe’s suggestion that the area had ever been a graveyard saying that it had been a plantation. Mr. Farr objected on the basis he “would appreciate a citation for that fact or document.” In true form, Mr. Koppe countered that he, in turn, “would appreciate counsel know the case file,” then gave two such citations from the case file. Mr. Koppe read from a history of the area that described it as a gravesite, but Mr. Chandara maintained that he had looked into this assertion, and reiterated that it was not an old gravesite.
Running out of time, Mr. Koppe asked Mr. Chandara for the names of fellow revolutionaries from when he joined the revolution. The witness pled forgetfulness, that he is “really 80.” (The birth date provided the court would indicate he is 72)
The President reminded Mr. Chandara that he was obligated to answer and ordered him “to answer what is asked of you.” With this encouragement of the court, he listed four of his fellow revolutionaries. But he disagreed with the application of the term “revolutionary” to himself. He “considered (himself) a servant of the Khmer Rouge regime and not a revolutionary.” Mr. Koppe accused Mr. Chandara of being a medic active on the battlefield assisting the Khmer Rouge wounded. Mr. Chandara said as a doctor he treated all. When Mr. Koppe challenged him that he had been “a medic revolutionary very instrumental in the war of liberation,” Mr. Chandara denied that he had been “instrumental. He was just a medic treating all, even animals.
Mr. Koppe moved onto the matter of Mr. Chandara’s arrest. Mr. Chandara insisted that he did not know why he was arrested, that he did not know what mistakes he had made. Another warning from the court about failing to answer and long responses, and the witness confirmed that he did not know what his offences were. He had been interrogated about any CIA/KGB involvement but Mr. Chandara denied any saying that he did not even know what the CIA and KGB were at the time. He was never asked to write a confession. This “puzzled” Mr. Koppe who summarized that Mr. Chandara was a good friend of Ta Mok, he was a true revolutionary…and yet he was not asked to write a confession. Mr. Koppe pounced putting it to Mr. Chandara that he was “never detained or arrested at Kraing Ta Chan or elsewhere.” Mr. Chandara heatedly shot back that he had been arrested, and then was saved by the President telling him he did not have to answer that question as it “was seeking a conclusion and conclusions are prohibited.”
Pressing on, Mr. Koppe asked about a Ms. Keo, whom Mr. Chandara described as a fellow survivor of Kraing Ta Chan. He saw her twice since 1979, but the last time was over 20 years ago and he had lost touch with her. As the prison was in operation from 1972 to January 7, 1979, and he had only been there for 29 days, the witness did not know how many survivors there were. Mr. Koppe asked if he knew of the book: War and Genocide. Mr. Farr objected on the grounds that there had been no notice given of using the book with this witness. The President ruled that no answer need to be given. Not to be deterred, Mr. Koppe then asked if Mr. Chandara had written an article for “Searching for the Truth.” Again, Mr. Farr repeated his argument on notice. Mr. Koppe denied he was referring to a document, propounding in classic Koppe crusading style that he was “entitled to ask questions about what the witness has done whether (the court) likes it or not.” The President ruled the counsel was entitled to ask an open question, such was done but Mr. Chandara denied writing an article for any book at all. Mr. Koppe was taken back by Mr. Chandara’s response but had to race to his next question: Who was Pen Sovan? Mr. Chandara would only admit to knowing Pen Sovan’s face from television. (Ed. Note: Pen Sovan was Prime Minister of Cambodia after 1979, and is presently a Member of the National Assembly). Mr. Koppe asked if Pen Sovan intervened in Mr. Chandara’s “threatened arrest” in 1979 but the court jumped in, shutting down this line of questioning by ruling that no response was necessary as the question “does not help the Chamber ascertain the truth.”
The cross-examination was turned over to Mr. Kong who only had time to ask Mr. Chandara what he knew about the mistreatment of the Khmer Cham. The witness knew little other than the area was “taken back” in 1975.
As the day was done, The President asked Mr. Chandara to return on Wednesday to complete his testimony. A most uncomfortable-looking Mr. Chandara tried to claim he could not confirm his availability due to uncertain health conditions. The President was having none of it and firmly advised him to come on Wednesday to finish his testimony, ordering court services to assist with Mr. Chandara’s transportation home today and back to court at the appointed time later this week.
And so ended a dramatic day of testimony and courtroom manoeuvres. To be continued.