Historian David Chandler recently published a masterful new work, Voices of S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison. In assessing his subject, Chandler argues that torture was one thing that made S-21, the headquarters of the Khmer Rouge secret police, unique in the nation-wide network of Democratic Kampuchea's internal security centers:[1]
Thousands of men and women charged with lesser offenses or imprisoned as class enemies succumbed to malnutrition, illness, and savage treatment in provincial prisons, but in general these people were not tortured to produce evidence of their crimes.
The evidence generated by interviews with hundreds of witnesses to events at these same provincial prisons, gathered over the last five years by DC-Cam investigators, does not always correspond with this conclusion. Indeed, various forms of torture seem to have been common at most of the zone-, region-, and district-level prisons operated by Khmer Rouge security forces throughout Cambodia, and sometimes it was used to extract admissions of guilt from the prisoners. The 1999 data bears this out.
For example, four witnesses who were detained by the Khmer Rouge in Kampong Thom Province at two different prisons there, Tradet and Wat Baray Choan Dek, testified that they were beaten so savagely by guards that their ribs were broken. Given their continuing ill health, the beatings may also have inflicted various internal injuries on these victims. As with so many who experienced the inside of Khmer Rouge prisons, they still bear scars on their legs, from the deep wounds caused by the crude shackles which restrained them, in itself a form of torture. The same story of brutal beatings by guards is told by Mr. Cap Bun of Kampong Thom Province, who relates how guards at Tradet prison also beat him so severely that he coughed up blood. In Siem Reap Province, it was the same. Mr. Aum Soeun of Banteay Srei sub-district describes prisoners who were tied up and tortured at Wat Tbeng.
In Kratie Province, others also tell of severe torture. Mr. Paong Bopha Rith relates how young prisoners at Ro Leak Village prison were “seriously tortured” before being executed. Mr. Heng Be of the same province described prisoners at Prek Kaun Nge prison as having been “severely tortured” before being taken away for execution. At Veal Kchoeng in Kratie Province, Mr. Ty Nhi describes having seen prisoners tortured to extract “answers” from them, adding that the guards beat the victims “like cattle.” At Prek Koun Nge, he said, prisoners “were beaten to [make them] confess.” A second witness, Mr. Poeng Vin, confirmed that at this site prisoners would be “beaten to force a confession.” Another method of torture in this region, according to Mr. Nhi, was to bury prisoners alive up to their necks in the earth. At another location in Kratie, prisoners at the Kanh Chor commune prison were tortured; Mr. Yoen Chhoen describes how he himself was “physically tortured” until his ribs were broken. He also recalls that many prisoners were starved to death.
One peculiar form of torture, which seems to have been inflicted merely for the sake of tormenting the prisoners, is recounted by a woman who was held in a facility at Wat Khnol Roka in Kandal Province. Ms. Pal Ran describes how during her imprisonment, “Sometimes, while the prisoners were sleeping on the bamboo floor, the Khmer Rouge bayoneted them from below, injuring some in the back or in the feet, causing very painful wounds.” Unsurprisingly, she remembers the Khmer Rouge cadres in charge of the prison as being “very cruel.”
As data continues to be collected from sub-districts all around Cambodia, more and more often people are also testifying to rape and other forms of sexual violence inflicted on female prisoners by the Khmer Rouge. For example, in Kampong Chhnang, at a site called Prey Trapeang Ampil, the witness Bin Met asserted that Khmer Rouge cadres routinely raped the women prisoners before killing them. This, too, can only be classified as a type of deliberate torture.
It may be correct, as Chandler asserts, that torture for the purpose of extracting confessions was not used, as systematically in the lower-tier facilities of the Khmer Rouge prison system, as it was at the apex of the system, S-21. It appears that in many cases torture may have been more commonly used at these lower-level prisons simply as a method to inflict suffering upon “enemies,” or to bring about their death. And it certainly seems to be true that the methodology of torture was much more highly refined at S-21 than it was in the bush leagues of the Khmer Rouge extermination apparatus. More often than not, torture at the zone-, region-, district-, commune- and village-level prisons was done with the bare hands or with simple wooden or metal implements, beating the prisoners until they were bleeding and senseless, or dead.
Again and again in accounts of life and death in the lower levels of the Khmer Rouge prison system, we hear that guards often shackled certain classes of prisoners, and then left them restrained in custody without food and sometimes without water, until they expired from starvation or dehydration. This appears to have amounted to a very deliberate low-tech and low-impact form of execution. (See, for example, the story of Prey Damrei Srot prison, as told by Mr. Kim Porn of Kampong Chhnang Province; or Mr. Ao Yoeng of Kampong Thom Province, regarding his experience at Tradet prison.) I would maintain that this practice, which seems to have been widespread, constitutes a particularly cruel form of torture, albeit not in the traditional understanding of torture. To be slowly starved to death in a roomful of similarly suffering victims seems to me to be a much more excruciating and horrible way to die than simply being marched off to a mass grave pit and smashed on the back of the head with an iron bar.
Thousands of men and women charged with lesser offenses or imprisoned as class enemies succumbed to malnutrition, illness, and savage treatment in provincial prisons, but in general these people were not tortured to produce evidence of their crimes.
The evidence generated by interviews with hundreds of witnesses to events at these same provincial prisons, gathered over the last five years by DC-Cam investigators, does not always correspond with this conclusion. Indeed, various forms of torture seem to have been common at most of the zone-, region-, and district-level prisons operated by Khmer Rouge security forces throughout Cambodia, and sometimes it was used to extract admissions of guilt from the prisoners. The 1999 data bears this out.
For example, four witnesses who were detained by the Khmer Rouge in Kampong Thom Province at two different prisons there, Tradet and Wat Baray Choan Dek, testified that they were beaten so savagely by guards that their ribs were broken. Given their continuing ill health, the beatings may also have inflicted various internal injuries on these victims. As with so many who experienced the inside of Khmer Rouge prisons, they still bear scars on their legs, from the deep wounds caused by the crude shackles which restrained them, in itself a form of torture. The same story of brutal beatings by guards is told by Mr. Cap Bun of Kampong Thom Province, who relates how guards at Tradet prison also beat him so severely that he coughed up blood. In Siem Reap Province, it was the same. Mr. Aum Soeun of Banteay Srei sub-district describes prisoners who were tied up and tortured at Wat Tbeng.
In Kratie Province, others also tell of severe torture. Mr. Paong Bopha Rith relates how young prisoners at Ro Leak Village prison were “seriously tortured” before being executed. Mr. Heng Be of the same province described prisoners at Prek Kaun Nge prison as having been “severely tortured” before being taken away for execution. At Veal Kchoeng in Kratie Province, Mr. Ty Nhi describes having seen prisoners tortured to extract “answers” from them, adding that the guards beat the victims “like cattle.” At Prek Koun Nge, he said, prisoners “were beaten to [make them] confess.” A second witness, Mr. Poeng Vin, confirmed that at this site prisoners would be “beaten to force a confession.” Another method of torture in this region, according to Mr. Nhi, was to bury prisoners alive up to their necks in the earth. At another location in Kratie, prisoners at the Kanh Chor commune prison were tortured; Mr. Yoen Chhoen describes how he himself was “physically tortured” until his ribs were broken. He also recalls that many prisoners were starved to death.
One peculiar form of torture, which seems to have been inflicted merely for the sake of tormenting the prisoners, is recounted by a woman who was held in a facility at Wat Khnol Roka in Kandal Province. Ms. Pal Ran describes how during her imprisonment, “Sometimes, while the prisoners were sleeping on the bamboo floor, the Khmer Rouge bayoneted them from below, injuring some in the back or in the feet, causing very painful wounds.” Unsurprisingly, she remembers the Khmer Rouge cadres in charge of the prison as being “very cruel.”
As data continues to be collected from sub-districts all around Cambodia, more and more often people are also testifying to rape and other forms of sexual violence inflicted on female prisoners by the Khmer Rouge. For example, in Kampong Chhnang, at a site called Prey Trapeang Ampil, the witness Bin Met asserted that Khmer Rouge cadres routinely raped the women prisoners before killing them. This, too, can only be classified as a type of deliberate torture.
It may be correct, as Chandler asserts, that torture for the purpose of extracting confessions was not used, as systematically in the lower-tier facilities of the Khmer Rouge prison system, as it was at the apex of the system, S-21. It appears that in many cases torture may have been more commonly used at these lower-level prisons simply as a method to inflict suffering upon “enemies,” or to bring about their death. And it certainly seems to be true that the methodology of torture was much more highly refined at S-21 than it was in the bush leagues of the Khmer Rouge extermination apparatus. More often than not, torture at the zone-, region-, district-, commune- and village-level prisons was done with the bare hands or with simple wooden or metal implements, beating the prisoners until they were bleeding and senseless, or dead.
Again and again in accounts of life and death in the lower levels of the Khmer Rouge prison system, we hear that guards often shackled certain classes of prisoners, and then left them restrained in custody without food and sometimes without water, until they expired from starvation or dehydration. This appears to have amounted to a very deliberate low-tech and low-impact form of execution. (See, for example, the story of Prey Damrei Srot prison, as told by Mr. Kim Porn of Kampong Chhnang Province; or Mr. Ao Yoeng of Kampong Thom Province, regarding his experience at Tradet prison.) I would maintain that this practice, which seems to have been widespread, constitutes a particularly cruel form of torture, albeit not in the traditional understanding of torture. To be slowly starved to death in a roomful of similarly suffering victims seems to me to be a much more excruciating and horrible way to die than simply being marched off to a mass grave pit and smashed on the back of the head with an iron bar.
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