Cambodia: S-21 RESTITUTION EXTORTION (10of10) [KH&EN]

Soon afterward, Laive managed to get the killers to take him to the killing fields. Just before he was to be taken away, he took me to see this gruesome sight. I was honoured to share his grief. All the time that I knew Laive, which was just under three years, he taught me so much about life and about survival in this town. Now, it was his turn to go. This time it was another plot to kill the families of servicemen, or what was left of them. My friend Laive was one of them. Three days later, I overheard shocking news from Mith Chass people who assisted in moving the group. They said that Laive had escaped. I was stunned by this news. I knew right then that Laive's family and others were killed, but Laive had escaped! The cadres and soldiers started a sweep search to capture Laive. I heard a rumour that Laive had come back to Tapang and hid out in the woods just outside the town. Fresh leaves were found in the thick bush. According to the soldiers, the escapee had slept there. The massive search for Laive continued. I believed then that Laive had outsmarted and frustrated the Khmer Rouge for a while, but then was captured and killed on site. He never gave up. He gave the Khmer Rouge a run for their money, that's for sure. He was a brave soul, my buddy Laive; I was praying hard for him. One morning over a week after they had been looking for Laive, the search team cheerfully returned to town. I knew then that Laive had run for his freedom, but his life had ended abruptly. I wept and wept after that. My best friend was gone, chased and butchered like a dog. If I could only help him, I surely would have, even if it meant risking my life too. My friend's courage and spirit would be instilled in me for the rest of my life. A mere two weeks later, on 22 December 1977, the other Mith Thmey families in Tapang and a few other families in nearby villages were notified to leave town. Angkar Leu gave us a mere 5 hours' notice. This notification included my brother, other members of our family, and myself. The order was little surprise to anyone after what had happened to Laive, his family, and others. Some people started to cry after they received the notification. Deep in their hearts, they knew that they would be killed sooner or later. The time had come for them to go and there was not much time to pack the essentials. KILLING: Beyond torture, the principal function of the network of Khmer Rouge security centers seems to have been to physically eliminate perceived enemies of the regime. A fantastic number of people were killed. It is often asked, "Why did the Khmer Rouge kill so many Cambodians?" The mapping reports provide at least a partial answer to this question, though the answer is hardly a satisfying one. The list of reasons why people were killed is shocking in itself. Simply having been a policeman, soldier or civil servant during a previous regime was adequate to earn the death sentence. Being related by blood or marriage to one of those "class enemies" was also enough to bring a chop from the executioner's ax. As witness Ok Tuon notes of Khmer Rouge activity in Kampong Chhnang's Prey Damrei Srot prison, "None of the relatives of the accused was spared." Also in Kampong Chhnang Province at Prey Ta Kuch, according to Uk Yun, the Khmer Rouge took "families" to be executed. This information conforms to a pattern we have seen in all five years of the mass grave mapping reports. With the spread of internal purges inside the Communist Party of Kampuchea, having been a civil servant of a previous regime was no longer required to earn a death sentence; increasingly, "civil servants" or cadre from within Democratic Kampuchea itself were widely rounded up and terminated. And as leadership purges accelerated, so too did the murder of those who had served under the previous cadres in virtually any capacity. The testimony of Mr. Chann Tauch of Mondulkiri Province eloquently describes this process. In 1977, Mr. Tauch recounts, "all the people related to the top two Khmer Rouge leaders — Ham and Kham Phoun — were arrested wholesale and sent to Phnom Kraol prison." Eventually, this form of repression became so extreme that merely being an ordinary citizen in a region formerly governed by someone now judged a "traitor" became enough to be added to the list, as was seen in the purges of the Eastern Zone. She was required to complete her confession by including her closest friends, colleagues, and surviving family members in her CIA "network." this was a particularly gruesome part of the torture; victims were required to indict those closest to them and often died knowing their tortured "confessions" led to the arrests and deaths of their loved ones. Friendship was dangerous in the revolution. In these earlier years, three indictments by Tuol Sleng victims were sufficient to bring about the arrests of suspect. Once arrested, very few escaped Tuol Sleng.

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YouTube | December 2, 2007

Tags:. .province. .frustrated. .satisfying. .accelerated. .ham