Cambodia-National Rescue Party

Rights-Cambodia: Decades Later, S-21 Survivors Recall Ordeal

Thursday, July 09, 2009
By Robert Carmichael (phnom penh)
Inter Press Service

'They cuffed me and told me to lie on the floor with my face facing down,' the old man told the judges.

'They had a bunch of sticks and dropped it on the floor and it made a noise. I was asked to choose the stick I preferred. I said: ‘Whichever one I choose you will still beat me with it, so it is up to you, Brother, which one to use.’'

Those words comprise less than a minute of a full day of harrowing testimony delivered in Phnom Penh last week by Khmer Rouge survivor Bou Meng at the ongoing U.N.-backed tribunal, known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

Bou Meng was describing his experiences of torture at the security prison called S-21. Perceived enemies of the Khmer Rouge state known as Democratic Kampuchea were imprisoned, tortured and murdered at S-21 between 1975 and 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown.

Please click here to read more...