D119659

Enighisgl

Cambodia

15/06/1998

DC-Cam/D119659 24/03/2025

Khet kandal

Khet kandal

DC-Cam/Documentation Center of Cambodia

Cambodia

Documentation computer(tx), Documents40 peag

Then, we went to see a woman, who, according to the report by Kry and Heng, was a former prisoner of Sang prison. Her name is Samrith Phom, 47, now living in Prey Ta Tauch Village, Boeng Kyang Sub-district, Kandal Stung District, Kandal Province. Previously, she lived in Damrei Slap Village, Trea Sub-district, Kandal Stung District, Kandal province. In the Khmer Rouge time, she had been imprisoned for one year. Asked about her personal life in the Khmer Rouge regime, Samrith Phom described to us that her husband was taken to be killed by the Khmer Rouge who lied to her that he was taken to be educated. And then, she said, she and her children were also taken to kill by being told that she and her children were taken to see her husband. But, she and her children were, in fact, were arrested and transported by an ox-card away to be executed at a killing site. Fortunately, when the ox- card she and her children boarded arrived at the gateway to the location of Sang prison, the cows instead drugged the ox-cart into the compound of the prison, not toward the killing site. So because of the cows moving to the wrong direction they were out of life danger, though they were detained in the prison. Samrith Phom shed with her tears while recalling her life in prison, which she said was so miserable that she was on the brink of death. She had to eat whatever she had, although having not enough to eat to survive
was a common thing. She said with her eyes full of tears that a piece of cooked rice, about the size of a person's wrist, was provided for her and her two children. Samrith Phom was forced to gather water hyacinths from the edge of river near the location of Sang prison and put them into a pit in order to make fertilizers to be used for banana growing. There were a mixture of young, and old, male and female prisoners, but the female prisoners were separated from the male, said Phom, adding that the prisoners all had to sleep directly on the earth inside the prison. She said that was painful enough for her living with too many hardships in the Khmer Rouge regime until she has survived to this day. She said that at that time she never saw people killed, but that once she witnessed, while she was on the way to a work site, pits near banana trees, which were freshly buried and filled with bodies of victims just killed, as well as the sticks used as a tool for killing left near the banana tree. She told us that there were trucks coming mostly in late evening to take prisoners away, though she did not know where they went. She, however, stressed that the bamboo forest, located east of the prison, was the place where the inmates were killed. She added that Heng and Mong were in charge of the prison, and that the prison chief was Mong whose father was purely Vietnamese who cannot speak Khmer at all. Chuon Chhun called Chhun, Samrith Phom continued, had been a chief of prison guards at Sang prison. But Chhun himself refused to say he had, saying that he was just an ordinary prison guard. Currently, Samrith Phom is a palm cake street vendor with her two sons. Her older son was a leg handicap since he was a soldier of the State of Cambodia. Finally, Samrith Phom promised us that she would be a witness to testify before a court when needed. We had good relations and cooperation with villagers and provincial officials we told them our purposes and proposals that would depend on government cooperation. We thought that both DC-Cam and Cambodian government in the future might obtain historic achievements. We thought that it would be better not to research on national holidays, Saturday or Sunday. Because we need cooperation with the government officials - They are not around at the office during holidays and weekends, For a long distance provinces and districts. We should not finish our work with him on day for two districts. because in the evening we found it hard to meet district governor or sub-district chief and the time was short. But if there was no execution site in a particular district we could keep going from one to another.

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