Mapping Project 1999: '' The Number '' Quantifying Crimes Against Humanity in Cambodia ''

D119695

Mapping Project 1999: '' The Number '' Quantifying Crimes Against Humanity in Cambodia ''

English

Cambodia

1999

DC-Cam D119695 4/7/2025

DC-Cam/Documentation

Cambodia

Computer-Typing (Tx) 29 pages

+ Torture
Historian David Chandler recently published a masterful new work, Voice 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.
In Kratie Province, others also tell of severs torture. Mr. Paong Bopha Rith relates how young prisoners at Ro Leak Village Prison were ''seriously tortured'' before being executed. Mr. Heng Bo 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 described 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 tortureed; 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.
+ 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 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.
+ Survivors
Considering the sheer magnitude of the killing at Khmer Rouge security centers all around Cambodia, it is tempting to think that being arrested by the Khmer Rouge was tantamount to a death sentence. Many Cambodians certainly looked at it that way during the Khmer Rouge regime, and still do. But in fact, this was not necessarily the case. As shown by this year's mapping reports and those from the four previous years of mass grave mapping work, some individuals managed to survive incarceration in the Khmer Rouge security system. Hence we have many surviving witnesses to the brutality of those facilities. Fourteen such people were interviewed in the course of the 1999 mapping work.
+ A look at five years of Cumulative Data
Many Cambodians believe, almost as an article of faith, that the Khmer Rouge Killed more than three million people during the Democratic Kampuchea regime. When this estimate of the Khmer Rouge death toll was first publicized in the early 1980s, commentators in the West almost universally dismissed it as a product of ''Vietnamese propaganda,'' an invented figure designed strictly for political purposes. In later years, more sober analysts examining this three million figure also discounted it, basing their much lower estimates of the death toll on interview data, demographic analyses and other statistical methodologies.
+ A New Approach
Since 1995, researchers at the Documentation Center of Cambodia have continued to quietly and systematically study this elusive question of ''The Number.'' This effort has employed a new methodological approach: mass grave survey research. The methodology employed in the mass grave mapping project is a combination of high technology--global satellite position mapping-- and old fashioned human fieldwork -- investigators trudging across the Cambodian countryside, village to village, searching for the killing fields. With the help of local informants, Documentation Center mapping teams have located mass gravesites in virtually every district visited yet by the fields researchers.
+ Problems and Limitations of the Data
It is important to note that these figures all represent preliminary findings. More data needs to be collected. There are numerous uncertainties in the existing mass grave data set. Resolving those uncertainties in the data will require further research. That research continues at the Documentation Center. Meanwhile, the five-year mark of this research project offers an opportunity to make an assessment of strengths and weaknesses of the existing data, and to note some problems and limitations in the methodology, which can be addressed in future, efforts.
+ Refuting the Denial of Genocide
A great deal of work remains to be done before the mapping of Cambodian's Killing Fields is complete. To begin with, Preah Vihear Province has not been examined at all as yet. Mass grave mapping work in Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri Province has only just begun, and much work remains in provinces such as Battambang and Banteay Meanchey. In all, twenty districts in various parts of the country have not yet even been initially surveyed.
Moreover, once all the mapping data has finally been compiled, then the Documentation Center will face the final and perhaps most difficult phase of the work, forensic examination of a selected sample of the mass grave sites. This will be necessary to add additional scientific confirmation concerning the identity and causes of death of the victims in these graves, in order to augment the evidence already collected through physical inspection of the sites by the mapping teams, the testimony of local witnesses, and the wealth of information discovered in the archives of the Khmer Rouge secret police, the santebal.

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