Chum Mey is one of four (known) living survivors of Tuol Sleng, the infamous prison where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed more than 17,000 people. He was kept alive because of his skill at fixing machinery. Every day he thought of his wife. She was pregnant when they took him away. He found hope in the thought that his wife and child were still alive somewhere.
Now he sometimes returns to Tuol Sleng. He stands in his former cell and tells visitors — tourists with cameras who grow hushed when they realize who is talking — about the torments he endured. He describes the pain of having electrified wires touched to his eardrums. He points to the floor where he lay shackled in a way that immobilized both legs. Talking was punished. If he wanted to shift his weight, or roll in another direction, he had to call out to the guard for permission.
Tuol Sleng was above all a place of torture. Prisoners were beaten, raped, had their fingernails and toenails were removed, given electric shocks to the eardrums and genitals, and worse. One of the devices developed by the Khmer Rouge involved simulated drowning. They had numerous techniques for doing this. This type of torture was called waterboarding, and (to our shame) it became an officially sanctioned “harsh interrogation” method used by Americans during the Bush administration.
In 1979 the Khmer Rouge retreated from the invading Vietnamese army. The guards evacuated Tuol Sleng. They killed most of the remaining prisoners but took Chum Mey with them. As they fled across the country he had a surprise meeting with his wife and son. They walked together as a family for two days. On the third day, the family was ordered to walk away across a field. Then the soldiers opened fire with machine guns. Chum Mey’s wife was killed first and then his son, but somehow he escaped.
I have read two autobiographies of Khmer Rouge survivors (When Broken Glass Floats and First They Killed My Father). I know that many Cambodians above the age of forty have stories of terrible suffering that are equally horrific. So many who were fortunate to survive are burdened with nearly unbearable memories. From 1975-1979, twenty percent of the population died of murder, starvation, and disease. Almost every family in Cambodia lost multiple members. Today most of the killers, including murderers of hundreds and thousands of people, are alive and mingled in with everyone else. To this date nobody has ever been held accountable, probably because many people in power have something to hide.
Now Chum Mey is in Phnom Penh to testify at the trial of Khang Khek leu (a.k.a., Duch), the director of Tuol Sleng prison. Duch is the first leader of the Khmer Rouge ever to go on trial. A handful of others are awaiting trial if old age doesn’t take them first. Here is an article with more of Chum Mey’s story.
