TRANSPORTING
PRISONERS TO BE KILLED AND TRUCK STOP AT SITE
The Killing Field
- the place where Pol Pot slaughtered his people without mercy in
the thousands and buried them in mass graves.
Some were killed
and buried at the S-21 prison, but most victims, after
having been detained, starved, tortured and interrogated were
trucked out at night, at about 8 or 9 o’clock PM, to the Choeung Ek
and killed by smashing their skulls with hoes or canes and other
instruments
At the Choeung Ek
Genocidal Center of course, the place where
trucks
transported victims to be exterminated from Tuol Sleng prison no
longer exists. In S-21 there were two, Chinese-made and English-made
trucks with canvas covers that served as transport to the Killing
Field.
Nhem En, a
photographer of S-21, told Douglas Niven when he was asked about his
most frightening memory of S-21 said that, ” What made me really
scared was when I saw the trucks loaded with people and they shoved
the people off the trucks and then pushed them when they hit the
ground. I was young and it scared me. These people were blindfolded
and their hands were tied behind them” (David Chandler 1999:139).
Him Huy, a
ex-chief of security of S-21 said that prisoners were taken from
S-21 to Cheung Ek to be killed they were lifted one at a time onto
the trucks like pets or children because they couldn’t get onto the
trucks themselves, as the trucks were too high (David Chandler
1999:139).
The assigned
trucks waited for the prisoners to be taken by the guard at the main
gate. Usually, trucks would arrive 2 or 3 times a month or every 3
weeks. Each truck held 20 to 30 frightened, blindfolded and
silent prisoners. The prisoners were escorted by four or five
guards, two of whom sat in the carbine and the other two or three
sat in the closed canvas area of the trucks. .
Mrs. Chan Thoan,
was a former soldier and was growing rice in Choeung Ek rice field,
she said that one day in 1977 the trucks transporting the prisoners
from S-21 got stuck in the mud because of a strong rain near the
place where she stayed. Five guards tried hard to push it but it was
impossible. Then, they came to her and asked her housemates for
assistance. At that time, she saw with her own eyes that there were
many prisoners in the truck and she also heard the sound of children
crying for their parents (From success toward self-destruction, Huy
Vannak 2000: 107).
When the trucks
arrived, the victims were led directly to be executed at the ditches
and pits or they were sent to be detained in the darkened and gloomy
prison nearby. After January 7th, 1979 one truck remained
at the site, but it has since been taken away.
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