Cambodia & the Khmer Rouge: The testimony of Mei Monyroath, student

In collaboration with the magazine Searching for the Truth, initiated by DCCAM, Cambodge Mag presents a series of raw testimonies from those who lived through the Khmer Rouge regime. Today, we hear from Mei Monyroath, a student.

I was the eldest son in a family of six children. My father, Mei Sam Aol, worked as a nurse in a hospital in Phnom Penh; he was a generous man and sometimes treated people without asking for money. My mother, Men Malin, taught at a primary school.

The morning of 17 April

In early 1975, there were too many bombs in the countryside, so people living in rural areas began to come to Phnom Penh. Many of them lived in temples and other public places, such as the hospital where my father worked. The price of food was rising every day.

On the morning of 17 April, I was a 12-year-old schoolboy. Lon Nol's soldiers were running around the streets in panic that day. Some of them had put on civilian clothes; I knew this because I saw many army uniforms on the ground near the hospital.

My father and two of his friends cut up their nurse uniforms, made a white flag and hoisted it on the hospital flagpole. He told me that the white flag was a sign that we were surrendering. I stood in front of the hospital, watching the tanks and cars go by. A few moments later, I heard the sound of breaking glass and saw that the Khmer Rouge soldiers were smashing all the windows of the hospital.

When the Khmer Rouge saw my father, they put a gun to his forehead and asked him if there were any Lon Nol soldiers hiding in the hospital. They searched, but found none. One of the soldiers told my father that our family had to leave the city within three or four days because the Americans were coming to drop bombs. He also added that all patients who could walk had to leave the hospital.

A little later, they entered the hospital, removed the IVs from the patients undergoing treatment and shot them.

My father put his family in an ambulance and headed west towards Pochentong Airport, but soon the Khmer Rouge soldiers forced people to head north along small roads. So we had to abandon the ambulance and carry only the most important things, such as rice. I couldn't help because I had polio when I was little and couldn't walk without a stick.

The village where we stopped was in Kampong Speu province. The people at the base, and even the soldiers there, were kind and caring. We had enough to eat because there was a large lake where we could catch fish.

‘Re-education’ and barbarism

After three months, we were transferred to Pursat province. My parents worked in the rice fields, while I was a cowherd. We could only meet late at night during self-criticism meetings. A Khmer Rouge official who was about my age educated all the villagers.

Instead of addressing his mother as ‘Mother,’ he had to call her ‘Comrade Mother.’ And instead of using the polite words nhaim or pisa for ‘eat,’ we had to say ‘haup’ instead.

The Khmer Rouge said that the old terms were capitalist and reactionary and had to be eliminated.

In 1976, the Angkar arranged for three of my cousins to marry disabled Khmer Rouge soldiers. All three refused. The following night, they were sent to re-education camp. The next morning, I heard soldiers from the village talking; they said they had slept with three virgins from the city and then inserted sticks into their vaginas. The three women couldn't breathe after that and died.

I wanted to hit those soldiers with my cane, but I could only keep my anger inside. When I told my family what I had heard, they cried bitterly.

The following week, my family was transferred to the village of Thkol; it was a place where they punished the ‘new people.’ My father was sent to the southern part of the village, where they kept those who had committed serious crimes, and the rest of us were sent to the northern part for less serious offenders. We had to live there in a cooperative.

We were not allowed to eat in private and had to give all our valuables, especially watches, to the Angkar.

When we first went to the village of Thkol, there were about 2,000 people; half of them were killed while we were living there.

Family massacred

One of my younger sisters stole an ear of corn one day when she was hungry; the cadres beat her with a hoe and buried her near the cornfield.

After my sister's death, the Angkar accused me of having ties to the enemy. They transferred me from the kitchen and made me a cowherd.

One day, while I was tending cattle near the jungle, I smelled the stench of decomposing corpses. I went to see and saw my father's body; his head had been almost severed from his body with a knife. I took him in my arms and sobbed silently because I was afraid the Angkar would hear me crying.

That evening, I asked the village chief if I could bring my mother a piece of crusted rice and a sweet potato. I wanted her to have them when I told her the news. She cried after I told her that I had found my father's body, then she ate the crusted rice.

My grandmother was the next to die. She was over 70 and looked after young children. A teenager told me that she had been accused of stealing a child's rice soup, so the village chief beat her with a stick. I ran to her house and saw two elderly women digging a grave for her. I arrived just in time to pay my last respects.

With so many members of my family dead, I began to feel nervous about the regime and was afraid of losing my mother. My fears came true.

Early one morning, a woman came to tell me that my mother was having difficulty breathing. At first, the leader of my unit wouldn't give me permission to see her, but I kept begging until he agreed. I held her until she died.

For the Khmer Rouge, her death was like that of a dog or a cat; it didn't matter, and there was no funeral or monks, nothing at all.

Then four of my younger brothers and sisters died at the same time from malnutrition. Their bodies were swollen and they no longer looked human. They complained because their skin was so tight; no one could do anything but hold them.

This story is based on an essay submitted by Mei Monyroath to a competition sponsored by the Khmer Writers Association and the Cambodia Documentation Centre in 2004.