District Deputy Chief Contradicts Her Own Testimony
Khoem Boeun (alias “Yeay Boeun”) who has been mentioned in the testimony of many cadres, appeared before the ECCC today. Before her examination got underway, Kong Sam Onn, Khieu Samphan Defense Counsel, requested to know the grounds on which the court was allowing her to attend via video link. His client wanted “to confront the witness directly in the courtroom.”
President Nil Nonn explained that the decision had been made for a variety of reasons:
First, that Khoem Boeun had “serious health issues” as supported by a report from WESU that included independent medical information that she was unable to make the trip from her home in Battambang province to the ECCC; additionally, her “advanced age” (of 72); the probative value of what the witness could contribute based on her OCIJ statement; and the request of the witness herself for the consideration of a video link. The judge summed up that it was a matter of “forfeiting testimony” or allowing the accommodation.
Prosecutor Seng Leang began the questioning. Khoem Boeun was born in Tram Kak. She moved back to her native village from Phnom Penh in 1969 (before the Khmer Rouge occupation of the rural territory in 1971), to look after her ill mother. After she joined the revolution, she was assigned by Khom, Ta Mok’s daughter, to be chief of Cheang Tong commune. She also knew Ta Mok from his visits to the commune, but not Riel Son as she “had little contact” with the hospital. Nor did she know that Khieu Samphan had been in the area as she had not met him then and did not know him. From 1972 to1974, she worked in the Women’s Group, and could not remember exactly when she was appointed to the commune administration. Ms. Khoem defined “full rights people” as being “full members of the Party.” Contrary to the evidence of Riel Son, she denied that she was “‘a full rights person’ and an influential member of the Party.” But, she also admitted that ‘full rights people’ were appointed to work in the District Office and that she was made Deputy Secretary of Tram Kak District by 1978.
Ms. Khoem could not remember the structure of Cheang Tong commune very well. She was able to outline that people were put in groups, teams and cooperatives, and that there were Children’s, female and youth units. “Chaun” (who was responsible for the military), “Khem” (who was also responsible for militia in the communes) and Po were below her. In her duties, she “led people to work in the fields and to make fertilizer.” The militia were responsible for security in the commune and its villages, and were recruited by Chaun and Khem.
Administratively, reports were sent from the villages to the commune level on such matters as security, economics and the military situation. Then meetings would be held on such topics as food shortages. Security issues would be referred to the District level, but the witness did not know what action the District took on these. When she met with her superiors, she “would submit requests to solve people’s problems,” orally. There were no messages or telegrams from her to the District.
When she observed that “people were getting older” or that some had “moral offences,” Khoem Boeun would submit a request to “the Upper Level” to have marriages performed (as per the policy that she received from “the Upper Level” and disseminated through village chiefs). If the District objected, there would be no marriages. She usually arranged for three couples or so to be married at a time but sometimes there would be ten or more. Marriages were not celebrated frequently. The communes and villages would arrange the ceremonies. There was “no significant ritual” and “no traditional… religious ritual” during the rite. Rather, the newlyweds were asked to make a resolution. A reception with a meal followed.
“‘New people” married ‘new people’; ‘base people’ married ‘base people.’” They were not allowed to intermarry. Ms. Khoem had been told by the District that this was because “‘new people’ were not settled yet, they did not know the ‘base people’ very well and, perhaps, could not get along, and ‘new people’ were not trusted yet.” She admitted under grilling that, as the Party made the decisions, marriages were “forced marriages.” Khoem Boeun had said in her OCIJ statement that it was such a small village that it was not necessary for the militia men to spy on the new partners. They authorities knew “if they were not in love,” and if they would not have consummated their marriage. There were divorces, but she could not recall the names of any of those who had divorced.
International Co-Prosecutor Vincent de Wilde prefaced his questions by thanking Khoem Boeun for the frankness of her responses. He made it clear to her that she was not there to be “adjudged or accused.”
Ms. Khoem told him that her sister had a position of authority in Kirivong District, and that she knew a Yeay Yip from her native village of Kabal O. Ta An, Director of Kraing Ta Chan, was a distant cousin of the witness and hailed from an adjacent settlement. Im Chaem was Chairperson of Women for Sector13, but the witness did not know if she had any Central Zone functions. Im Chaem was also a distant relative from the same village and commune as was Ta Chorn, Khoem Boeun’s, husband. This list of relatives ‘begged the question,’ but she did not know why so many important cadres had been appointed from Kabal O. When prompted by Mr. de Wilde’s reading of her OCIJ statement, Ms. Khoem confirmed that Khom had been the first District Secretary of Tram Kak, followed by Chim, Kit and Chi; that Ta Mhev had responsibility for military affairs, and that Ta San (under whom she had worked as Deputy Chief from 1978 to the fall of the regime) was the last District Secretary. Ta Ron (a former Head of the District Office), had Sector level control for Tram Kak. She identified Pi and Chorn as militia supervisors while Hoeun had supervision over economics matters. Yip Duch she had met at the District Office where he had responsibility for Youth. The witness did not know if he had any role at Kraing Ta Chan.
District offices were located at Ang Rokar, close to Cheang Tong commune. Three “ordinary” District meetings would be held on the 10th, 20th and 30th of each month to deal with such things as economics (for example: “to solve the livelihood of the people.”) “Enemies and discipline of ‘the 17th April people,’” were also agenda items. Khoem Boeun would draft meeting reports on the District Chief’s instructions. There was “a pyramid system” style of reporting taught: the villages reported to the communes; the communes to the District. In 1978, Ms. Khoem attended Sector meetings on behalf of the District. There were no written reports on the economic, political and military situations discussed. (She could only bring to mind headings, not specifics). “Sometimes,” cadres from Kraing Ta Chan would be at these meetings, “sometimes not.” She would meet Ta An at District meetings. He would make reports to the District Committee during District meetings but she could not recall any of his exact points. When prodded, the witness could confirm that he had talked about spy networks in the meetings. Khoem Boeun had no knowledge of Kraing Ta Chan prisoner headcounts or the number of people purged on a monthly basis.
“Urgent (extraordinary) meetings” occurred as a situation required. For instance, when another commune made a request to share the surplus rice from a neighbouring commune or when the Vietnamese troops had almost reached the District. An “urgent” meeting had been held to prepare cadres to receive the evacuees from Phnom Penh and Takeo. Khoem Boeun could not remember who had chaired these assemblies but it was someone from Sector or District levels. She was instructed to arrange for food and accommodation for “the new people.” The evacuees were first gathered at Wat Champa. Mr. de Wilde read in from the witness’s OCIJ statement that “they were considered enemies as the city had corrupted their spirits.” She confirmed that their biographies were taken by the village chiefs after they had been dispersed to the villages. The villages sent the personal histories to the communes and the communes forwarded them to the District. Ms. Khoem had had arrested those who had been named by “the Upper Echelon.” “Some returned; some did not. They were mostly soldiers and policemen. Not many teachers… were sent.” She did not know to which facility they were taken after they left her custody.
Khoem Boeun could not recall if she had been instructed to draw up lists of Lon Nol officers and officials while she was commune chief. Nor did she know anything about whether instructions were issued by “the Upper Echelon,” in 1977-1978, for the arrest of Lon Nol officials and soldiers. She could not identify the signature on a document she was shown as being hers (“the writing (was) not clear”), but it did use her name and there was no other “Boeun” at the Cheng Tong commune office at that time. She confirmed that, because her handwriting was not good, it was customary that someone else would write reports for her under her supervision.
The witness had received instructions from the District in May, 1977, to “clean up enemies” such as Lon Nol officers and officials, police and teachers, but claimed that she had no way to “eliminate or smash” anyone. Ms. Khoem would only send reports from the commune to the District. She was told to use “vigilance vis-à-vis the enemy,” which she said meant to “pay attention and not let the enemy come and harm the people.” She agreed that the authorities “were afraid the enemy would contaminate the good elements of the people.” Khoem Boeun repeatedly was adamant that she was not involved in any arrests.
When the Co-Prosecutor started to read details from an April, 1977, report from the commune level, Victor Koppe, Nuon Chea Defense Counsel quickly stood to point out to the court that “the reading is the product of an interrogation,” and reiterated his frequently made claim that the defense “should be allowed to do the same thing.” Mr. de Wilde replied that “there was no question of torture here,” and got his confirmation from the witness that the District asked the commune to interrogate enemies to ascertain their prior occupations and ranks. Ms. Khoem did not know Keo Sokar or if Lon Nol officers and officials had been arrested. (In her commune, there had only been “a handful” of such members of the former regime). Neither did she know where the police were located, and only later knew of the existence of Kraing Ta Chan.
Khoem Boeun described that there were various types of “conflict” that people could commit.
One was “a verbal offense that made the people fear.”
After lunch, Co-Prosecutor de Wilde picked up the thread of his examination of Khoem Boeun who was not very helpful about the persecution of evacuees who had been collected at Wat Champa as she had not been there at the material time. Neither did she know if the statements of others that Ta Mok was on site at the pagoda during the incident were true or not.
There were only three families of Khmer Krom in Mr. Khoem’s commune, and she had no information about Khmer Krom in other areas. According to her, there was “no wave of arrests” of Lon Nol soldiers in Tram Kak District April-May, 1977 either.
Mr. Koppe objected as speculative to a question as to whether it was common in DK to arrest families of former soldiers. He further suggested that it would be helpful for his colleague to ask simpler questions as even he could not follow him. Mr. de Wilde refuted that the question was speculative, but rephrased. Ms. Khoem was then able to reply that, “yes,” she had received instructions at District meetings to arrest families of enemy soldiers, but that she had not done so or sent any away. She had heard of the arrival of Khmer Krom who had been exchanged for Vietnamese but she had not witnesses it. She knew “only hearsay” about instructions being issued “in secret meetings on the fate of the Khmer Krom and the Vietnamese in Tram Kak District.” There were no such discussions at any of the meetings she had attended. She complained her memory was not good due to a health condition when the Co-Prosecutor challenged her that Son (a.k.a. Vorn) Lan, Ta Mok’s brother-in-law (whom she knew) had named her as one of the commune chiefs who had collected Vietnamese at the commune level and handed them over to be taken to the District Office.
Khoem Boeun was made Deputy Chief of Tram Kak District in October, 1978, and held the post until the Vietnamese came. San was by himself prior to that. Ron was on the Sector Committee. The witness said she did not feel overburdened with duties when she was made Deputy Chief while she was also commune chief as her responsibilities remained the same: “economics, leading people working in the rice fields.”
The witness knew there were forgeries about as she had been presented with a letter supposedly written by herself when she was in Phnom Penh, but she did not recognize either the handwriting or the signature. Messengers delivered letters between the communes and the District but were not allowed to open the mail. Mr. Koppe objected to Ms. Khoem being asked what would have been her reaction to a stranger bringing her documents, as “a ‘double speculation’ on a hypothetical situation that rules out post-1979 forgeries.” Mr. de Wilde disagreed but rephrased. Khoem Boeun had not heard of any false messengers being arrested. She maintained that, if someone else wrote anything for her, she (or someone acting on her behalf), had always cross-checked the correspondence. She had only received documents from Ta An, chief of Kraing Ta Chan, “once in a while.”
Again, Khoem Boeun asserted she had not ordered any arrests. If a letter came from the District, the District soldiers and commune militia would affect the warrants, and the District would detain the unfortunates. Ms. Khoem did not know whether the District had informed the commune when they were looking for certain people as she was “not involved in military affairs.” She was never at Kraing Ta Chan, but admitted she had heard that people were killed there. Yeay Ngor’s children Meas Surat and Meas Socar had told her about it when they had returned from the prison. The witness claimed that she could not recall the details of why the family heads (Meas Khun and Mom Boen) had been arrested, but was fairly descriptive of them having been involved in a meeting of some 60 participants at which they had put their thumbprints on a paper advocating dismantling the coops. The village had reported the meeting to her, and she had sent it on to the District who had carried out the arrests.
When asked to elaborate on her fear of committing errors and on what would have happened to her if she had not implemented instructions from “the Upper Echelon” as directed, Khoem Boeun explained that she “regretted that Cambodians had been pitted against one another, that they had fought with one another, that they had not been able to live in a traditional way and not been able to live with family members.”
General Assembly meetings were never held in the zones or sectors, but Khoem Boeun had not attended any of them for health reasons. Specific orders had been given on how to identify the enemy. The villages wrote the reports that were then sent to the District without any charges.
Ms. Khoem said that they were instructed (she could not remember specifically from whom the orders came “as there were so many of them”) “to seek out opposition. They did not say ‘enemy.’” She was told to re-educate the miscreants and retrain them.
Civil Party Lead Co-Lawyer, Marie Guiraud, was next up. She sought to clarify the role of a commune chief in DK. Khoem Boeun could not remember how many cooperatives there were in her commune, but said an extract read to her was wrong as there was a coop in a village. The chief of a cooperative and the chief of a commune were two different persons. In her role as Chief of the commune, she: “had to educate the people to be honest, love the other inhabitants and be sure people did not break pots and pans.” According to “the Upper Echelon,” the members of the commune were divided into groupings of women, men and youngsters “to avoid thoughts of moral misconduct” and to be able to educate the children to read and write during their work breaks. Children did not have to do heavy work like the adults. She agreed with Pech Chim that the units were established “for control over the forces, to know who was ill or lazy, and to exercise control over these people.”Ms. Khoem also believed that (because there were food shortages), they “had to organize in that manner.” Both “base people” and “new people” had been monitored. Group, unit and village chiefs at different levels in the communes and villages would watch the “base people.” Monitoring was “confidential” so the witness did not know much about it. She had feared that she was a target of monitoring individually.
The number of militiamen in a commune varied. They were recruited by the District from various villages and changed constantly. They were posted mostly at the communes but sometimes would be stationed in a village. Their duties were both security (“to protect the people against the enemy”), and to work in the rice fields the same as ordinary villagers. Occasionally they would work at night. Some of them were armed, likely with weapons obtained from the District level.
Ms. Khoen’s position in charge of women’s affairs meant that she educated the women in: “morality, the way of living and in the work of rice production.” She could not recall other specific activities that would have been under her purview. The women had a lighter work load then the men. Pregnant women would be given duties such as preparing vegetables in the kitchen. The witness was not aware of any women who had had to work until they went into labor. On the basis of the testimony of three Civil Parties, Ms. Guiraud challenged Khoem Boeun’s claim that the children had received any sort of an education. Kong Sam Onn interrupted twice with some sort of nonsensical objection that Ms. Guiraud stated she could not understand but would move on nevertheless as it was approaching 4:00 P.M. and she was just about out of time. Ms. Khoem’s role in food production had been mainly in distribution. She asserted that “shortage of food was rare and only at the end of harvest season when there would be rice in the form of thick gruel for people.” (Translation?) Contradictorily, Khoem Boeun testified the workers would complain about food shortages but, “as they had no other source of food, the reality on the ground was that they had to bear the situation.”
Stealing of food was a minor crime for which the prescription was re-education. The “Upper Echelon” defined a serious crime as opposing the regime or destruction of cooperative property whereupon the perpetrators would be “considered the enemy.” Khoem Boeun had not witnessed any serious crimes but had received information about them. She gave as examples: “the destruction of collective property, tools, cooking pots or other materials.”
Khoem Boeun said that some prospective spouses agree to the matchmaking of the authorities but that some did not. Some knew their future partners because of working together at work sites; she reiterated that there were divorces. Ms. Khoem explained that the chief of the Women’s Unit was considered a mother to all the women because it was her responsibility to educate them. “She was close to them and took care of them, and it was she who understood who would be married to whom.” The witness said she had not initiated any monitoring of newlyweds. If it happened, it was without her knowledge. Nor did she think she had ever heard that “as children had been given to Angkar, they had to obey.”
On the completion of Ms. Guiraud’s examination, President Nil said he had received an email from the Senior Legal Officer concerning Mr. Koppe’s request to postpone the witness scheduled for Friday. He asked the counsel to provide more particulars on the nature of the urgency of the “belated request”?
The defense counsel clarified that he had commitments in Holland, and had expected that his National Counsel, Son Arun, would be available to do the cross-examination. Unfortunately, due to a “health situation,” Son Arun would not be able to do so. He felt that it “would not be responsible” to have the new national counsel who was not yet up to speed and capable “of asking the questions that should be asked of such an important witness at such a late stage in the trial.” Mr. Koppe did not mind telling Judge Fenz what was calling him to Europe, but he did not want “to share it with the rest of the world.”
The Civil Party lawyers had no objections to the request, and Mr. de Wilde left it “to the wisdom of the Chamber.”
The president reserved ruling, “in due course, probably tomorrow,” and adjourned late at 4:12 P.M.