On the one hand, peasants or previous land workers were known as the ‘old people’ by the Khmer Rouge and were seen as ideal communists for the new state. On the other hand, however, city dwellers were seen as the ‘new people’ and they were considered to be the root of all capitalist evil. For this reason, the lives of the new people were seen as having no real value for the Khmer Rouge campaign, and so even the most minor violation of rules was enough reason to send them to the killing fields. For example, if they were seen to be trying to get extra food, this was seen as a sin, despite the fact that the rations were so low hundreds of thousands of Cambodians starved to death. As family relationships were banned, if they were seen talking to any relative they would die, if they wore glasses they would die, if they were educated they would die, and so it went on. Even those people who worked themselves into the ground for the Khmer Rouge, would eventually be charged as associate enemies of the state and taken off to the killing fields. Living under these incredibly harsh conditions, the Cambodians did everything they could in their power to stay alive, cutting off all ties with their past and pretending to be an illterate peasant or one of tthe ‘old people’, just on the offchance they might manage to stay alive.
As if the conditions weren’t harsh enough in the work camps, a number of political prisoners and their families met their fate inside the Khmer Rouge interrogation centres. The most famous of these was Tuol Sleng, meaning ‘hill of the poisonous trees’, the site of an abandoned Phnom Penh high school and code-named S-21. The people who were taken inside Tuol Sleng were simply known as konlaenh choul min dael chenh – ‘the place where people go in but never come out’. Tuol Sleng was part of a sophisticated network of prisons where people were systematically imprisoned, tortured, interrogated and murdered by a group of sadistic guards who would do anything to extract fictitious confessions to imaginary crimes. Many of the prisoners were selected from all around the country and were often former members of the Khmer Rouge who had been arrested for supposed espionage.
The Khmer Rouge became a killing machine of frightening proportions. In just under four years, an excess of 1.7 million Cambodians died under the regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. In Tuol Sleng, alone, an estimated 17,000 people were executed.
On arrival at the detention centre, the prisoners were photographed and forced to give personal information. All their possessions were removed and they were ordered to remove all their clothes. They were then taken down to the detention cells, where they were shackled to the walls. In the larger cells, where as many as 50 to 100 prisoners were held, they were collectively shackled in leg irons to long pieces iron bar. There were no beds so the prisoners were forced to sleep on the concrete floors, and there was just one solitary latrine box. Food was served twice a day at 8.00 a.m. and 8.00 p.m. and consisted of two or three tablespoons of rice porridge but nothing to drink. Every few days the guards would hose the prisoners down but the insanitary conditions led to sickness and skin diseases. Many people died during the night and guards would come each morning and take the bodies away.
From the moment of detention the captives had to adhere to a strict set of rules, which were pinned to a notice board outside the cells, written in both Khmer and English. These rules, ten in total, dictated how they could act, how they had to respond to questioning and how, in fact, they had to accept the fact that they were traitors and would be treated as such.
1. You must answer accordingly to my questions – don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretexts about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you will get many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
The methods of torture were both cruel and barbaric. Prisoners were forced to confess by using battery-powered electric shocks, searing hot metal prods or knives or having their head constantly ducked under water. Outside in the prison courtyard was a wooden frame that was once used by gymnasts, which the Khmer Rouge had converted into gallows. The majority of the prisoners were innocent, but the Khmer Rouge main objective was to extract whatever confession they felt was suitable. Although many of the prisoners died from the severity of the torture, the plan was not to kill them before they extracted the necessary information. The dubious nature of these confessions mattered little to the Khmer Rouge who built up a massive dossier of names allowing them to prove to themselves that there was indeed a massive web of traitors against them.
After the prisoners were interrogated, they were taken along with their family to the Choeung Ek extermination centre just outside Phnom Penh. Here, they were killed by being battered with iron bars, pickaxes, machetes and other forms of makeshift weapons. It was rare for a prisoner to be shot because the Khmer Rouge considered bullets to be a precious commodity to waste on their contrived traitors. Mass graves containing 8,895 bodies were discovered at Choeung Ek after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. Many of the dead were former inmates in the Tuol Sleng prison.
Today thousands of these confession files have been uncovered, including 5,000 photographs that give an insight into the brutal and inhumane treatment of prisoners at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Out of the approximate 17,000 prisoners taken to Tuol Sleng, there are only seven known survivors. These men were kept alive because the Khmer Rouge believed they had special skills. One survivor, Vann Nath, who had trained as an artist, was put to work painting pictures of Pol Pot. After his internment, Nath continued to paint 15 scenes, including a self-portrait, which depicted the harsh realities of life and death at the detention centre.
While the Khmer Rouge were intent on destroying what remained of the Cambodian society, there were stirrings of unrest with their old enemy, Vietnam. Although it was expected that the two new communist governments of Vietnam and Cambodia would eventually come to some kind of political agreement after years of conflict, their hatred and mistrust of each other ran too deep. Pol Pot, who showed signs of having an inferiority complex as far as the Vietnamese were concerned, was concerned that his neighbours were about to attack Cambodia. He decided to make a pre-emptive assault by invading Vietnam and looting the villages that were close to the border. The Soviet Union had ceased supporting Cambodia as soon as Pol Pot came into power; however, without their aid, China and the USA stepped in and pledged their support to the Khmer Rouge.