MOENG Vet
Witness 2-TCW-1005 – anonymous due to involvement in other cases – testified in July 2016 on the subjects of internal purges and forced marriage. He was born in 1958 in Tram Kak, Takeo province. His father died sometime around 1967 or ’68; although the witness isn’t sure precisely when or why because he was quite young, he does believe that it was because of his father’s involvement in the CPK. In fact, he believes that his father’s friendship with Son Sen is the only reason he is still alive today. His mother also joined the revolution quite early, in 1970.
The witness said he joined the Khmer Rouge army when he was 15. According to the witness, when several of his teachers were killed while participating in demonstrations against the Lon Nol regime, the witness was inspired to fight against Lon Nol, so he joined the army as part of a children’s messenger unit. He stayed there for two and a half years, then moved to Kiri Vong in September of 1975 and onto Kratie in 1977 while moving up in the ranks of messenger units in those sectors.
Because of his increasingly important position in messenger units, the witness said he was present at many meetings of the higher echelons of leadership. His main testimony pertained to purges of the party leadership in the Khmer Rouge during the later years of the regime. One purge he spoke of in particular allegedly occurred in Sector 13 in 1977 when the secretary of the sector was removed from his position, originally due to health reasons and then arrested for alleged connections to the enemy. The witness explained that the secretary was replaced by the witness’s cousin, who was only in the position for a short time before he, too, was accused of connections to the enemy and sent to S-21.
Another alleged purge in 1977 that the witness was questioned about, occurred during a period of intense fighting against the Vietnamese in the area near Kratie. As a leader of a messenger unit, the witness said he delivered a letter from the head office which required 11 of the top leaders in Sector 505 to go to a meeting in Phnom Penh. At the time, he said, he was young and he was happy that his superiors would be away for a few days. However, he realized they had been “disappeared” when their positions were filled with new cadres. Their names later appeared on the prisoner list of S-21, including one of his uncles.
The witness spoke in particular about the harmful effect of the mistrust between comrades sown by the party, specifically through their Revolutionary Flag magazine which told its readers that enemies of the party were everywhere. These enemies were referred to as “burrowing enemies”, and much of the witness’s testimony related to how the party dealt with these alleged burrowing enemies. The witness pointed out how the magazine and the party focused heavily on eradicating friends of the CIA and the KGB-affiliated Vietnamese, while ignoring the hunger and shortage of food being suffered by the Cambodian people at that time.
According to the witness, the Khmer Rouge tended to move cadres who were from the East Zone into the Southwest Zone and vice versa, and each time they moved it was difficult for party members to trust them. As well as this, the witness said the mistrust meant that any person with any connection to Phnom Penh or outside Cambodia was disappeared because they were believed to be an agent of the enemy. He exemplified this with the case of his mother, who according to the witness was killed because of an aunt in Phnom Penh, even though she had been a member of the party since 1970.
The witness stressed that the principles of the party were sound – he remained a member of the Khmer Rouge until 1998. However the principles depended on execution, and in this he felt the party failed. The leadership was not consistent through the country, he said, and the breakdown occurred between the written tenets of the political society created by the Khmer Rouge and their implementation of them.
- Witness acronym :
2-TCW-1005
- Age at the time of testimony :
- Appeared as :
- Cases : Case 002, Case 002/02,
- Date(s) of testimony :