Mr. SENG Soeun
The Civil Party was born in 1956 in Trapeang Kak village, Takeo province. He began to learn art when he joined the Communist Party of Kampuchea in 1970 and after he joined the army.
He was assigned to be a group chief and a card-carrying member of the Party. He was promoted to chief of a company but was injured in the battlefield and sent to a handicapped soldier compound in Sector 13 in mid-1975, then transferred in a guarded handicapped zone in the southwest. During his rest he saw handicapped men forced to get married with some single women from Kampot province for patriotic duty. They were old and handicapped so the Khmer Rouge felt they should arrange marriage for them according to Ta Mok's policy. He was in charge of the district office so he was responsible for biographies of men and women to arrange their marriages and choose who should marry whom. He explained that there were always 20-30 couples to get married at the same time. He said people could refuse this arrangement but no one did because they were too afraid of getting killed. He tried to refuse to get married but the third time he accepted because the woman was a cousin of his chief Phoan and it was a culture of fear during the regime. There were three couples to get married at the same time. According to him, it was not forced marriage, rather a sector plan on the communist party of Democratic Kampuchea. He was informed of this plan by his chief and it was disseminated throughout the country. Women and men with a certain age had to get married, it became a rule, and women had to be younger than men of three to five years.
He chose to use the notion of arranged marriage. He asked the Courts to note his suffering and that the lower ranks should be tried at the ECCC because they altered and ruined the party line according to him.
- Witness acronym :
2-TCCP-219
- Age at the time of testimony :
60
- Appeared as :
- Cases : Case 002, Case 002/02,
- Date(s) of testimony :