SOU Sotheavy

The Civil Party was born in 1940 in Koh Tang village, Tralach Commune, Takeo province. She is a rice worker field and a transgender. 

Her parents were killed during the Pol Pot regime. Although she was born as a man, before 1975 she had lived as a woman. During the Khmer Rouge era she became he, because she had to get married when she was evacuated from Son Nol Mountain, a re-education prison. When she was transferred a village in Bantay District, she tried to refuse to marry because her mother was in bad health and her family couldn’t be there for the ceremony. 107 couples were called to the same room without knowing what was happening. They had to choose each other in the dark. The Civil Party had talked with her wife-to-be to ask her to be able to recognize each other with the scarf. She said no one refused to get married because it was a psychologically tense situation. Some of her transgender friends decided to kill themselves or others were shot. The ceremony was not organized according to the Khmer tradition. She spoke also about soldiers who monitored them to know if they consumed their marriage. She and her wife had to drink a lot of alcohol to be able to do it, because the Civil Party wasn't attracted to women. They had to make a vow to Angkar, commit to marriage and produce children as Angkar required it to increase population and protect the country. After that they sent her to work and she never saw her wife and daughter again. The Civil Party also spoke about rooms of interviews, tools of torture and screams she heard. She lived in a lot of different places, most of the time in prison.

She said she had nothing to tell to the accused just how much he suffered because he lost everything: her family, how she was forced to get married, she was sexually abused, had physical injuries, eyesight is poor, right leg is handicapped because of the chains, etc.

  • Witness acronym :
    2-TCCP-224
  • Age at the time of testimony :
  • Appeared as :
  • Cases : Case 002Case 002/02
  • Date(s) of testimony :

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