Editor’s note: As progress toward a Khmer Rouge tribunal moves forward, The Cambodia Daily is running a series in which the people who lived through the Khmer Rouge regime share their stories. Subsequent stories will appear in future issues of The Cambodia Daily.
Ean Thorng is often reminded of the small, sharp knives, the cruel Khmer Rouge cadre and the bleeding man and girl who were forced to apologize for their unauthorized love.
He remembers the man and girl who stood in two dug-out holes in the earth, holding their intestines, as thousands of villagers filed past.
“They were forced to say they had done an immoral deed and to not follow their way,” said Ean Thorng, now a farmer in Battambang province. “They didn’t speak clear, because a lot of blood was coming out and they were about to die.
“Local leaders had people walk in a row and point at them and say ‘you are bad’ and ‘you deserve to be killed,’” he said. “I felt sorry for them, but I couldn’t help them and I had to say and do what they wanted me to.”
Thirty minutes later, the two were dead. Ean Thorng heard they were buried in the same shallow holes that they had been told to stand in.
“I think of this cruelty a lot. Three months after the killing, I could not eat very much rice porridge. It would make me vomit,” Ean Thorng said.
Angkar, the Khmer Rouge regime’s organization, had made its point clear on that day in 1977.
Men and women could not choose their wives and husbands—only local Khmer Rouge officials could give approval for marriage. Love affairs were strictly forbidden. Those caught in secret liasons faced torture, public humiliation and death.
During the Khmer Rouge years, between 1975 and 1979, when more than one million Cambodians died of starvation, overwork, disease and execution, another man in Battambang province was driven to death because of an illicit affair.
Kuy Try was married with children when he began seeing another woman, who was a widow and had a number of children of her own.
When the Angkar found out about the relationship, Kuy Try decided not to wait for his certain execution. Instead, he went 10 km outside of his village and hanged himself. Soon after, the widow disappeared, according to Song Tith, now a motorcycle taxi driver in Poipet.
But many of the couples who did have Angkar’s approval often did not have the romantic love to go with those relationships. Many couples were married by Angkar in large groups. Sometimes, the men and women had not met before the weddings.
“I was asked by the Angkar to marry a girl. I never knew her. Even if I did not love her or if I did love her, I could not reject her, because it was the Angkar’s order,” said Khoun Eath, now a farmer in Battambang province.
“When I was married, there were more than 100 couples and we had just a little food for the party. At the wedding party, I had trouble remembering my wife. If she walked away from me, I didn’t know who she was.”
Today, the couple are still together and have six children. But Khoun Eath still feels shame.
“I never tell anyone I was married by the Khmer Rouge organization,” he said.
