Investigators in Kratie Killings Say They Were Shadowed
Human rights workers investigating suspected military killings around Snuol district claim they have been harassed and, in some cases, prevented from doing their jobs by soldiers in Kratie.
Investigators from several local rights groups, including Adhoc and Licadho, arrived in Kratie late last weekend in an attempt to sort out reports that soldiers from sub-military region headquarters in Snuol district killed at least three people accused of being associated with the anti-government group “Khmer Serey,” or Free Khmer.
Rights officials in Phnom Penh on Wednesday said investigators reported being shadowed by soldiers identified by a local hotel owner as being from Snuol district.
“They were watching us closely and we could not do anything,” Adhoc Director Thun Saray said, adding his investigators were told they could not go to Snuol, where the bodies of three men killed in May are reportedly buried.
Pol Khemera, deputy police chief in Kratie province, acknowledged that rights workers had at least been discouraged from traveling to Snuol, though he did not know by whom.
He said the Snuol area right now may be too dangerous for rights workers, saying “[the military] does not want rights workers to see anything right now.”
Tension has recently gripped Snuol—a small muddy town isolated from the provincial capital by jungle and vast rubber plantations—as local police officials try to probe accusations of a military massacre and quietly send reports back to their bosses in Kratie.
“This case involves the military, and if we investigate in the open maybe we are interfering with [the soldier’s] jobs,” said a senior Snuol district police official, explaining that while he knew the military is implicated in the killings, he could only move forward cautiously.
“I’m worried about my security, about being killed in the jungle and robbers being blamed for my death. This area, on these roads—it is very easy to kill someone,” the visibly shaken official said during an interview in his Snuol district office on Sunday.
“I’m making secret reports to provincial police authorities. We are very afraid of the military—soldiers have more power than the police,” he said.
Snuol is indeed heavily populated by armed soldiers and military officials, driving endlessly around the town’s small square in the area’s only pickup trucks and Landcruisers, and spending their weekends on drinking and karaoke binges.
The town is seemingly under the control of the large sub-military region headquarters, a sprawling compound located several kilometers outside of town, near where the bodies of Son Peou, Meuk Sukhoeun and Nou Sok were found in May.
Human rights officials claim the three were killed in early May after a roundup of suspected Khmer Serey members from nearby Khsim village and elsewhere.
At least another dozen men—all allegedly ex-rebels with vague ties to the royalist Khmer Serey who volunteered to join the government on the promise of a $150 monthly salary—are missing, human rights groups say.
The government has regularly dismissed Khmer Serey as nothing more than loosely organized bandits. But Pol Khemera said he thought those killed may be associated with the organization and suggested they were former Funcinpec soldiers who were never re-integrated after the July 1997 factional fighting but instead moved to the jungles of eastern Cambodia.
“I am still not convinced this isn’t a clean-up of Funcinpec,” said one human rights official, pointing to the discovery of two more bodies found earlier this week in Kompong Cham province as evidence of a wider killing spree by soldiers.
The two new victims, farmers Sou Seth and Nen Bunsang, were both arrested at night in mid-July by soldiers, according to Licadho officials, who point out that both are on a list of the missing men now thought dead.
Sou Seth was dragged from his Koki Thum commune home in Kompong Thom province after a local military commander threatened to throw a grenade inside, a Licadho official said Tuesday.
Nen Bunsang, also of the same commune, was asked by the same commander to work in his camp at night and disappeared, the official said. Neither men were seen again until villagers found their bodies earlier this week and lodged a complaint with Licadho workers. Both had been reportedly tied up and shot, according to human rights workers, though none had seen the bodies.
Pol Khemera said he was aware of these most recent killings and has ordered provincial police to cooperate with Ministry of Interior officials to investigate the allegations of a province-wide purge.
“It is a brutal slaughter of not only those three men, but of those other men reportedly killed,” he said.
Pol Khemera said the families of Son Peou, Meuk Sokhoeun and Nou Sok have refused to cooperate with authorities, fearing for their own safety.
But so far, it is the slain men’s relatives who have been the only ones to see the three bodies and could possibly have evidence indicating execution-style killings.
All three were reportedly bound, blindfolded and shot several times each in the back.
Om Yentieng, human rights advisor to Prime Minister Hun Sen, also said he has ordered an investigation but refused to talk about the case until the inquiry is complete.
