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KOH KHSACH CHUNLEA: AN ISLAND OF WIDOWS
Kalyanee Mam
Cambodia is a land
of widows. The Pol Pot regime left behind many enduring legacies. One of the
more striking reminders of this horrific period are the vast number of women who
are left widowed and children left orphaned by their husbands and fathers. Where
did all the widows come from and how did they come to be? Five women from Sa-Ang district, Kandal
province seek to answer this question by re-telling their own bitter stories of
hardship, endurance, and survival on an island called Koh Khasach Tunle, where
recent widows were ostracized and sometimes, even murdered. These stories reveal
another determined effort by the Khmer Rouge to sever family ties and to uproot
the traditional relationships that existed between the Cambodian husband and
wife and between the Cambodian mother and her children. Abandoned by a hopeless
future, the women wonder who will avenge their past and who will remember their
story.
Before 1975,
Theeda and her husband lived in Phnom Penh. She sold things at the market, while
her husband worked as a servant in a hotel. When the Khmer Rouge ransacked Phnom
Penh and evacuated the city, Theeda and her husband were sent back to their
native village in Setbo. There, she was placed in the full labor force (kamlang
sreuk) in Beoung Tnaot and forced to carry dirt up to the Toul Krasang dam while
her husband worked in Chansa Cheang Kul, plowing the fields at night and
carrying dirt in the daytime. They rarely saw each other since it was policy
that husbands and wives only meet once a week. When Theeda and her husband did
meet, he would help her complete her quota of five square meters of dirt per
day, so that they would have more time in the evening to devote to each other,
before separating again at the crack of dawn. Theeda only met her husband nine
times this way, before he disappeared from her life forever. In March of 1977,
they dragged him from his work site in the evening and took him to Koh Kor, the
largest prison and execution site in Sa-Ang District. They accused him of being
a 1st Lieutenant. During the Pol Pot regime, soldiers, military officers, civil
servants and anyone educated were considered bitter enemies of the regime and it
was necessary to eliminate them.
Although Theeda’s husband worked as a simple servant in a hotel in Phnom Penh,
his connection with urban life made him a perfect candidate for execution.
Theeda did not get
to see her husband leave, but she and her children were forced to endure the
consequences of his execution. Even before Theeda and her children were sent to
Koh Khsach Tunlea, they experienced the bitter contempt of Angkar. They were
forced to dig with fixed quotas, they received the heaviest and most difficult
work, and their food was rationed differently from the others. Despite her
husband’s death Theeda continued to work hard. “If you don’t work, they will
kill you,” she said, “because they have already killed your husband. But they
did not allow you to cry. Anyone who dared cry would be killed.”
When her husband
was taken away, Chantou was also forced to cry alone. Like Theeda, Chantou was a
native of Setbo village. During the months of fighting, Chantou moved with her
family to Phnom Penh, before she eventually evacuated to her native village in
1975. Chantou was a widow with one child, before she was forced by Angkar to
re-marry. Chantou did not want to marry, but knew she would have to bear the
consequences if she did not: “In my heart I did not want to [marry], but if you
did not marry they would take you to be killed. They would kill you, so you just
forced yourself to get married.” Like Theeda, Chantou only saw her husband once
a week or every ten days. Their meetings were monitored and they were not
allowed to visit each other freely: “When we went to work, we met each other
like this, but we never spoke a word to each other.... We just steal glances at
each other, but they never let us talk to each other.” Thousands of marriages
were arranged during the Pol Pot period, but it is not clear why people were
forced to marry since couples were denied the right to live together and were
sometimes separated forever. Chantou was forced to endure such a fate while she
was already seven months pregnant with a child. In 1977, she was helping to
raise a dam in Beoung Tnaot when they sent her husband to Koh Kor. Only a week
later, did Chantou discover her husband had disappeared.
Davy, on the other
hand, witnessed her husband’s departure and even staged a small resistance to
challenge the policies of Angkar. Davy was a “base person” who had lived in Prek
Ambel ever since she married her husband. Her husband was poor and weak and they
only had a small hut in the village. they raised only enough ducks to live on
and they had some wood they were saving with which to build a house. In 1974,
the militia leader came to ask Davy for some ducks and wood. She refused since
it was all they had. A couple of days later, they came to take her husband away.
“We are only taking him to be educated,” they said. Davy understood the
consequences of being educated, “Being educated. It will not be quick. I know
that if he goes, he will go forever.” She asked who would support her and her
four children of her husband was taken away? They answered, “Angkar will support
you.”
During the Pol Pot
regime, relationships were shattered, families were separated and emotional and
sentimental ties disappeared. Angkar became the parent, the husband, and the
family that one should only pledge allegiance and absolute loyalty to. Davy
refused to accept this reality. She sat in the road in protest and dared them to
kill her entire family, “Okay, why don’t you just shoot and kill everyone in the
house. Shoot and kill everyone,
including myself, my children, my husband, everyone, because if you take him
away, I will definitely starve and die.” Few people were willing to be as
confrontational as Davy was. When asked why they did not dare to resist Angkar,
Theeda answered, “How could you run away? If you run, the punishment is even
greater, It will even touch on your children. I tell you, if your husband
challenges them...he will live, but we will lose with their warning, “It the husband dares to resist, we will
take the entire family. At this point, your husband does not dare to resist.”
But Theeda, quickly added, “If we knew that all our families would die anyway,
we would have all resisted.” Davy’s husband did not resist. He resigned himself
in order to save his family.
Bopha’s husband’s
departure was less dramatic, Bopha lived for a short while in Phnom Penh, before
returning to her native village in Svay Brateal. When they returned, her husband
planted vegetables while she worked near the village. It was 7:00 in the morning
in 1977, when they called her husband from the house. Bopha was two months
pregnant at the time. They said that they were taking him to help plow the
fields. Bopha remembered how her older brother, in 1976, also left in this way.
Many different tactics were used at that time to deceive family members from the
truth. Although one of the most popular methods used was to say they were taking
the individual to be educated, Angkar also used other means of deception.
According to Theeda, “They would pick at you and say, ‘Come on, fetch your earth
basket.’ When you went to fetch your earth basket, you knew that they were
taking you to be killed. And we knew. Inside our heads, we already knew.” When
Bopha’s husband left, he also knew. He did not take anything with him. He kept
everything for his wife, knowing that he would never return, A month after her
husband was taken to Koh Kor, Bopha suffered a miscarriage while digging a
canal.
Sopheap was also
two or three months pregnant when her husband was taken away. In 1975, Sopheap
and her husband were evacuated from Phnom Penh, where her husband worked as a
motorcycle repairman. They arrived in their native village of Svay Brateal
carrying a baby only 20 days old. Sopheap and her husband were divided into
separate units. Sopheap entered a mobile work brigade for married women (Kong
chalat sehtrey), transplanting rice seedlings and clearing forests, while her
husband worked in a mobile work brigade for plowing (Kong chalat pchoor). It was
broad daylight when they took her husband to Koh Kor and she was not able to see
him go. He was not alone. Four or five people were dragged along with him. Like
Bopha, they said they were taking him to plow the fields and to carry wood.
After their
husbands were sent to Koh Kor prison, each of the women above was soon taken to
Koh Khsach Tunlea. They were certain they would never see their husband again,
not only because Koh Kor was an infamous execution center, but also because Koh
Khsach Tunlea was an island reserved mainly for widows. “I could not say that we
would be able to reunite again,” said Bopha. “If they take you and put you in
that place....It is filled with widows.”
Sopheap was almost
ready to give birth when they took her to Koh Khsach Tunlea. They told her she
was going to meet her husband. “When I left, I didn’t even know they were taking
me to this island. Only after they pulled the boat in, did I know. When they
took me, they didn’t tell me where I was going. I just kept walking. They said,
‘We are taking you to be with your husband.’ …They just lied, They already
killed my husband. They just lied to me. They gathered everyone. Everyone, who’s
husband they had killed, they took to live on this island.” Theeda was also told
she would go meet her husband .She was so happy she tried to walk faster while
she advised her own child, “Go easily. We are to meet our Pa; we are going to
meet your father. Look, your father is waiting to welcome us,” On the way there,
Theeda saw many women crossing the river. But there were no men. “Whenever they
sent you anywhere, they always said it was to go meet your husband. Go here, and
we will meet. Go there, and we will meet. We were all so happy to hear that we
were going to meet our husbands. But until the day we broke out, I still do not
know where my husband went.”
The five women
never met their husbands again, but on the island they met many women who
confronted the same fate they did. It was uncertain where all the women came
from, but there were thousands of them. Chantou was surprised to see how many widows there
were on the island. Each of them had one thing in common. They were widows, left
stranded on an island because of their suspicious connections to their husbands.
When Sopheap reached the island, the unit leaders announced to the women, “Those who come to this island, do you
realize what’s going on? You are all wives of soldiers and the military police.
We bring you and put you on this island.” Sopheap asserted that there were no
wives of soldiers of military officers present on the island, They were all just
regular people. This line of reasoning, however, was used simply to justify
their own classification schemes.
Koh Khsach Tonlea
wa an island 6 km in length and 2 km in width and was divided into six mess
halls. Three mess halls formed a row on the western side of the island, while
another three formed a row on the western side. Homes were built surrounding the
mess halls. “Base people” who were native to the island and widows who were
re-married by Angkar, lived on the western side in mess halls #1, # 2, while the
widows without husbands, lived on the western side. “They wanted to distinguish
between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ people,” explained Bopha, “They ‘new people’,
whose husbands they had taken away , they put in one place. They didn’t want us
to remain mixed with the ‘base people’. They did this to make it easier to
supervise (kapear) us. If we commit
a crime, they are able to take us away quickly.” The Khmer Rouge was a paranoid
and systematic lot. Classification gave them the ability to manage their
‘enemies’ and away to keep their revolution pure from contamination. Although
the widows committed no crimes, they were still guilty by association. Davy was
a ‘base person’ entitled to rights and privileges, but she was eventually sent
to Koh Khsach Tunlea for her guilty connections, “I’m also a base person, why
wasn’t my life good?” she asked. “What is the reason? It’s because I have guilty
connections, guilty connections with my husband who was taken away. So they also
grouped me with the 17 April people.”
On this island,
the Khmer Rouge created a new society, a brave new world that consisted only of
women. In this world, there was no concept of privacy and ownership, there was
no concept of family, and there was no concept of community. Each person’s
actions were dictated by an absolute fear of Angkar, a fear that they too, would
be taken away and killed.
At the outset, the
Khmer Rouge sought to destroy any representations of uniqueness and
independence, any symbol that could distract the women from their work and from
their uncompromising loyalty to Angkar. These representations consisted of
physical ties to property, emotional ties to family, and intellectual ties to
ideas and freedom. As Davy appropriately recalled, “They didn’t let me have
anything, not even a word.” When Theeda first arrived on the island, they
discarded everything personal to her. “From here on, they removed all the dishes
and pots from us. Even our clothes were removed from us. They would not let us
take them with us. They only allowed us to take one bundle. There was nothing in
that bundle. We had just one pair of pans and a skirt we wore there. We had
nothing.”
The women did not
even have the right to express their uniqueness from others in their appearance.
Their clothes were piled away and they were forced to wear black clothing and
cut their hair short, up to their necks, Korean style. If they did not have
black clothing, many would soak their clothes in mud to dull the colors or in a
dye called makkloeu. It was important that the clothes did not distract
attention and did not look better than the clothes of the “base people” who had
clean back shirts, rubber-sole sandals, and red kramar to wrap around their
necks. Any attempt to look different from others on the island was met with
punishment. “Everyone had to wear black.” said Chantou, “No one had color. If we
wear color they’ll harass us and they’ll call us to be educated. If they call us
once or twice, we don’t listen, and we continue to wear this kind of clothing,
they’ll take us to be killed. We could not do this. We had to soak it in mud
until it was black and dirty.”
Not only were the
women deprived of their own self-concept, they were also robbed of their
traditional, nuclear concept of family. When the women made the trip from their
native village to Koh Khsach Tunlea, they were allowed to bring their children
with them. Their workdays were so long and regimented, however, that the women
rarely saw their children. When Dvay arrived on the island, her youngest
daughter was only five months old and still required breast-feeding. At four
o’clock in the early morning Davy would leave her children with the old
grandmothers in the children’s unit and ferry a boat across the river to work.
She worked in Prek Raing planting rice seedlings in front of Phnom Tun Mun.
After her afternoon meal with the other workers, Dvay would row the boat back
across the river, and feed her five-month-old baby then take leave again. “All
day, I never get to stay, “ said Davy. She could only return in the late
evening. Davy would finish her evening meal first before picking up her children
to return home. “At night when we return from work, the grandmothers would give
each of us our children and we would return to our respective homes. They let us
live in a house and in that one house there were four or five families. There
were large houses and small houses. The large houses had ten families. They just
laid our rugs and let us sleep with our children.”
Chantou also
arrived on the island soon after she gave birth. Her baby was only one month old. Instead
of forcing her to work in the fields immediately, Chantou had to serve as a
wet-nurse for seven to eight months. Within that period, she watched and
breast-fed ten children in her group. There were many other women, in many other
groups. Chantou did not have a lot of breast milk, but she continued to watch
the children. She watched them from six in the morning to six in the evening.
The mothers would drop off their children in the early morning and then leave
for work. Sometimes, like Davy, if they could break from their work, the mothers
would come to check up on their children. “Some people see their children and
they cry. They embrace their children and cry. They feel sorry for their
children because they’ve been away for so long. Some hug their children and cry
because they have nothing to eat.” When asked how she felt about having to look
after other people’s children, Chantou said she did not really think about it.
She just kept doing her job. “ Angkar had already assigned a job for me to watch
[after the children]. If I don’t follow they will kill me. If I argue they will
kill me. And if I don’t look after the children carefully, that will also not
do.” During the Pol Pot regime, the personal and private duties of motherhood
were reduced to a collective and impersonal event. In traditional Cambodian
families, mothers watched after their own children, especially during the
initial stages following birth. During this period of collectivization and
no-privatization, mothers could no longer care for their own children but had to
depend on others to look after them. Certain mothers, like Chantou, were even
forced to serve as a “collective mother” for other people’s children. Her
personal duties as a mother were transformed into a public good for Angkar.
Sopheap, who gave
birth soon after she arrived on the island, only served as a wet-nurse for a
short while. Her baby died one month after she gave birth and immediately they
placed her in a special unit and sent her away to work in Prek Raing and Prasat.
Most of the women were sent to Prek Raing, a village across the river and on the
western side of Koh Khsach Tonlea, to work. They woke up early in the morning to
cross the river. There, they transplanted rice seedlings, cut down forest,
pulled grass, planted corn, and harvested rice. They women there even plowed the
land, a job traditionally reserved for me. After a long day at work, the women
did not return until late evening. They took their meal in a collective mess
hall before returning to their sleeping quarters late at night.
Although the Khmer
Rouge sought to destroy traditional notions of family, they still wanted widows
on the island to remarry. Many of the married ‘base’ women on the island viewed
the single “new” widows as a threat to their own marriages and hoped to
alleviate any problems by marrying them off. According to Davy, “Sometimes they
would bring soldiers and those who were handicapped to marry.” The marriages
took place at a temple at the end of the island and couples were lined up row by
row. Women stood on one side while men stood on the other. Women on the island
were rarely threatened or torture into marriage. Most of the time, the unit
leaders came to ask the woman personally if she was willing to remarry or not.
Most of the women, however, agreed to marry for fear of their lives. According
to Bopha, “Even if they weren’t forced [to marry], it was as if they were
forced. They were afraid they would die. During that time, if you did anything
to offend them, you were afraid you would die. So those who had children, just
endured it. They went along with it because their husbands were already taken
away. If they tried to resist and they also died, they would leave their
children. So they just endured it.” Although Sopheap managed to resist
remarriage, she wondered why marriages were arranged if families continued to be
separated from each other: “Why should I take [another husband]. I already had
children and they were not yet even fully-grown and they forced me to work
myself to death. My children are not yet fully-grown and they separated them
[from me]. They did not get to live with me. Why should I give birth? I give
birth and they take them all away and use them and starve them.” When asked
whether the life of those with spouses were much easier than the life of those
unmarried, Dvay answered, “The lives of those with spouses do not seem to be
much easier than the lives of those who were unmarried. Sometimes, after they
married them, if they did anything wrong, they would take them away.” It remains
a mystery why the Khmer Rouge felt it necessary to force couples into marriage
only to break them apart again.
The women from the
island described Koh Khsach Tunlea as a prison surrounded by water and enveloped
by fear. Although women were not physically tortured on the island, they were
tormented by the loss of their husbands. “They did not torture me or put me in
prison with chains and shackles,” said Bopha, “but [when they took my husband
away] it is also like putting me in prison.” With the loss of their husbands,
the women also dreaded the loss of their own lives and the possibility of
leaving their children behind. Bopha explained, “If I don’t work hard, I am
afraid they will take me away and I will leave my children. So I tried to work
hard.” Not only were the women forced to strain themselves in labor, they were
also compelled to restrain themselves in speech. The women became mute figures
deprived of the freedom to express themselves or even to relate to each other.
Militiamen (chlop) and young
children would sneak up underneath the house to make certain nothing
inappropriate was being said about Angkar. It was safer not to speak at all.
Chantou remembered, “During the Pol Pot regime, every night, people would just
enter their mosquito net. No one joked around or laughed, because we were afraid
we would say something wrong.” The fear on the island was so pervasive, that
every night for Theeda, became a night of judgement: “In one day, if I can sleep
one night, I say that I am alive. If I sleep one night and I wake up the next
morning to see the light of the sun, I say that I am alive. One night I die, one
night I live. When it is night, I know I am dead. I don’t know if they are
coming to get me, because I keep seeing them come to get people.”
Although people
were not being killed on the island, many women disappeared from the island. The
Khmer Rouge set up an intricate system of informants. Besides the numerous
militiamen posted throughout the island, there were unit leaders responsible for
ten people within their group. The unit leaders were familiar with each member
of their group. When a problem arose with one member, they would inform the
group leader and the group leader would inform the higher officials. The member
would then be taken away. Chantou remembers one woman who was taken away to be
killed. They were shelling corn together and while they were shelling, they
called out to her and told her they wanted her to return to her district. When
she heard this, the corn fell from her hands and the women urinated in her
pants. Two or three days later, Chantou saw her body floating down the water.
This woman was probably taken to Koh Kor, the largest prison and execution site
in Sa-Ang. According to the five women, Koh Khsach Tunlea was the island for re-education, while Koh Kor was the
island for execution. “They would
put them in a rowboat and cross them over to Koh Kor....Koh Kor is full of dead
people.” During the flooding season, the women would see dead bodies floating in
the water from the direction of Koh Kor.
Although
executions accounted for many deaths, most of the women and children on the
island suffered or died from disease and starvation. Instead of the Cambodian
staple diet of rice, the women were only fed lotus stem soup, somla machoo
thacuan, wood potato, and small cobs of corn. Many of the women had to look for
other foods to supplement their diet. Chantou remembers the first few months
while she was there: “When we arrived there in the beginning, they starved us.
We did not have any rice to eat for months. We had no rice to eat. We ate only
leaves, like potato leaves, any leaves. Whatever leaves as long as we could eat
it and not get poisoned.” The health of the women on the island quickly
deteriorated from lack of food and adequate nutrients. The women failed to
menstruate and mothers barely had enough breast milk for their children. Many of
the women became sick with swelling because they lacked salt in their bodies.
According to Theeda “I was so skinny, you could see my bones. I was really
skinny, everyone was. In Koh Khsach Tunlea, people were mostly sick with
swelling. They would swell up and die, swell and then die, because there was not
enough to eat.” The people on the island suffered especially during the wet
season when much of the island fell victim to heavy flooding. Chantou, who was a
wet-nurse on the island, noticed that many of the children died during this
time. “So many people died on this island,” she says, “especially the young
children because they did not have anything to eat. So many kids died, none of
them remained. Some developed bruises, some developed....I don’t know what it
is, but they would sleep on banana leaves. Some developed large sores this big
and they would lay on banana leaves...and die. Many children died...When
[people] returned their hands were empty. When they went hey had their children,
but when they returned each person lost their children.”
With numerous
executions and with the threat of disease and starvation, the island population
was in constant flux. Although most of the women estimated that there were
thousands of women living on Koh Khsach Tunlea (Theeda and Chantou asserts there
were tens of thousands), it is difficult to asses how many women and children
were still alive after the Vietnamese invasion and liberation of Cambodia in
1979. Theeda claimed that, “Close to 1979, close to the time of liberation, they
really killed a lot of people. There were very few when we returned from Koh
Khsach Tunlea.” At the same time, Theeda also recognized the chaos of that
period: “There was too much confusion. They sent some over here and some over
there; so how are were supposed to know? We didn’t know. They would say, ‘Okay,
we need people to work over there.’ The fill up two or there cars and go...When
we were being sent over [to Koh Khsach Tunlea] there were a lot of people...At
the end, in 1979, there were very little people left. We don’t know where they
put them. We were all separated.” With the slow encroachment of the Vietnamese
on Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge panicked and evacuated many women from the island,
forcing them to travel west.
From
an island of widows, Cambodia became a country of widows. Currently, 20 percent
of the female population in Cambodia is widowed, according to the UNDP’s
statistics. The stories of the five women in Kandal Province speak volumes of
the suffering that occurred during this brutal period, but yet, they represent
only a fraction of the suffering endured by women during this time. What of the
other widows and how will their suffering be remembered? At the end of her
interview, Bopha pointedly answered, “I wanted the organization to seek justice
for widows. The name Pol Pot-he is the one who killed the husbands of
widows.”
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