MEAS Sokha
Pseudonym: 2-TCW-936
Cases: Case 002/02
Category: Witness
Background and role
Meas Sokha, alias Thlang, was considered a member of the “Base” (or “Old”) population.
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As a child, he lived in the Tram Kak cooperative in Cheang Tong commune until 1976,
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when he and his entire family was arrested and detained in the Kraing Ta Chan security centre.
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He and his family members were released in August 1978 and sent to a cooperative in Ta Reab village.
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After 1979, he became a soldier.
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In Case 002/02, Thlang testified about the conditions in the Tram Kak Cooperative (1975-1976) and the detention conditions, interrogations and executions in the Kraing Ta Chan security centre (1976-1978).
Life in the Tram Kak Cooperative (until 1976)
Before 1975, the witness lived in a cooperative.
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Thlang was part of a 6-member mobile children’s unit, assigned to tend cattle.
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They were supervised by two militiamen.
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The children were aged 10-14 years; those 15 years and older were part of the youth unit.
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People were forced to eat together communally.
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Although there was not enough food at the cooperative,
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they did not report it.
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His only personal belonging was a plate and a spoon.
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Base People were separated from the “New People”, who were considered feudalists.
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The Trial Chamber in Case 002/02 found that “[c]ollectivisation and communal eating was introduced in Tram Krak … and expanded progressively”,
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that Base and New People were divided into separate groups,
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and that the Base people (including children) were forced to work.
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Kraing Ta Chan security centre
In 1976, Thlang’s father and brother-in-law were arrested by the commune chief, supposedly because his brother-in-law was requested to collect signatures for deposing the village chief and send the report to the Khmer Rouge.
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When Thlang arrived at Kraing Ta Chan a few days later,
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his father and brother-in-law had already been taken there and killed.
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The Trial Chamber in Case 002/02 found that the detention of Thlang and his family at Kraing Ta Chan was arbitrary,
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upheld his account of his father’s and brother-in-law’s arrests, and found that the conditions at Kraing Ta Chan were “dire”.
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Detention conditions at Kraing Ta Chan
The Kraing Ta Chan security office had three buildings for prisoners.
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Prisoners were cuffed
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and shackled day and night,
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and were released only for work and lunch.
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Babies or young children stayed with their mothers.
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Five prisoners were shackled to one segment of a metal bar, with no space between them.
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Prisoners were punished for talking to each other or moving while they slept.
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If one prisoner moved, all were beaten.
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The detention building was filled with bedbugs.
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Prisoners relieved themselves in the room, into a coconut shell, which would be passed from one prisoner to another to pour it into a container.
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There was no doctor to treat the prisoners.
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Prisoners had two meals a day from dirty bowls,
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consisting of a ladle of gruel with at most 10 grains of rice or three small pieces of potatoes and a little bit of water plant.
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They allowed the prisoners to drink water only twice a day, at most three gulps of it; the water was red due to its proximity to the fertilizer’s pit.
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At Kran Ta Chan, Thlang tended two cows and four water buffaloes, until 5 p.m. every afternoon.
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Thlang testified that on most nights, between 10 and 30 more prisoners were brought in.
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Interrogations in Kraing Ta Chan
Only adults were interrogated, not children.
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Women were rarely interrogated.
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The interrogation took place in the open.
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Behind the interrogation place were piles of clothes of prisoners who had been killed.
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Some cadres made their own wine, which the witness says was consumed along with human bladders
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that were dried in the sun.
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The cadres also brought wine and gallbladders to interrogations,
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believing that drinking wine made people braver.
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Prisoners were asked whether they were American or Vietnamese spies.
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They were beaten in interrogations
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and tortured by having their fingernails pulled by pliers,
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if they did not confess.
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If prisoners escaped during interrogations, the kitchen staff would help catch them.
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In 1976, Thlang witnessed a handcuffed prisoner being suffocated with a plastic bag after being tortured
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during his interrogation.
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The prisoner fainted and was carried into the prison.
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Thlang found the prisoner dead the next day.
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The Trial Chamber found Thlang’s testimony about the interrogations and the suffocated prisoner credible,
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and also found a notebook (E3/4095), summarising interrogations at Kraing Ta Chan, to be authentic.
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Executions at Kraing Ta Chan
Executions took place once every week,
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usually from 2 or 3 p.m. until 5 p.m. and sometimes until 8 p.m.
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Sometimes there were 50, 70, 80 or 100 prisoners who were killed.
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Prisoners were starved for one week before being killed.
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Thlang described how two or three prisoners at a time, having been falsely told that they would be sent back to their bases, were walked to the pit.
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Two executioners would hold the prisoner tight and the third one would slit prisoner’s throats with a sword.
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During killings or violent interrogations, there was loud music played on speakers,
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which was directed towards concealing the sound from the prisoners.
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After the execution of a mother, her children would be killed by throwing them against a gum tree.
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Thlang also witnessed a mass execution in 1977
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of 100 or more individuals who were brought in from Srae Ronoung and Nhaeng Nhang communes and not even interrogated,
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because there was no space in the prison.
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Thlang buried the bodies.
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The Trial Chamber in Case 002/02 found Thlang’s account of regular and mass executions, and the killing of a baby against a tree, to be credible.
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Office 204 as a Lon Nol detention centre
Thlang testified that Office 204 (or M-204), located to the west of Trapeang Kranhung, was a detention centre for former Lon Nol officials and “the rich or the capitalist”.
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Thlang’s suffering
Thlang’s father and brother-in-law were killed at Kraing Ta Chan three days before his arrival;
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and three of his younger siblings died of malnutrition three months after they were detained.
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His aunt, her husband and their five or six children also died at Kraing Ta Chan.
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All the villagers from his village were killed.
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Thlang said that if he had spoken out about any of the incidents he witnessed, he would have been killed too.
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He was a teenager and was afraid.
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Before being taken to Kraing Ta Chan, he was told that if he attempted to escape the cooperative while tending cattle, his parents would be killed.
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He could not refuse the job of tending cattle.
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At Kraing Ta Chan, the guards trusted him because he did not dare to talk to anyone else about what he witnessed: “I knew if I talked about it then I would be in trouble”.
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After the DK regime, he returned to Kraing Ta Chan to search for the skeletal remains of his relatives but could not find them because of the number of skeletons.
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