NORNG Net
Pseudonym: 2-TCW-913
Cases: Case 002/02
Category: Witness
Background and role
Norng Net was a monk from 1973 until April 1975 in Romeas Haek district, Svay Rieng province.
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When the Khmer Rouge came to power in April 1975 he was forcibly defrocked, and forced to work in farming and rice transplanting.
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Two or three months later he was sent to work in Phnom Penh to raise animals and cook at a training school for cadres at Borei Keila.
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After the internal purges in the East Zone, he was considered an enemy due to his East Zone affiliations and was transferred to be tempered at a railroad construction site at Trapeang Kraloeng located to the north of National Road Number 4 in Kampong Speu province.
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Thereafter he was sent to Steung Hav in Kampong Som to work on a new railroad and sewage system,
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until he was arrested and taken to be killed.
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He testified as a witness before the Trial Chamber in Case 002/02 on the treatment of Buddhists, K5 training school in Borei Keila, the purge of the East Zone, and how he survived execution.
Treatment against Buddhists
In April 1975, he and 19 other monks in the Ta Suos pagoda in Tras commune, Svay Rieng province, were forced to defrock by the Khmer Rouge and were no longer allowed to live in the temple.
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He recalled that “[t]hey did not allow us to stay as monks since they wanted to abolish our Buddhism.”
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The defrocking of monks did not follow any rituals or ceremony.
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All monks were defrocked in a single day, and then were separated to different villages.
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The commune chiefs were the ones who came to coerce monks to defrock.
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Before entering Phnom Penh, Norng Net passed by Svay Romiet pagoda near Prey Veng district and saw that all the monks there had been defrocked.
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Training school at Borei Keila
Upon his arrival in Phnom Penh, Norng Net was sent to K-5 training school at Borei Keila or Bak Touk School.
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Ta Chamroeun was his chief unit who was in charge of the training school.
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The school had an open space with a big training hall
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where cadres from different parts of the country were summoned for study sessions.
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He never attended any training sessions
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and was simply a worker, raising livestock and cooking rice to serve the participants.
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He had to take a sip of everything including rice and water before they were served to the guests to make sure nothing served was poisoned.
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The training sessions took place twice a month.
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Each session lasted from three days to one week,
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and there were around 40 or 50 to 100 trainees.
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He heard that Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan came frequently to teach there, but never saw their faces.
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Work at Stung cooperative
Norng Net recalled that while working at Stung cooperative just outside of Phnom Penh,
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he was tasked with taking care of water buffalos, plouging and rice transplantation.
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He was warned not to lose the buffalos or break the plough
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or he would be accused of being an enemy.
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The Trial Chamber relied on his testimony, in addition to others, to find the existence of a policy to establish and operate cooperatives and worksites as a means of furthering the common purpose of rapidly implementing socialist revolution through a “great leap forward” in order to build the country, defend it against enemies and radically transform the population into a homogenous society of worker-peasants.
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Internal purges in the East Zone
Norng Net testified that those who were from Prey Veng and Svay Rieng in the East Zone were considered enemies who had to be tempered.
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They were referred to as men with a Vietnamese head and Khmer body.
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He was removed from the Stung cooperative to be tempered and to carry dirt at the new railroad construction site at Trapeang Kraloeng and then at Stueng Hav.
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All of the workers at Stueng Hav came from the East Zone.
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One day, he and others in the 50-people group joined their hands to arrest the cooking chief named Hoeun and send him to the military barrack for not providing them with sufficient food to eat.
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However, in the end, they were rounded up, arrested, tied and tortured for 13 days during which time they were fed just one or two pieces of potato per meal.
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They were then taken away to be killed.
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Norng Net was hit with a club several times over the head but managed to survive, as did one other man named Kan.
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They untied each other and managed to live for over a month in an abandoned cave near their worksite.
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