ONG Thong Hoeung
Pseudonym: TCW-490
Cases: Case 002/01
Category: Witness
Background and return to Cambodia from overseas
Ong Thong Hoeung was a Cambodian intellectual who was taken to the political training school K-15 for re-education upon returning to Cambodia from overseas in 1976.
1
He had left Cambodia in 1965 to study political economics in France,
2
spending 11 years abroad.
3
While overseas, Ong Thong Hoeung joined the French Socialist Party and later, the Khmer Students’ Union in 1970.
4
He testified about re-education and disappearances at the political training schools for overseas Cambodians and about Khieu Samphan’s early career and function, which the Appeal Chamber relied upon as support for the Trial Chamber’s findings regarding Khieu Samphan’s role in indoctrination sessions.
5
According to Ong Thong Hoeung, he was transported to the K-15 re-education centre immediately upon his return to Cambodia.
6
Three months after his arrival at K-15, Ong Thong Hoeung was taken first to D-2, a rice mill factory,
7
then to an agricultural cooperative at Takhmau for a little over one month.
8
After that, he was transferred to Boeng Trabek,
9
before being taken to Dei Kraham camp in December 1976 where he stayed until 2-3 months before the fall of the DK regime.
10
He returned to Boeng Trabek a second time just two months before the fall of Phnom Penh,
11
and after that, in May or June of 1979, Ong Thong Hoeung began working at Toul Sleng, or S-21, for approximately 2-3 months.
12
Administrative structure of the CPK
The CPK maintained an administrative office referred to as the ‘Government Office’, or ‘S-71’, which oversaw a variety of sub-offices and units performing support functions for the Party Centre.
13
Ong Thong Hoeung testified that within this structure, the sub-unit ‘K-15’ was a “political training school”, principally for Cambodians returning from overseas.
14
Khieu Samphan’s early career and role in indoctrination sessions
In describing Khieu Samphan’s early life and career, the Trial Chamber referenced Ong Thong Hoeung’s book, in which he wrote that Khieu Samphan succeeded Ieng Sary “at the Head of the Marx-Lenin and the Khmer Student’s Union” in 1956, citing to sources he had obtained from Khieu Samphan’s associates in the Leninist and Marxist Circle when Khieu Samphan was in France.
15
The trial Chamber found that Khieu Samphan played a role in the re-education of those returning to Cambodia from overseas.
16
Ong Thong Hoeung testified that his wife, who had returned to Cambodia six months prior to his return,
17
told Ong Thong Hoeung that upon her arrival, Khieu Samphan chaired a study session at K-15.
18
He also testified that according to his wife, Khieu Samphan had come to talk about how to re-educate oneself and behave like a peasant.
19
Ong Thong Hoeung’s wife also told him that Khieu Samphan had said that “Cambodia is being developed and it needs the resources”, and that “we had to build ourselves”.
20
The Appeal Chamber found that Ong Thong Hoeung’s testimony supported the Trial Chamber’s finding that “Khieu Samphan had justified the evacuation at least one of the indoctrination sessions” for returned intellectuals and officials in late 1975 and 1976.
21
Re-education at training centres
Ong Thong Hoeung testified that at K-15, where the majority of people were from France, and others from the United States, or were military soldiers,
22
waves of intellectuals arrived from abroad after he did.
23
He maintained that at K-15 they were encouraged to self-criticise in addition to criticising each other, creating an atmosphere of mistrust.
24
Later, Ong Thong Hoeung was transferred to Boeng Trabek, a camp where people from overseas were sent, mostly from France and some from the Soviet Union, though a few Khmer Rouge cadres were there as well.
25
He recalled that at Boeng Trabek, the overseas returnees were criticised pursuant to the class struggle.
26
According to him, the class struggle meant that they had to “uncover the enemy” within themselves and that during meetings or rallies, others would criticise those who were arrested for not being in line with the principle of the Party against liberalism.
27
Ong Thong Hoeung also testified that while at Del Kraham camp, he was told that he had “re-educated” himself, and was therefore moved to the diplomat group.
28
Disappearances from the training centres
The Trial Chamber found that the Party leadership considered that if FUNK/GRUNK officials were left abroad they would pose a threat to the socialist revolution unless they spent a year in the Cambodian countryside.
29
Accordingly, former GRUNK ministers who were recalled from overseas and/or were loyal to Norodom Sihanouk (the head of state of GRUNK and chairman of FUNK
30
) were re-educated at Boeng Trabek.
31
Ong Thong Hoeung testified that many disappeared from Boeng Trabek.
32
According to him, some of his group members from Boeng Trabek were sent elsewhere, and later when he worked at S-21, where he had access to confession records,
33
he learned that they had been taken to S-21.
34
While at S-21, he also learned that those who had disappeared from Dei Kraham camp were sent to be killed 3 kilometers from S-21.
35
Videos
