PHUNG Guth Sunthary
Pseudonym: D25/5
Cases: Case 001
Category: Civil Party
Background
Phung Guth Sunthary testified as a civil party in Case 001
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about the evacuation on 17 April 1975 and information related to the death of her father, Phung Ton, a professor of international law specialized in law of the sea,
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at S-21 Security Office.
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The Trial Chamber relied on Phung Guth Sunthary’s testimony of her father’s death at S-21 in determining Duch’s responsibility for harm on her caused by the loss of her father.
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In Case 002/02, Trial Chamber relied on her testimony in finding backgrounds of detainees at S-21, which they include those returning from overseas.
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Evacuation of Phnom Penh and information related to the death of Phung Guth Sunthary’s father at S-21
A few days before 17 April 1975, Phung Guth Sunthary’s mother received a letter from the Foreign Ministry that her father would come back to Cambodia from his mission abroad.
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On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated her and her other family members from Phnom Penh to Kampong Chhnang to do rice farming.
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Having no transportation, they let the Khmer Rouge decide for them on direction.
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They moved to Sector 21 and ended up at Sector 505.
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Phung Guth Sunthary was in mobile farming unit at different places, which she claimed shelter her from “starvation”, “forced marriage”, and “rape”.
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Asked to write her biography, Phung Guth Sunthary provided true information expecting that it would be forwarded to the “upper echelon” of the Khmer Rouge and that it would enable her father to locate her and other family members.
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Later, when the Khmer Rouge were defeated, she ran with others, and found her mother, grandmother and one of her siblings who was handicapped.
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During the escape, the Khmer Rouge ordered them to take the boat across Mekong River to Boeng Ket Mountain where she heard from a radio of a villager that Phnom Penh fell.
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They went down Boeng Ket Mountain, and met her aunt there.
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All of them moved together to Kratie.
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Since they did not have food to eat, they returned to the last village (no name was given) where they used to stay and work.
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They could not ask for food from people there, so they decided to go back from Kratie to Phnom Penh along the Mekong River by a self-made bamboo raft.
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Phung Guth Sunthary and her family members arrived in Phnom Penh in February 1979 (not 1976 as indicated in the transcript).
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They stayed at Prek Takong Pagoda, and her younger brother worked as a boat carrier. She heard from some, including her father’s friend, that her father came to Cambodia and was killed.
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Others told her that her father was at the Technological Institution Boeng Trabaek, and was seen carrying a backpack travelling to Siem Reap on 06 January 1979.
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Around November 1979, when Phung Guth Sunthary returned to the house of her mother’s cousin, she stopped and exchanged rice for sugar palm,
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wrapped with newspaper. When she unwrapped it, she found a picture of her father with his name as well as the existence of S-21.
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She went with her mother to S-21 but found nothing about her father.
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Later, a survival detainee of S-21 found interrogated information of Phung Guth Sunthary’s father which was taken before he was sent to S-21,
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having retuned to Cambodia on December 25, 1975.
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On December 12, 1976, her father was sent to S-21.
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She thinks the biography that she wrote could have resulted in the arrest of her father.
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For some reasons, she believes he was detained there for almost seven months before being smashed.
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