By Lauren Crothers
PHNOM PENH
Testimony centred on charges of genocide under the Khmer Rouge continued in Cambodia on Tuesday, as a second Cham Muslim man took to the stand and told the court of restrictions placed upon followers of Islam.
The very grave charges of genocide levelled against elderly Khmer Rouge defendants Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan pertain to the treatment of Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese people under the Khmer Rouge, who seized power April 17, 1975 and forcibly evacuated millions of people from urban centres into the countryside.
Sos Min, a 61-year-old civil party witness from Kompong Cham province, began his testimony at the Khmer Rouge tribunal like the witness before him, describing how the Cham way of life was quickly eroded after the Khmer Rouge came to power.
“By 1975, they imposed restrictions on religion, forced us to eat pork and forbade us from fasting,” he said.
“The food rations were compounded by hard manual labour and that made it very difficult to survive. The restrictions were problematic because we weren’t allowed to speak the Cham language.”
Failing to abide by the strict new rules - which also included being forced to cut one’s hair short - effectively put a target on people’s backs, Min said.
If caught, Cham would be accused of having not surrendered their old religious practices and, as a result, “be accused of being an enemy of Angkar.”
Angkar refers to the nerve centre of the Khmer Rouge, and the highest echelons of its leadership structure.
The accusations were manifested in a series of arrests—always at night—during the first month that the Khmer Rouge took over Min's village.
“If they wanted to arrest someone, they would do so,” Min said, saying that people were put into horse carts and taken away.
Fearing they would be “killed anyway” unless they tried to fight back, Min said that some Cham villagers mounted a revolt, armed with just two rifles, knives and swords.
“If I didn’t chop the Khmer Rouge, I would be killed afterward," he said.
But the attempt ended in failure - "40 of us interrogated and bayonets pointed at our necks."
Some of his fellow detainees were ultimately taken away, but Min was reunited with his family and then, packed on to 50 boats, he and other Cham villagers were forced to row in a straight line through the night toward another village.
The Khmer Rouge fired shots at them if they weaved off course.
“It rained all night and some new-borns died," he said.
“We were not allowed to rest at all. We were exhausted and starving but we had to row the boat. When we got to shore we had to walk all day to reach the village, without any food.”
His testimony continues Wednesday.
