So Farina has worked at the Documentation Center of Cambodia since 2003 and is currently team leader of its Cham Oral History project, which records the research monograph, drawn from Ms. So’s master’s thesis, focuses on Cham Muslim women’s experiences under the Khmer Rouge. Ms. So holds a BA in Accounting and Finance from National University of Management (Cambodia) and an MA in International Affairs with a concentration in Southeast Asian Studies from Ohio University (USA). She has participated in international programs related to genocide, oral history, Islam commissions in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Germany, Malaysia, South Korea, and the United States. Besides Khmer, her native language, she is fluent in English and familiar with Bahasa Indo-Malay and Cham.
head. The Arabic word hijab, which refers to modest behavior or dress in general, is often used to describe the headscarf worn by Muslim women. Muslim women wear the hijab for religious reasons, including the desire to be judged for their morals, character, and ideals instead of their appearance.
Documentation Series No 16—Documentation Center of Cambodia Funded by Open Society Foundations (OSF) Printed in Cambodia © 2011 | www.dccam.org
O F C H A M M U S L I M W O M E N A F T H E R T H E K H M E R RO U G E | F a r i n a S o
Hijab: Headscarves are scarves covering most or all of a woman’s hair and
M em o r i es
in Southeast Asia, memorialization, information and technology, and truth
T H E H I J A B O F C A M B O D IA
Cham Muslim community’s memories of the Khmer Rouge era (1975-79). This
Fa r i n a S o
THE
Hijab OF CAMBODIA
Memories of Cham Muslim Wo m e n a f t e r t h e K h m e r R o u g e
Fa r i n a S o
THE
Hijab OF CAMBODIA
Memories of Cham Muslim Women after the Khmer Rouge
Searching for the Truth: Memory & Justice
Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) P.O. Box 1110 66 Sihanouk Blvd. Phnom Penh, CAMBODIA t: +855 (23) 211-875 f: +855 (23) 210-358 e:
[email protected] w: www.dccam.org www.cambodiatribunal.org THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA: Memories of Cham Muslim Women after the Khmer Rouge So Farina Q. Keo Dacil 1. Cambodia—Law—Human Rights 2. Cambodia—Politics and Government—1975-1979 3. Cambodia—History—1975-1979 Funding for this project was generously provided by the Open Society Foundations (OSI) with core support from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). The views expressed in this book are the points of view of the author only. Copyright © 2011 by the Documentation Center of Cambodia. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover and book concept: Youk Chhang Graphic design: Yvonne Wong Photo credits: Jim Mizerski The hijabs featured in this book were made by a Cham family living in Chrang Chamres village. Mariyum, the mother, began making hijabs in 2009 after the death of her husband, Ibrahim, several years ago. Ibrahim was a religious teacher. Mariyum has six children. One of them, Ainy, a 12th grader, oversees the designs. The fabrics and accessory materials are bought from local markets in Phnom Penh city. The family produces about five to six hijabs each day. They sell their finished products to women in the village and to whole sellers who sell the hijabs in Kampong Cham province and several other provinces. Mariyum’s hijab business, along with other local hijab businesses, face heavy competition however from Malaysian and Vietnamese imported hijabs which are much more popular. She earns about 90,000 riel ($22.50) in income and makes about 20,000 riel ($5) a day in profit, which is not enough to support her six children. With little profit and small demand for locally-made hijabs, Mariyum decided to end her business in mid 2010 and now makes Islamic dress for men. Her story is another example of the difficulties of economic mobility in Cambodia, where 87% of the population is poor and one third live below the national poverty line (2,473 riel or $0.61) according to a 2011 United Nations Development Program (UNPD) survey. (Photo caption by Dacil Keo) ISBN: 9-789995-060206 Printed in Cambodia
For My Father, So Chantra
FOReWoRD It is with a sense of reverence I write this foreword to “The Hijab of Cambodia.” Most of my professional life has been spent prosecuting mass atrocities. A significant proportion of the victims of these horrors, whether the crimes took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia or Darfur, have been those of Islamic faith. Women have been particular targets of violence and indignities. As it has been in Bosnia and Darfur so it was in Cambodia. The men of the Cham Muslims were targeted for elimination leaving the women to rebuild communities and raise and educate their children. Estimates of Cham deaths during the Khmer Rouge regime range from 100,000 to 500,000 and yet most Cham women adhere to the words of the Prophet and speak of forgiveness and reconciliation as the means to break the cycle of violence and revenge. This year the trial of the four most senior living members of the Khmer Rouge will begin at the ECCC. The fate of the Cham people under the Khmer Rouge has been characterized by the investigating judges as genocide. The Trial Chamber will ultimately determine whether this is the case. Thanks to the Documentation Center of Cambodia I have listened to the Cham, to mostly women in fact, speaking of their suffering under the Khmer Rouge. Of the tearing apart of their dignity and faith and of those loved and lost. This monograph recounts to us shocking and occasionally uplifting parts of the human condition seen through the eyes of women of family, faith, suffering, death, survival and forgiveness. Primo Levi recalling his experiences at the Auschwitz concentration camp wrote this poem as an introduction to his book, “If this is Man”:
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You who live safe In your warm houses, You who find warm food And friendly faces when you return home. Consider if this is a man Who knows no peace, Who fights for a crust of bread, Who dies by a yes or a no. Consider if this is a woman Without hair, without name, Without the strength to remember Empty are her eyes, cold her womb, Like a frog in winter. Never forget that this has happened. Remember these words. Engrave them in your hearts, When at home or in the street, When lying down, when getting up. Repeat them to your children. Or may your houses be destroyed, May illness strike you down, May your offspring turn their faces from you. Andrew Cayley International Co-Prosecutor Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trial (UNAKRT) Phnom Penh, May 2011.
Memories of Cham Muslim Women after the Khmer Rouge
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
5
Acknowledgment
8
Abbreviations and Other Terms
11
Introduction
13
Background of the Khmer Rouge (KR) Regime
14
An Overview of the Cham Muslim Community
15
Analytical Framework
16
Research Methodology
Chapter 3: Religion and Identity under Threat
54
The Destruction of the Cham Muslim Community
55
The Responses of Cham Muslim Women
59
Cham Ethnic and Religious Identity Persecution
61
Chapter 4: Imprisonment, Torture, and Sexual Violence
67
Background: Prisons, Rape, and Sexual Abuse
68
Part I: Imprisonment and Torture
73
19
Cham Muslim Female Prisoners’ Narratives
74
Part II: Sexual Violence
83
Chapter 1: The Evacuation as the Turning Point
21
Women’s Stories
84
Surviving Cambodia’s Civil War (1970-75)
23
Rape and Sexual Assault in Everyday Life
86
Mass Evacuation from Phnom Penh City
24
Evacuating Other Cities and Towns
27
At the Checkpoints and Along the Way to New Homes
30
New Homes and New Way of Life
Chapter 5: Conclusion
90
Cham Muslim Women and the Khmer Rouge Legacy
90
31
Defending Their Community
91
Perceptions on the KR Crimes
92
Chapter 2: Changing Family Forms and Women’s Roles
35
Outrage and Anger
92
Communal Living as Social Transformation
36
The Struggle to Locate Loved Ones
94
Hard Labor
37
Prevention
101
Communal Dining as a Tool to Replace Women’s Kitchen
39
Healing and Forgiveness
101
Livelihood Meetings and Criticism/Self-Criticism Sessions
40
The Importance of Oral History
103
Women’s Struggles to Safeguard Pregnancy and Childbirth
42
Instilling Islamic Culture at Birth
43
Motherhood: Caring for Newborns at Birth
43
Relationships between Wives and Husbands
47
Kup Aishah
49
Health and Hygiene
50
Appendix
105
Endnotes
108
Bibliography
116
Index
125
Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of many people and organizations. First, I would like to thank Director Youk Chhang of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) for his constant inspiration, for giving me the chance to lead the Cham Oral History Project, and for his critical comments on the manuscript. I owe a great deal to Dacil Keo, who tirelessly edited and critiqued drafts of my monograph, and assisted me throughout the entire process of this book project. I would like to express my appreciation to Dr. John Ciorciari for his helpful comments, to Sayana Ser, to all my colleagues at DC-Cam and the DC-Cam legal associates, and to the university students in Cambodia who assisted with the Cham Oral History Project and who support me. My deep gratitude goes to the Open Society Institute for funding the research and publication of this book. Their belief in the importance of this project and their commitment to it has been unyielding. My first year of graduate study was made financially possible by the generosity of DC-Cam and the Ohio University Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Along with the Margaret McNamara Memorial Fund (MMMF), they also supported my second year of study. This book grew out of my M.A. thesis at Ohio University (OU) and thus I am indebted to my committee members. My advisor, Dr. Haley Duschinski, guided me, and proofread and commented on numerous thesis drafts. Her knowledge, care, and patience gave me the strength to complete my thesis. Dr. Risa Whitson’s advice, comments, and encouragement contributed immensely to the completion of my thesis as well. Dr. Elizabeth Collins provided helpful comments and suggestions and proofread my final draft. In addition, her kind assistance with my application for the MMMF fellowship cannot be understated. My appreciation also goes to Dr. William Frederick for his illuminations on the oral history discipline, and to Keng We Koh, Jeffrey Shane, and Joani Kraynanski for providing helpful references for my thesis. In addition, Sok-Kheang Ly and Sister Mary Ann Bergfeld tirelessly read and commented on the final draft of my thesis. My special thanks go to a number of professors at the oral history summer institute at Columbia University. Professor Ronald Grele and Dr. Peter Maguire offered me significant support which allowed me to attend the oral history program. Both of them, along with professors Alessandro Portelli, Mary Marshall Clark, and Linda Shopes, all pioneers in oral history, taught me essential components of conducting and analyzing oral history research. I would also like to thank Professor Alistair Thomson for his invaluable comments on oral history techniques. My profound gratitude goes to my mother. Her love, motivation, and support made every success in my life possible. Her tragic story and her courage gave me the strength to explore the stories of other Cham women. Lastly, the Cham Muslim women whose stories are included here, along with other members of the Cham community, have made this book and the rebuilding of the Cham Muslim community possible. May this book help break the silence, recall the past, and find truth and justice for all.
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ABBREVIATIONS AND OTHER TERMS
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CPK
Communist Party of Kampuchea
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
DK
Democratic Kampuchea
ECCC
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
Haj
Pilgrimage to Mecca
Haji
Male pilgrim to Mecca
Hajaj
Female pilgrim to Mecca
Hakim
Islamic community leader
KGB
Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti or Committee for State Security
Kru Khmer
Khmer traditional healer
KUFNS
Kampuchean United Front of National Salvation
Mekang
Chief of group or squad
Mukana
Female prayer dress
Mufti
Highest Council for Islamic Religious Affairs in Cambodia
Muqqadam
Introductory Islamic religious book
Qur’an
Holy Book of Islam revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) in the seventh century A.D
Ramadan
Islamic holiday in which followers fast for one month
Sawm
Fasting
Shahadah
Profession of Islamic faith, the first pillar in Islam
Solat
Prayer
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INTRODUCTION
By the time I was seven years old, my parents, and particularly my mother, had told me many kinds of stories. They included personal stories, community legends, and family histories of life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (KR) regime.1 Each story was rich in deep emotions such as joy, sadness, and horror. One of the most memorable is the story of my mother’s experience under the KR regime. My mother was born to Malay parents in Kampong Luong commune, a community of predominantly Malay descendents.2 She was a young woman when Khmer Rouge soldiers forcibly evacuated her from the factory where she worked along the Kilometer 6 road in Phnom Penh. This was only a few days after the KR soldiers occupied the city. She and her family joined a mass exodus from the city. They headed to their hometown because they did not know where else to go. When reaching her birth place, her family, including my grandmother, my aunt and her children, decided to head for the northeast part of the country, and finally reached Kratie province. Upon arrival, my mother was assigned to live with a family of “base people”3 in Prek Proloung village, Kratie province. My mother had long hair, a fair complexion and an oval face. She appeared to belong to the bourgeoisie, and these characteristics put her in danger during the regime. She was detained and accused of being a young female commando4 and was nearly sent to a re-education camp. In fact, she was not that at all, she proclaimed. Fortunately, she was saved by several base people who vouched for her and guaranteed that she was not a commando. She was then released. A few months later, her hair was cut short and she was drafted into a female mobile brigade, a vanguard squad. Her mother was assigned to a widows’ mobile brigade, her older sister worked in the village where she lived with her three small children, and her younger sister was drafted into a female mobile bridge. The family was forcibly separated by the Angkar5 and everything changed completely for her. My mother had to submit herself to the Angkar. She had to work despite fatigue in order to survive. She built dams, dug canals, and produced rice. She could not cook her own favorite food, do her favorite job, or worship her God. Food was distributed at the communal dining hall. Her daily ration was porridge, and she sometimes received rice, if lucky. The rations were meager and she was expected to eat the same food as non-Muslims. Some of it violated Islamic dietary law (unhalal food), which bothered her. Although she could escape eating pork, she could not avoid pork flavor in soups and other food as there was no visible meat. To keep up her energy for work, she sometimes knitted secretly at night for some base people in exchange for extra food. Life was very difficult and oppressive. She was required to meet agricultural production goals set by the Angkar, and especially to fulfill her obligations as a vanguard unit member. In 1978, she received a marriage proposal from a young Sino-Khmer man who had finished his Baccalaureate from Lycee Preah Sisowath6 in Phnom Penh. My father was the only son in his family to leave their hometown, Chau Doc, Kampuchea Krom,7 to pursue education in the capital city of Cambodia. He was caught up in the evacuation of April, 1975. He left with the mass exodus to the countryside, and eventually settled in the same place as my mother. He safely hid his identity as a student from the watchful eyes of the Angkar. Their marriage, along with a dozen others, was arranged by the Angkar. All they had to do was to declare “I will sacrifice for the revolutionary cause.” My mother has never forgotten this event. She remembers that her marriage was organized and arranged without the presence and blessings of her guardian and relatives because the Angkar took the role of parents. Although the Angkar had no blood connection to
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my mother, they claimed full authority over her, allowing no room for her mother to bless her, or for her to pay respects to her mother, as had been customary in our culture for hundreds of years. Besides her own experience, my mother also told me of her sister and brother, both of whom lost their lives during the regime. My aunt was reportedly killed because of her husband’s background as a Lon Nol solider. My uncle died of gunshot wounds inflicted when he was fulfilling his mission as a Lon Nol medic during the fighting in the 1970s.
My mother wanted me to know that meager rations and unhalal food (i.e., pork soup), the inability to practice Islamic rituals, hard labor, and violence were the main features of her life for many years. Her losses were immense. She lost her loved ones, her house, and her property. She lived separately from her mother and did not enjoy her youth as she had anticipated. When asked how she managed to survive, she gave a short answer that “God” and her skills had saved her. My mother’s experience and the impact of the KR regime on Cambodia inspired me to explore other women’s stories. My mother and the women in the study belong to the generation of survivors, a generation that is aging and quickly becoming a minority in Cambodian society. In this book, I seek to understand how Cham Muslim women made sense of their experiences through the way they remember and tell their stories in the present day. This study has affected the women who were interviewed, but it has also had an impact on me as a researcher. As part of the generation in Cambodia that grew up after the Khmer Rouge regime, I am limited in my emotional capacity to truly understand the hardships that survivors of the regime faced. During the course of interviewing these brave women, reviewing the tape recordings and transcripts, and writing this monograph, I was keenly aware of my struggle to place myself in their shoes. While I feel tremendous empathy for them and strive to understand their point of view, I recognize that I cannot feel what they felt. Thus my empathy is constrained by the enormity of the brutal and inhuman experiences my interviewees went through. However, I have emerged as a stronger person because I have witnessed their courage and honesty. I am motivated to prevent such an atrocity from ever occurring again, and to investigate other issues related to Cham Muslim Women and women in general in future research. Background to the Khmer Rouge (KR) Regime Democratic Kampuchea, better known as the Khmer Rouge regime, came to power on April 17, 1975 after the Lon Nol regime was toppled.8 A group of communist leaders, armed with radical Maoist and Marxist-Leninist ideologies, aimed to transform Cambodia into a utopian agrarian society. In order to achieve their goals, the KR abolished markets, money, commercial transactions and all forms of religious practices; they closed banks, academic institutions, monasteries, churches, and religious institutions.9 Many mosques and monasteries were desecrated or turned into pigsties, storage, stables, and torture chambers. Former soldiers, officials, political opponents, educators, and medical doctors were targeted. Monks were defrocked and sent to the countryside to undertake agricultural work like lay people. Some were killed, while others were sent to the battlefields. Likewise, religious books, like the Buddha Dharma doctrine and the Qur’an, were collected to be burned or used as toilet paper. The KR intended to assimilate all ethnic minorities into one ethnicity, the Khmer. The KR instituted radical policies that began with the evacuation of everyone from the capital city of Phnom Penh and other towns. They shifted entire populations to the countryside to embark upon a mass agricultural transformation which relied largely on manpower. The
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Khmer Rouge regime divided society into “pure” base people consisting of rural people, and “corrupt” new people made up of urban dwellers. David Chandler, an American historian specializing in Cambodian history, argues that the base people were treated less harshly than others because they joined the revolution earlier10 and the regime entrusted them with decision-making power over the livelihood of local cooperatives. DK Prime Minister Pol Pot declared: “As for the figures set out in the report, let people in the base areas make the appropriate decisions.”11 The KR banned all languages except the Khmer language. All forms of art from former regimes were banned--including music, song, performance, and drama--and artists were targeted. The KR replaced all forms of worship with the Angkar and told people that everything achieved was due to the Angkar’s blessings.12 Under the Khmer Rouge, Cambodians lived with unimaginable hardship. All Cambodians had to dress in black peasant clothing, were stripped of basic freedoms, and were prohibited from protesting. All Cambodian people–Khmer, Cham, Chinese, Vietnamese, and other indigenous groups–suffered immensely under the KR regime. In a span of less than four years, almost two million people, approximately a quarter of the population, lost their lives as a result of exhaustion, starvation, disease, and execution. The KR regime was overthrown by Vietnamese troops and the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation forces on January 7, 1979.13 Immediately after the fall of the regime, many evacuees returned to their hometowns or settled in a new place. People had to rebuild their lives anew with their bare hands because all major economic, cultural, and educational institutions were devastated during the KR regime. According to scholars, the estimates of Cham Muslim deaths during the KR era range between 100,000 and 500,000.14 The number varies because scholars use various pre-KR era figures to estimate the initial population.15 During the KR regime, Cham people were not allowed to pray or abstain from pork in accordance with Islamic law. Cham Muslim men were targeted and killed because they rebelled against the KR openly and because of their background in the public sphere. This left all the burdens to their wives or female family members. Approximately 65% of survivors were women, making their participation in the rebuilding of their community critical.16 Although women had very low levels of education and no experience in public leadership, they had to support and educate their children after their husbands died. An Overview of the Cham Muslim Community Prior to the KR Regime Before 1975, the Cham Muslim community comprised 700,000 people out of seven million in Cambodia, or about 10 percent of the population.17 Cham Muslims settled in various parts of Cambodia, including Kampong Cham, Kampong Chhnang, Kampot, Pursat, Battambang, Kandal, Phnom Penh, Kampong Thom, and Kratie. The majority of Cham Muslims lived in Kampong Cham province.18 Many Cham Muslims lived collectively. Some lived near Khmer villages; others lived in villages with Khmer people and other ethnic minorities, including the Vietnamese and Chinese. Most Cham Muslims practiced Sunni Islam, which means they were orthodox Muslims and followers of the Shafi’i school.19 There were about 113 mosques across the country, each led by its own Cham Muslim dignitaries, including the hakim, the Islamic religious judge or community leader in charge of a mosque and community affairs such as marriage and settling disputes; the deputy hakim; the imam, the leader of the prayers;20 the ustaz or tuan,21 Islamic religious teachers; and the bilal, who called the faithful to daily prayers.22 The community THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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in the Lon Nol area was officially led by the Supreme Chief of the Islamic Religion of the Sangkum Reastr Niyum and the Khmer Republic, Oknha Haji Res Los, also known as Reachea Thibdei or grand mufti to Cham Muslims. He was seconded by two adjutants, Haji Suleiman Shukri, the 1st Adjutant, and Haji Math Sales Slaiman, the 2nd Adjutant. The mufti was counseled by General Haji Les Kosem and Haji Yasya Asmath.23 However, in other liberated zones, especially Kampong Cham province, Sos Man, the Front’s leader for Islam in Cambodia, appointed Haji Muhammad Kachi as the top Islamic leader of Cham Muslims in the early 1970s.24 In traditional Cambodia, most Cham Muslims lived in closed micro-societies, forming separate villages and maintaining economic relations with the Buddhist majority. They had their own mosques and Qur’anic schools where religious instruction was given in Arabic and in Malay, a language akin to Cham. Cham families spoke Cham to their children at home. Most Cham Muslims strictly observed the five pillars of Islam: 1) Shahadah, the declaration of faith, stating there is no god but God, and that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is the messenger of God; 2) solat, the five daily prayers; 3) zakat, the personal taxes paid during Ramadan and on wealth, and shadaqah, charity; 4) sawm, Ramadan fasting; and 5) haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. The latter was mostly observed by those who were financially and physically able to do so.25 Besides practicing the five pillars of Islam, Cham Muslims observed other important Islamic religious festivities and other aspects of Cham culture, including Eid-ul Odha (Islamic New Year), Mawlid (Muhammad’s birthday), and ziarah (visitation to the grave of religious figures and their loved ones). The funeral ceremony is important for Cham Muslims. In Islam, it is imperative that the ceremony, along with ritual prayers for dead bodies, be prepared in a religiously appropriate manner so that the dead can rest in peace.26 In the 1970s, Cham Muslims rose to political prominence and held positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government offices. Les Kosem was given command of a separate Cham army battalion.27 Five Cham Muslims worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; one of them, Peang Abdul Gaffar, was one of the youngest diplomats assigned to the Khmer Embassy in Washington, D.C. and the Cambodian delegation to the United Nations.28 However, there were no Cham Muslim women reported to hold such high positions. Ordinary Cham Muslim people were fishermen, butchers, gardeners, farmers, foresters, rubber plantation workers, blacksmiths, traditional herbal sellers/healers, and weavers. Most Chams practiced small-scale family fishing on the rivers, especially the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers. One of the women interviewed in this study, Yeb Maisom, a Chrang Chamres resident from Kampong Cham province, started fishing the Mekong River and lakes with her parents when she was very young. She said that after her mother passed away, she managed the family with her father. After she married, she continued fishing alongside her husband, and sometimes helped her father weave baskets to trade. Family bonds were built on trust and love. Families embraced values long held in the Islamic faith, in particular those associated with economic, religious, cultural, and moral practices. These values were transmitted from one generation to the next. In certain cases however, Islamic customs were slightly altered. Inheritance practice provides a case in point. According to Shariah law, men are given two thirds of the inherited wealth since they are responsible for household expenses and other family duties.29 In practice, however, Cham Muslim daughters often enjoy an equal share or an even bigger share than their male counterparts, depending on practical circumstances and mutual understandings. This sharing happens either after their marriage or their parents’ death.30 Such flexible practices demonstrate the role of women in the family in Cham Muslim society.31
perspective is grounded in the belief that Muslim women underwent different experiences from men because of their gender. Further, Cham women’s minority ethnicity and Islamic faith also shaped their experiences. The whole of their experiences are examined through the structure of (1) the nature of women’s narrative and interpretation, and (2) the thematic events in women’s lives during the regime. While the former examines the way women narrate their stories and remember the past, the latter focuses on the KR treatment of women and women’s responses to these policies. These elements are interwoven in each thematic discussion. The monograph examines each of the four underlying themes in separate chapters – (1) evacuation, (2) family and motherhood, (3) religion and identity, and (4) imprisonment and sexual violence. The KR’s attempt to transform the country into an agrarian society brought dramatic and unprecedented changes to women’s lives. Their memories of these changes are contested, but also consistent over time. There are many parallels from one interview to another. Cham women complied with the KR in order to survive, but some also resisted in order to maintain their ethnic and religious identity. The women’s memories of their personal experiences of separation, loss, and pain shed light on the systematic KR policies against Cham Muslims and other people. Gender affects memory because men and women remember and experience events dissimilarly due to differences in biology, conditioning, and societal expectations. These differences also affect what they choose to narrate. Women’s lives tend to focus on their immediate surroundings, such as the household, family history, and personal experiences. Men tend to focus more on their role in larger events, such as war and politics. Further, Selma Leydesdorff et al. have observed that, depending on various disciplines including linguistics, psychology, and oral history, women tend to focus more on feelings and can recall “fuller and richer accounts related to feeling expression.”32 Men tend to dominate the public sphere and public memory, so the way they recall things are associated with these issues. However, both men and women share something in common: general knowledge of the concepts and the facts that make up larger issues. For instance, in this study, women, like men, recalled the evacuation, starvation, and forced labor they experienced under the KR. Interestingly, the way that they recall the important aspects of these events is not the same, and that in part lies in the saliency and importance of the event. Thus, while I acknowledge that memory is affected by gender, I also admit that people remember and recall what is most salient to them.33 In addition, memory is contested because numerous recollections surround a certain event or time period. Further, evoking these competing memories can be painful and overwhelming, just as the experiences themselves were painful and traumatic. The events are sometimes equal in importance and interconnected, making it hard to put the memories into words. When recalling the memory of a brutal cadre, the memory of a helpful cadre also emerges. Once the memory of losing a husband is recalled, the memory of losing a child also occurs. The memory of a grateful daughter toward her mother might compete with the memory of struggling to defend other children. Although most KR cadre treated women badly, some KR helped save women’s lives. As described in chapters two and four, Lek Riya was sexually abused by a KR cadre and then accused of committing a moral offence. But other KR cadre and base people defended her, saving her life. Chapter Two includes the story of Lors Rohimah, whose husband disappeared before her child died. As she was talking about her husband, she jumped ahead to describe her child’s death. Then she suddenly reverted to her husband’s story. In her mind, these two episodes compete with each other because of the strong emotions and feelings they evoke. Similarly, when Halimah described how the KR punished her daughter, she discussed how the KR threatened her when she prayed. Ros Aishah also jumped between salient events during her narration; from her own torture in prison to her father’s death in prison. From reading this book, the conflict among these memories may not be obvious, as I have organized them chronologically and by theme. However, during the interviews, many of these women talked about two important events at the same time.
Analytical Framework This monograph examines the experiences and narratives of Cham Muslim women under the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979). This
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Memory is also both inconsistent and consistent. In most cases, it is inconsistent because remembering events involving figures, numbers, specific dates, and order of events is a difficult thing. This is due in part to fragmented memory. People generally cannot THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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remember everything about an event, especially small details, after time has passed. I am struck, however, by the consistency in memory of the women interviewed. Memory which is salient and important to them is consistent over time. These kinds of memories are tied to strong feelings and extremely personal experiences. As Paul Thompson’s research findings suggest, feelings are reliably consistent within an individual’s testimony. For example, his narrator’s memories of her father in The Edwardians were consistent over three different interviews, even if she did not remember the details of where her father came from.34 In both interviews, Rohimah recalled the stories of her husband and her child clearly and consistently, including the settings where her feelings occurred and even her facial expressions at the time. The way she told her stories also revealed the emotional load she carried. During the interview, Rohimah would sigh deeply, raise her voice, and almost cried when talking about how her husband disappeared and how her child died. For Halimah, the three most outstanding episodes under the KR regime are: (1) her grateful daughter and her starving daughter, (2) her struggle to bring up her newborn, and (3) her dream of martyrdom. As she narrates these stories, her body language and voice reflect her strong emotions and the difficulties in overcoming these challenges. Women both complied with the KR and resisted KR policy, as described in chapters two and three. Instead of full compliance, however, women responded creatively to the KR policies they found impossible to follow. They accepted some policies and subtlety, yet effectively, resisted others. This comparatively quiet form of resistance is similar to that which James Scott calls “weapons of the weak,”35 and Risa Whitson calls “hidden struggles.”36 For the Cham women interviewed, however, risk was a factor in how and whether they resisted. When the risk involved was high, they usually complied, but if the risk was low in comparison to the perceived benefit, they secretly resisted. Although the women were not as physically strong as men, they possessed emotional and verbal strengths (the weapons of women), for dealing with the KR. Given that memories are contested, does recalling past experiences hurt or help women? There is still a debate about whether reliving trauma hurts or helps, and over how it contributes to collective remembrance. My study on Cham women’s experiences found that it hurts them temporarily, but may have long-term benefits. Recalling the story of an event requires that the person go back to the event in their memory. They more or less need to re-experience it, and consequently this will hurt them on some level. They will find it hard to describe the pain and loss because many strong emotions are simply indescribable. However, recalling a traumatic experience also brings them relief, and possibly helps them to overcome their status as victims. Further, at the societal level, their narratives contribute to remembrance and education. After each interview, I asked the women whether they felt relief, and all of them responded that they did. A few months later I phoned some of them and asked about their well-being again, and about how they felt after being interviewed. Over the phone, they again responded that they felt better after having shared their stories with me. Reconstructing the past through narration can also be a way of restoring ethnic and religious identity. During the KR regime, those identities were eliminated. Cham women were not allowed to speak the Cham language or practice Islam; they had to follow communist policies. During interviews, they talked about how the Cham community was revived after the KR. After the regime, they were free to pray, fast, build mosques, speak Cham and Arabic, rebuild religious institutions, wear traditional clothing, and cook traditional food. Thus, interestingly, while reconstructing the events in their lives during the regime and the changes after the regime, they reaffirmed the strengths and attributes of their identity. Further, reconstruction of the past through oral history also contributes to remembrance and collective memory. Each survivor has a story to tell, so the greater the number of people who tell their stories, the richer the remembrance and collective memory. Each survivor’s truth contributes to the larger truth of an event or time period. Therefore, individual memories enrich the collective memory of the nation
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as a whole. Research Methodology This monograph grew out of a larger five-year project entitled “The Cham Muslim Oral History Project,”37 carried out by the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) to document the experiences of the Cham Muslim community during the Khmer Rouge regime. DC-Cam, a research institute and large repository of KR documents,38 works to promote memory and justice for Cambodian people. The project gives Cham Muslims the chance to speak about their experiences in order to preserve their memories, to search for truth and justice for the community, and to transform their suffering into educational purposes. From 2004 through 2009, the DC-Cam’s oral history project team, under my supervision, conducted 400 interviews with Cham Muslim community members, including hakim (Islamic judges) and religious teachers, and ordinary Cham people, such as women and youth. I interviewed 60 female Cham Muslim survivors and 60 male community leaders. Prior to fieldwork, the team, including the DC-Cam staff and university student volunteers, received oral history methodology training on issues such as how to approach interviewees, how to conduct interviews, how to manage the material after the interview, and how to transcribe the audio recordings. In my interviews, I used both semi-structured and unstructured techniques to allow flexibility and depth. The former allowed me to focus on particular subjects, but left room for my participants to provide particular meanings based on their own perceptions and experiences.39 The latter made possible open-ended questions and empowered women to speak in their own voices.40 Although I came to the interviews with prepared topics to cover, I allowed the interviewees to discuss other topics first, or topics that I had not planned to cover, so that they would feel comfortable talking with me. At the beginning of the interview, some women talked about their experiences under the Khmer Rouge regime, others began with their childhood years and continued in chronological order up to present day, and others began by discussing their missing family members. I organized the 60 interviews according to demographic information, geographical locations, and occupations, and from this, selected 12 in-depth interviews to focus on for this monograph. My selection represents a diversity of women in terms of geographical locations and current occupations; the birth dates of the women range from 1930 to 1970 (ages 40 to 80). I conducted 12 follow-up interviews in the summer of 2009. These women were evacuated in April, 1975, to varying provinces and have now settled in different locations, representing 10 cities and provinces of Cambodia. One of the 12 now lives in California, in the United States. Their occupations include grocery, cloth or traditional herb sellers, assembly worker, NGO officer, housewife, and religious teacher. The initial emerging themes were: starvation, separation, communal eating, hard labor, exhaustion, execution, pregnancy, childbirth, childrearing, terror, sexual violence, changes in their life style, and religion. Many of the women provided details of these themes in the first interviews, with additional information and clarification gathered from follow-up interviews. I categorized these emerging themes under the following main themes: evacuation, family and motherhood, religion and identity, and sexual violence and imprisonment. During my research, I encountered several main challenges. Some women were reluctant to speak out at the beginning because they were overwhelmed by emotional pain. However, once they understood the importance of the research and trusted me, they felt more comfortable opening up about their lives. I have noticed that trust is crucial in compiling oral history. Prior to each interview, I had to build rapport with my female participants by explaining my position and answering all of their questions about my research project to make them feel comfortable and to remind them that their stories are important parts of history.
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Also, selecting interviewees to analyze for this monograph posed a challenge. Each interview included valuable and insightful information about the life of a Cham Muslim woman. Taking a sub-set of these interviews inevitably led to the exclusion of some interviews and the information they contained. It was impossible to include everything due to time and analytical constraints, but I feel that my choices successfully achieve the goals of this study. In addition to building rapport, I realized being an empathic listener is important in order to fully understand women’s stories and their meanings. Furthermore, being an empathetic listener enables me to share their suffering, making the female narrators feel a sense of relief.41 I am extremely grateful to the interviewees who spoke about their experiences despite the tremendous pain it might have caused them. Some spoke with passion while sobbing, while others tried to hold back their tears. It was a cathartic experience for them nonetheless. I hope that through the process of sharing their stories and my empathic listening skills they will achieve some modicum of healing. I feel honored to be part of their reflection, and to have the opportunity to help them transmit their memories. Chapter Overview This book is divided into five thematic chapters that connect the critical moments and experiences of Cham women’s lives during the KR regime. Chapter one discusses the turning point when the KR ordered forced evacuations from Phnom Penh and other cities to the countryside. The arduous journey and the process of settling into a different environment turned the lives of Cham women upside down. The process of packing, the incessant confusion, the need to hide identities, the feelings of uncertainty and constant fear, and other struggles are discussed. Chapter two looks at the changing forms of family and motherhood as a result of KR rhetoric and treatment. Collectivization was the foundation of KR policy and was implemented at the worksite, in the home, and during meals. In addition, personal forms of communication and relationships between men and women were greatly restricted. The changes in gender relationships, the rupture of the traditional Cham family structure, the imposition of communal living conditions (including unhalal food), the scarcity of food, the exhaustive workload, and women’s efforts to preserve the Cham family and motherhood, are discussed. Chapter three investigates KR handling of Islamic practices and Cham ethnic identity, the effect of this treatment on women, and the women’s responses. Religion was banned and thus its manifestations suppressed and punished. This chapter details how despite immense suffering and hardship, Cham Muslim women became caretakers of their religion and culture. Cham women responded not only to ensure their survival, but also to protect Islamic beliefs and practices and Cham values. Chapter four explores women’s experiences of imprisonment and sexual violence. KR moral offense laws were implemented to restrict physical relationships between men and women and to protect women. In practice, however, women were punished more often than men under these laws because their statements were not valued, in particular in cases of sexual abuse where the abuser was a KR cadre. The aftermath of imprisonment, torture, and sexual violence left these women with emotional and physical scars that make it incredibly difficult for them to move forward. The conclusion summarizes the main findings and elaborates upon the importance of oral history, memory, and the narratives and perceptions of Cham Muslim women of KR crimes. Despite some limitations, oral history is extremely effective in revealing the experiences of minority women who suffered greatly. Their tragic stories, told through tears and heartache, can nevertheless offer hope for the future.
Chapter 1: The Evacuation as The turning point The forced evacuation of Cambodian’s cities and towns in April, 1975, was a turning point for every Cambodian, including Cham Muslim women. The evacuation drove millions of people to the countryside to undertake manual and agricultural work which they had never done before. The country was already in turmoil—its socio-economic fabric, the bonds of family and community, and the ordinary lives of people had deteriorated from the political instability and fighting between Khmer Rouge troops and Lon Nol soldiers that began in 1970. During the civil war (1970-1975), some people fled villages for cities and towns, the prices of goods rose, and political unrest developed. Still, most people maintained some semblance of normalcy in their daily lives. However, with the arrival of the KR regime in 1975, even that became impossible. The first drastic change was the massive, forced emptying of cities and towns. Panicked by the evacuations, Cham Muslim women collected their children, gathered other family members like husbands or parents, and packed whatever belongings they felt necessary and portable. They took clothes, rice, cooking pots, and religious sacred texts such as the Qur’an, Muqqadam (elementary Islamic book), and kitab (Islamic religious books) for worship. They believed that these sacred books would take care of them along the way. They traveled with other Cambodians to destinations set by the KR, although in some cases, individuals were able to choose their own destinations. Some people decided to go to their parents’ hometowns or to those of relatives; some to places where they would be unknown; and others to places they perceived having rich and fertile land which would support them. During the evacuation, many people died of exhaustion and disease, or were executed. Many others died after they reached their new village. Pregnant women faced special hardships. Like other pregnant women, one Cham Muslim woman interviewee delivered a child on the roadside. A few other women interviewed had just given birth several days before the evacuation and had to leave despite physical weakness. Another consequence of the evacuation was the separation of people from their ancestral lands, homes, and property. This chapter examines the evacuation as well as the new locations where women settled. It describes the violence that took place during the civil war and examines the mass evacuation from the capital city, other cities, and smaller towns to the countryside. Violence was not uncommon during the evacuation; it occurred during the initial stage when KR soldiers beat or killed those who disobeyed evacuation orders, at the checkpoints, and as they moved into new settlements. Although the reasons for evacuation have been debated among scholars,42 is it clear that this displacement had a severe effect on people, especially the elderly, young children, those physically ill or weak, and pregnant women. The evacuation and its consequences are examined through the lens of about a dozen Cham Muslim women. Not all of them were originally from the capital city, Phnom Penh. A few of them had come to live in the city just before and during the civil war, and were part of the mass evacuation. Those that had remained in their hometowns were also evacuated to rural areas in April, 1975. Although these women have different backgrounds, they shared similar experiences and emotions during the evacuation. One common image that they
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witnessed was of swollen corpses showing evidence of horrific violence inflicted on people in various forms. Along the way, they all feared the armed KR soldiers and described being in a state of panic and confusion. Within with the mass evacuation, the KR targeted former soldiers, former government officials, and educated persons. Young KR combatants scanned for those who looked like capitalists, professors, and teachers as they made their way to the countryside. Anyone the KR soldiers identified for these categories was arrested and killed. The evacuation greatly benefited the KR goal of turning the country into an agrarian society by facilitating the identification and disposal of their opponents and enemies. While the vast majority of Cham Muslim women were not targets of the killing during the evacuation because none were soldiers or held notable positions in the former government, in some cases their family members and relatives were. Those women endured the pain of losing their loved ones, compounded by the pain of not being able to perform a proper funeral. According to the interviews, some women were executed along with their husbands or family members who were deemed enemies of the revolution, and others hid their identity to avoid arrest. Throughout the evacuation journey, women were traumatized. Surviving Cambodia’s Civil War (1970-1975) On March 18, 1970, Marshall Lon Nol and Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, Prince Sihanouk’s cousin, staged a coup against Sihanouk while he was in China. Sihanouk called on Cambodians to gather in the forests and fight the Lon Nol regime, so Sihanouk could return to lead Cambodia. The KR forces who had already recruited people to join their revolution benefited from this call. When fighting escalated between KR forces and Lon Nol forces in 1972, some Cham Muslim women left home for Phnom Penh to find employment, education, and a safe place to live because their houses had been burnt and villages destroyed. This displacement occurred in numerous parts of the country. Thus, the women interviewed experienced separation and loss even before the Khmer Rouge officially took over the country in April, 1975. After giving birth to her son, Lek Riya divorced her husband because of his irresponsibility and disregard for her and their baby. She then found a factory job so she could buy powdered milk and food for her baby. Riya traveled back and forth every weekend from the ancestral home she shared with her mother in Kandal province to the factory in Kilometer 6 village, Phnom Penh. Her life improved greatly after she got paid. Similarly, Toek Sary’s life also improved after she moved to the city. Originally from Kampong Tralach village, Kampong Chhang province, Sary’s brother-in-law asked her to move to Pochentong quarters, in northern Phnom Penh, where her husband found work constructing brick houses. He earned about 25 riel/day.43 Later, her husband took a second job as a Khmer traditional healer (kru Khmer). With her husband’s income, their living conditions improved. While Riya and Sary left home in search of better work opportunities, Seth Maly left her home village for educational opportunities. In 1971, she left her home village, Svay Khleang, with her younger brother, to continue her education in Phnom Penh. She lived with her uncle near Psar O-Russey (O-Russey Market) for about a year, when she married a former Lon Nol soldier. Her parents could not attend her wedding because of safety concerns and delegated responsibility to her aunt and uncle to preside over the wedding ceremony. Soon after her marriage, Maly moved into the barracks of Prey Nup fort, Kampong Som province, with her husband. She gave birth to two children. Sos Zarah, on the other hand, escaped her hometown of Kampong Chhnang province for Phnom Penh to catch a plane. She previously lived in Kampong Chhang, close to Lon Nol’s fort, one of the targets of KR bombardment.44 Her house was burnt down and the fighting there left many casualties and partially destroyed the road to northwest zone. She and her husband took a taxi from her hometown to
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Phnom Penh and from there flew to Banteay Meanchey province, the place to which her relatives had fled earlier. In the KR liberated zones, women could not avoid being recruited into the KR revolution. They were either forced or motivated to join the revolution. Mousa Sokha was the only daughter of a Cham Muslim mother and Sino-Khmer father. Under the guidance and instruction of Sos Man,45 a Cham communist from Kampong Cham province, she became a Khmer Rouge cadre when she was 15 years old in 1973. She was trained in Khmer Rouge politics, revolution, and arts. Her duties and responsibilities included spreading Khmer Rouge propaganda, mobilizing people in Po-In and other villages to join the revolution, and learning KR revolutionary songs. She also led a women’s mobile brigade that was set up to implement Khmer Rouge plans for producing rice and raising political consciousness. She recalled: At that time I was still young and extremely influenced by the Khmer Rouge movement. Rakiyah, granddaughter of Sos Man, and I got along well. We were like sisters. We often went to work together. I was usually asked to speak to a large crowd of people about the revolution and to convince people who were not completely devoted to the revolution to join the revolution. We traveled from one village to another to do the same routine jobs. I remember that I could sing lots of KR songs because I was one of the leading artists in my band. My aunt was chief of the art band in my village and perhaps in the entire province. I worked very hard, but enjoyed it at that time.46 Sokha was one of the many other Cham Muslim women in Kampong Cham province who was indoctrinated in KR ideology and became a KR cadre. She said that, from the beginning, the revolution appealed to her because the KR claimed that they were nationalists. Later on, her mother, wanting to end Mousa’s involvement with the revolution, arranged for her to marry in 1975. Her future husband was a Cham Muslim who her mother initially believed was not a Khmer Rouge; however, she was wrong. Mousa recollected: After I served the revolution for about two years, my mother called me to Chimoan village (my husband’s hometown) and arranged marriage for me with a Cham Muslim man who led a male mobile unit. I did not want to get married at that time because I wanted to continue the revolution. But I could not oppose my mother. As the stories show, Cham women, like many other Cambodians, sought refuge or better opportunities in Phnom Penh or became swept up by the KR revolution during the civil war. Others decided to join the revolution, either willingly or by force. It was also impossible for many ordinary Cambodians to remain in their home villages because of KR bombing, ground fighting between Lon Nol troops and KR soldiers, and the titanic American bombardment of the Cambodian countryside that resulted in at least one hundred thousand deaths and the destruction of countless villages. When the civil war ended, people believed that stability and peace would gradually return to Cambodia. However, they were grossly mistaken.
Mass Evacuation from Phnom Penh City “Beloved brothers, sisters, workers, youths, students, teachers and functionaries! Now is the time! Here are our Cambodian People’s National Liberation Armed Forces, brothers! Rebel! It is time for you to rise up and liberate Phnom Penh.” —Announcement on the clandestine CPK radio on 16 April 1975.47 When KR soldiers entered Phnom Penh, people in the city cheered them nervously and naively. But the horror would begin immediately.
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The KR took over the city and began evacuating people, sometimes at gunpoint. People in the capital city were tremendously confused at this time, fearful of KR soldiers, and uncertain of their own future. Diplomats and foreign embassy staff were ordered to the French Embassy, where all foreigners were gathered for expulsion.48 Patients in hospitals were forced to leave; all remaining businesses and government offices shut down. Journalists scrambled to capture images of the chaos. David Chandler described the situation: “Everybody, in all colors – except the young KR soldiers – was ordered to leave the city within twenty-four hours. Generally, there was no excuse for patients, pregnant women, the disabled and the old to stay longer.”49 Within one week, all of Cambodia’s cities were deserted. The Khmer Rouge viewed most people who lived in Phnom Penh as feudalists and capitalists. These people were deemed enemies of the DK regime together with the imperialists. A Khmer Rouge cadre wrote in his notebook: We drove all the foreign imperialists from Kampuchea [Cambodia]. On 17 April we evacuated the feudalists and capitalists out of the cities to become farmers. By this, manual work would transform city dwellers into laborers on agricultural communes. The city people shirked productive work. Their real problem was that they were not trusted to remain in their homes.50 Scholars agree that there is no clear explanation for why people were evacuated from the city, but several reasons can be ascertained through KR leaders’ announcements and documents, and survivors’ stories. DK Minister of Defense Son Sen stated that the objective was two-fold: first to divide and destroy the strength of the enemies, and second to protect the Party. Nuon Chea, former DK Chairman of the People’s Assembly, during a conversation with a delegation from Denmark, said: “Right after liberation, we evacuated all the people from the cities. Then agents of the CIA, KGB, and the Yuon [Vietnamese] had to go along to the countryside and were unable to carry out their preconceived plans.”51 However, Ieng Sary, DK Vice Premier in charge of Foreign Affairs, told reporters at the Conference of NonAligned States held in Lima, Peru in 1975 that the reasons for the evacuation were economic and humanitarian. He repeated a claim that people (city dwellers) had to be evacuated to the countryside because there was no food in Phnom Penh and his new government had no means of transporting food to the city.52 What is clear however is that the KR told citizens that they had to evacuate immediately to avoid American bombing. Further, according to Cham Muslims, those evacuated from other cities and towns outside of Phnom Penh recalled that the KR planned to send Cham Muslims to Malaysia, India and Arab foreign countries in exchange for oil.53 Supposedly, this was a strategy to get Cham Muslims to evacuate without resistance. Some Cham, however, believed the KR and began to envision traveling to Islamic holy sites in the Middle East. In reality, Cham were sent to the countryside just like other Cambodians. A few days before April 17, 1975, Riya moved to the southwest of Phnom Penh with her new husband, a taxi driver who had a house in Kambol village near Pochentong, to take care of her son. Her second husband, Oeun, was a widower and had a six-year old daughter. Her son, who lived with her in the factory’s housing unit under the care of Riya’s mother, had contracted the measles. When she arrived at the textile factory, the situation in Phnom Penh was very tense. She recalled, “I heard the announcement that bombs would be dropped soon. So the roads would be blocked immediately. My husband suddenly drove back to Kambol village alone to pack clothes, rice and some household items for me, my son, and his daughter. Unfortunately, the road to Kambol was blocked and he could not come.” This frightened Riya and made her worry about her husband’s safety. She and her family hid themselves in a loom inside the factory. Riya continued, “I almost could not bear the sound of gun fire nearby the factory. I called my mom and my sisters, who were also hiding there, to come out, but I did not hear a response from them.” Then at around 1 a.m., young armed men in black uniforms marched into THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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the factory and aggressively ordered her to leave immediately. In the interview, she recalled, “They pointed a gun at me and said, ‘Leave now. If not, the U.S. will bomb you.’ I rushed to pack pots and rice that I had bought the day before. If I didn’t have [my relative] Ismael’s help with [carrying] the rice, I would not have it to cook for my son because I definitely could not carry the rice and my two babies while I was pregnant.”54 Riya did not wait for her husband to come back as the KR repeatedly ordered her to leave. Thus she and her family set out with other people, following the directions the KR soldiers gave. During the interview, she raised her voice when she said, “The KR soldiers commanded us to go forward; we could not go back. So we were heading on National Route 5 to Prek Pnoeu commune on foot.” The Khmer Rouge had set up a check point in Prek Pnoeu commune, located north of Phnom Penh in Kandal province. Traveling along the road, she became traumatized by what she saw. “I saw many corpses on the way to Prek Pnoeu and in every corner of an abandoned house while I was finding drinking water for my children.” When asked if the dead bodies frightened her, Riya replied yes, but she tried to deal with the horrific images. Back in Phnom Penh, at Pochentong, Sary, her husband, and her children were shot at and transported to a clinic behind Calmet Hospital for surgery. Sary was unconscious. After regaining consciousness, she said, “I was extremely thirsty, but the doctor did not give me any water to drink because I was injured by gunfire.” At this point in the interview, she remembered her ducks: “The bombs also caused my domesticated ducks to die. I pitied them.” She was then abruptly ordered to leave the hospital and traveled with other people to her hometown. During the interview, she emphasized that “if you did not leave, the KR shot you. There were many shot already.” Like Riya and her family, her group also headed north towards Prek Pnoeu commune. A patient at another hospital, Kalichip, had given birth to a baby girl a few days before the KR marched into Phnom Penh. The KR soldiers forced her to leave her bed and walk out of the city. During the interview, she recalled, “I could not walk fast as I was still in pain after giving birth. I was weak. My husband bought antibiotics and I injected myself along the way.”55 Kalichip remembered that the KR instructed people to walk to the Prek Pnoeu checkpoint or their home village; she decided to go to the latter. She walked south to Cham Krom village, Kandal province, with her husband and the baby. She stayed there for a few months before being sent to another place. Back in Kampong Som province, amid heavy fighting in Preah Sihanouk, Maly flew with her husband, a Lon Nol army battalion chief, and two children from Preah Sihanouk to Phnom Penh several days before the evacuation. She and her family wandered the city and arrived at Olympic Stadium just before the evacuation. On the day of the evacuation, the KR instructed people to leave Phnom Penh immediately, telling them to head out along National Road 5 towards the Prek Pnoeu check point. Maly and her family followed those instructions, heading towards Prek Pnoeu commune, Ponhea Leu district. She took a small bundle of clothes, jewelry, and identification cards with her. After reaching Prek Pnoeu, Maly did not know where to go next. She did not want to go to her hometown for fear of being identified, since her husband was a Lon Nol battalion chief, so she decided to go to Chamkar Leu district, Kampong Cham province. She narrated: On the evacuation day, I saw many [KR] trucks full of soldiers heading to Olympic Stadium. They exclaimed, ‘Bravo!’ I found myself confused by the situation which I had not seen before. It was like our country was going to have war again. We were asked to go out of the city immediately and we were told that B-52 bombs will be dropped in Phnom Penh soon. On the way out of the city, I saw the Chroy Changva bridge blow up. At that moment, we did not think of anything besides hiding our identity from the Khmer Rouge and finding a safe place to live. My husband was afraid of being known as the KR hunted down former Lon Nol soldiers. When the KR forced us to leave the city, we decided to go east.
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Most of the Cham women evacuated out of Phnom Penh headed in the same direction: north towards Prek Pnoeu commune. Kalichip headed south to her home village in Kandal province. The evacuation routes of these four women lend support to the overall systematic nature of the evacuation. There are six national roads that start in Phnom Penh and extend out to other provinces. During the evacuation, National Roads 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6A were all used by the Khmer Rouge to evacuate people. Different sections of Phnom Penh were told to evacuate along specific highways; however, National Road 5 was the most heavily used as it led to the Prek Pnoeu checkpoint. The KR also utilized boats and trains to transport people to various places out of the city and towns. All of the women were in north or north-central Phnom Penh at the time of the evacuation, with three traveling along National Road 5 and one along the road southward through Takmao provincial town in Kandal province. Prior to the evacuation of April 17, Riya lived in the north part of Phnom Penh at a factory in Kilometer 6 village. A bit south of her but still in north Phnom Penh was Sary, who was recovering from gunshot wounds at Calmet hospital with her family. In a different hospital in north-central Phnom Penh, Kalichip had just given birth. In central Phnom Penh, Maly and her family stayed near Olympic Stadium after traveling a few days from Pochentong airport. On the day of the evacuation, Riya (north), Sary (north) and Maly (central) were evacuated north towards the Prek Pnoeu check point in Kandal province. Kalichip (north-central) traveled south along National Road 2. After about eight kilometers, at the Takmao roundabout, National Road 2 divides into two roads: National Road 2 (towards Takeo province) and B-21 Road (towards Vietnam). At the roundabout, Kalichip traveled on B-21 to reach her home village in Kandal province. Interestingly, she said that the KR instructed people to evacuate along National Highway 5 to the Prek Pnoeu check point, or to their hometown. She and her family decided against heading north to Prek Pnoeu, and instead went south to her home village. The other three women, along with the 36 Cham women featured in this book, did not mention that the KR gave people the option of evacuating to their home village. Evacuating Other Cities and Towns Besides Phnom Penh, many other towns and cities were emptied in April, 1975, including those in Kampong Cham, Battambang, Kampot, and Preah Sihanouk56 provinces. A written note from Chhon, a KR cadre, dated approximately two months after the September, 1975 Cham rebellions in Koh Phal and Svay Khleang villages in Kampong Cham province, describes the implementation of orders that were stated to have come from the Party Center to evacuate 50,000 Cham from the eastern zone. It included plans to evacuate 100,000 more from Kroch Chhmar district, Peam Chileang district, and Chhlong district, to the North and Northwest Zones.57 The KR used different strategies to make people leave their homes. As mentioned earlier, one method was to deceive the Cham into thinking they would go to live in Malaysia, India, and several Arab states. In Kampong Cham and Kandal provinces, the KR spread a rumor in Cham Muslim villages that “Cham Muslims will be sent to foreign countries in exchange for oil.”58 This was circulated among those about to be evacuated. When asked about the origin of this rumor, Sman Zainoab, a midwife and Qur’anic teacher, replied: “It was circulated from one to another by word of mouth.” While some were excited about going to a foreign country, others were skeptical. They still had to leave immediately. There was no time to ask for clarification. Zainoab asserted, “Although I was influenced by the Khmer Rouge rumor, I was not convinced because I thought it was strange. However, I had to pack my clothes, utensils, rice, and the Qur’an to recite. I also brought my medical equipment with me, anticipating that this will help me to save other pregnant women’s lives.” This rumor was also confirmed by Sos Maisom in Kandal province after she evacuated from Phnom Penh, where she had a cattle farm in Stung Meanchey district, and made her way to her hometown, Cham Leu village, Kandal province. On the way, the KR took away her belongings. Her husband was riding a motor-cart (a motorcycle attached to a large wagon) and she sat on the cart. She recalled, “I saw THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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the Kbal Thnol area [in Phnom Penh] ablaze in flames. My husband continued riding the motor-cart to Koh Thom district. Later, our cart was confiscated by KR soldiers. They checked and took everything from the cart. They also confiscated my brother-in law’s car. They asked us to walk.” She arrived in Cham Krom village, where the KR assigned her work for nine months before transferring her to Pursat province. She and the villagers were told that they would be sent to India. She recalled: Ta Lach was the one who ordered us to leave our house and later told us that we will be dispatched to India. So some people including myself put on several layers of clothes because we knew that there were colder temperatures in India, and that we had to be ready. It was just a lie. We were trucked and then dropped off at [Phnom Penh] rail way station. We were placed there to bear the wet weather for long time before being transported to Pursat and our final destination, Kandeang district [in Pursat province]. Maisom’s narrative recounts the extent of losses she and her people experienced during the evacuation and the rumor that the KR spread among Cham Muslims to convince them to assemble for mass departure. Undoubtedly, many women felt great attachment to their homes, land, and property. They had no choice but to leave. As a young girl, Teur Sros very much loved the red toy horse that her mother bought her. She often played with it inside and around her house because her mother did not allow her to play near the Tonle Sap River for fear she would drown. During the interview, she said that she had the chance to play with her toy for only a few days before the KR came. She had to leave it because it was too big to bring along. However, she was very nostalgic about her toy: “I looked back at my beautiful toy several times hoping that I could have brought it with me. I loved it so much.” Similarly, No Halimah recalled that the KR forced her to leave her newly-built house. Halimah was assigned to a new village in 1976. She was extremely reluctant to leave her house because her life had been prosperous and peaceful. In a shaky voice, she described the scene with regret: The KR cadre forced me to leave my lovely residence to stay in a hamlet. He said, ‘come down to live in the hut, let the poor people who used to live in the hut replace you.’ I was very upset by his words. I tried to hold my tears back. I could not say anything. Rather, I climbed up the stairs to prepare my belongings for another village. In Battambang province, the Khmer Rouge asked people to leave their houses for three days. They were told that after everything in the town was cleaned, people would be permitted to return to their homes. However, the fate of these people was the same as other city folk throughout the country. They were sent to work in the countryside for almost four years. Uom Seila’s story sheds light on the chaotic situation during the evacuation. Four months prior to the evacuation she had given birth to a baby boy; assessing the situation a few days before the evacuation she at first thought it was not serious. However, she was shocked when she saw Lon Nol soldiers fleeing through her town, near the battle grounds. Not long after, she was evacuated. In a clear voice, she described this moment of panic as follows: I saw the [Lon Nol] soldiers, namely Cobra, running toward my village and declaring ‘we lost the battle and the KR took over O-Many pagoda.’ The soldiers were fighting with the Khmer Rouge soldiers in Tapon commune. Some of them got injured; some took off their military uniform and replaced it with plain civilian clothes. Perhaps they feared
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being captured by the KR. I heard that some of them had been held captive, while others killed. ‘We are running out of bullets to respond against the KR, so be careful my people,’ the soldiers informed us. Hearing this, we left home and ran toward the provincial town, which was about three kilometers from here. A few days later, the KR cleared out Sophy village, in Battambang province. Seila remembered the items she brought along, “I only brought some money and jewelry that I saved and a few sets of clothing. I did not bring any wedding photos along at all. They vanished. My house was taken down.” Her husband consulted with her about where they should go. As a former reporter of Koh Santepheap newspaper, he was afraid of being discovered. He wanted to go to his parents’ house in Battambang town, but Seila stopped him. “Please do not go there. If you go, you will be recognized and arrested. Look! Your boss was arrested and sent away,” Seila advised him. They decided to go to O-Many pagoda, about 10 kilometers from Sophy village. At the Checkpoints and Along the Way to New Homes The KR set up checkpoints along various main roads in order to locate former soldiers, officials, educated people, and other opponents. Their purpose was to compel those people to reveal their background by promising that the Angkar would re-appoint them accordingly. Some people did confess, while others did not; those who confessed were then arrested or were shot immediately. At the Prek Kdam checkpoint in Kandal province, in northwest Cambodia, Riya reunited with her husband Oeun, who brought with him a bag of rice. When the KR questioned her, Riya and her husband told them that her husband was a taxi driver and that she was a housewife. She did not tell the KR that her husband was a former soldier; she still remembered vividly the image of soldiers’ bodies along the road. As she narrated her story, she exclaimed, “One man in shorts was just shot in front of us and the KR claimed that he was an enemy!” Fortunately, her family got through the checkpoint safely. At the Prek Pnoeu checkpoint, the situation was more tense. At around 9 p.m., Maly arrived, confused She did not know in advance that the KR would ask people about their backgrounds. Fortunately, one of her former classmates, who became a KR cadre, recognized her as he drove on his motorcycle from the opposite direction along National Road 5. When he saw her, he whispered to her that if she wanted to survive, she should tell the KR that she was a worker. She explained, “He asked me, ‘do you want to survive?’ I replied ‘Yes.’ Then he continued, “If yes, remember these words ‘worker, poor and illiterate’ when you are asked about your background.” Maly was skeptical, but nonetheless remembered his instructions. When she reached the checkpoint, initially she was not sure if she should tell the KR that she was a student and that her husband a soldier, but she decided to listen to her former classmate and persistently replied that she was a “worker” at the checkpoint. While some were able to hide their identities, others did not or the KR did not believe them. After finding someone with a “targeted” background, the KR usually arrested or killed them. In Siem Reap, Aishah’s oldest brother, Ma, a high ranking Lon Nol soldier, was arrested by KR soldiers during the evacuation. Her father, who went back to collect some remaining property after the shelling by the KR soldiers on the day of the evacuation, was also captured with Ma. Aishah believed that they were killed because the KR did not spare former soldiers.59 This also happened to Kalichip’s husband. She sobbed and tears rolled down her cheeks when talking about her husband, who was arrested and killed. She said, “I am overwhelmed with this story. It’s painful.”60 Her husband was a teacher and in 1970, when the Lon Nol regime came to power, he was drafted into the military. He fought in many battles. After the KR identified him as a soldier, he was
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arrested and sent to Po Tonle prison several weeks after April 17, 1975.61 At the Prek Kdam checkpoint, Riya waited for her sister, Lek Aishah. When she did not see her, Riya, who was nine months pregnant with her second child, embarked on a ferry with her family and a large crowd. After reaching the shore, they were trucked to Sre Veal village, Kampong Cham province. Riya described the ride in the truck as adventurous and physically and emotionally exhausting. At the time, she felt that her belly had almost been flattened by the crowd of the people. Concerned for his wife, Riya’s husband created a protective barrier around her. She said that she struggled, but tried to be patient. “I prayed every single minute for my safety. I was suffocating very much in the truck with so many people. The chickens and ducks brought on the truck died because people accidentally stepped on them.” When they reached Sre Veal village, Kampong Cham province, Riya’s husband wanted to go to Battambang province. He believed that the province was rich in rice production which could feed his family. A KR cadre recommended that he go elsewhere, but provided no reason or explanation. She said: “The cadre kindly advised us because my husband helped fix his car after we got off in Sre Veal village. He told us to go to the eastern or northern part of Cambodia, rather than Battambang province.” Considering this suggestion, they all decided to go to Kratie province. Right after talking with the KR cadre, Riya felt her labor begin. With a group of people, she and her family traveled on a KR oxcart to Tamao village. Along the journey, there was not enough food and drinking water so people drank whatever water they could find. At Tamao village, Riya delivered her baby with the help of a midwife. There was no medical equipment or medicine. Seven days later, the KR instructed her family and others to proceed forward. Knowing that she was not able to go with them, Riya decided to stay behind with her husband and newborn. She sent her two children (her own son and Oeun’s daughter) with her mother and two younger sisters. She would follow them after she recovered from giving birth. Many evacuees were placed in large waiting areas prior to being sent to other places. Riya was asked to stay in an abandoned monastery hall with many other evacuees. She emphasized, “I did not feel comfortable staying in the monastery hall, but I had no choice. The stupa and cremation chamber were there. I felt afraid.” Ten days after giving birth, Riya begged her husband to search for her other children and family members until he agreed. She recounted, “I missed my son and daughter. I asked my husband to get a travel pass from the KR to take me to meet them. We traveled in sunlight, and I pitied my newborn so much. He cried because of the hot weather. However, we kept walking until we saw them in Prek Proloung pagoda, Kratie province.” New Home and New Way of Life The forced marches from Phnom Penh and other cities and towns to KR designated homes took from one to several weeks. Exhaustion and starvation killed people, especially the elderly and very young. Of the two million people evacuated from the city, an estimated 10,600 died en route (0.53 percent), with children, the elderly, patients, pregnant women, and women who had just delivered babies suffering the most.62 Martin Stuart-Fox, history professor at the University of Queensland, claims that during the first month of the KR regime, as many as 35,000 Cambodians died, both civilians and non-civilians.63 Most of the people evacuated from Phnom Penh were branded as “April 17th people” or “new people,” while those removed from other cities and towns were labeled as “evacuees” or “deportees.”64 People were evacuated to different locations, particularly to agricultural areas in the northwest of the country. Before reaching their final location, evacuees were gathered in a central area, usually around the vicinity of a pagoda, where they waited for trucks or boarded boats to provincial towns or districts. Once there, they were divided into small groups ranging from 10 to 20 families, and transported by oxcart to new locations. The KR chose this method not simply to divide groups of people, but more importantly to disperse them. Cham Muslims were grouped with Khmer or other ethnic minority families THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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such as Vietnamese and Chinese. By segregating people, the KR had less concern that people of the same ethnic group would unite and fight against them.65 In most of the new areas, no houses had been built yet, so people were assigned the task of constructing huts. In addition to the physical toll of building a house after traveling on foot for days or weeks, scarcity of food was also a constant problem. Many of the Cham Muslim women interviewed described their new homes as concentration camps rather than shelters. Kalichip’s family was sent to live in Chantrea village, Boeng Ha commune, Pursat province, in 1976. When she arrived, she found it far different from anything the KR had described to her. “We were sent to a re-education camp instead of a normal place. We found it hard to live due to scarcity of food and the new environment.”66
The individual and collective memories of the Cham Muslim women provide important information about events that followed after the KR marched victoriously into Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. Their narration of the evacuation, their vivid descriptions of the confusion, horror, fear, and uncertainty of the situation and people’s responses to it, is representative of many people’s experiences. Stories of killings, dead bodies along the road, traveling days by foot, the anxiety of getting through checkpoints, violent KR and even helpful KR, mirror the experiences of countless Cambodians. Perhaps one notable difference, however, is that nearly all of the Cham women interviewed credited Allah for their survival during the evacuation. It was Allah, as well, that they thanked after living through Democratic Kampuchea.
Zainoab and her family traveled in an oxcart to Anlung Ataeng village, Battambang province, where she and her husband built a small hut to live in. Some families were asked to live with base people in their existing houses. Riya’s family was assigned to live with a base family headed by Ta (grandfather) He. Riya was not pleased. She was concerned that there would not be enough room for her and her children. A few days later she started to feel homesick. This was the reality for many after being evacuated; they were forced to share a home with base people or live miserably in a makeshift hut. They were forced to leave behind nearly all of their possessions. Geographically, their new homes were far from their prior homes. Their new homes also lacked many things, including basic necessities and sanitation. This generated fear and created many difficulties for Cham Muslim women and other evacuees. None of them had ever experienced such large-scale relocation and depravation; however, they had no choice but to learn how to survive in this new way of life. Conclusion The relative peace and prosperity that existed under Sihanouk’s reign broke down during the civil war for all Cambodians, including the Cham Muslim. The civil war and the impact of neighboring Vietnam’s civil war resulted in the loss of at least 100,000 Cambodian lives, countless bombed villages and fields, a doubling of the Phnom Penh population to two million, and an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. As traumatic as the civil war was, the events on April 17, 1975, and thereafter proved even more dramatic. The forced evacuation, sometimes ordered at gunpoint, also brought about the immediate execution of former government officials, Lon Nol soldiers and other targeted people. The city’s general population was driven out of their homes and forced to abandon nearly all of their belongings. For Cham Muslims, the evacuation meant leaving their ancestral lands, their places of daily worship, and the community of other Cham Muslims. Cham women, responsible for the well-being of other family members including children, and for managing the family’s income and possessions, faced great challenges during the long evacuation. At the onset, it was Cham women who packed the family’s belongings and had to decide which items to take. In most cases, they brought rice, cooking pots, bundles of clothing, the Qur’an and Muqqadam books. During the interview, many of the women noted the things they forgot or failed to bring with them. During the journey, Cham women also took charge of caring for children and the elderly and preparing food. Once they arrived at their destinations, the women also had to figure out living arrangements in the homes of base families or in newly built huts. They faced enormous pressure to provide for their families with only a fraction of the resources they had before. In some cases, they were separated from their husbands or their husbands died. Riya’s husband died six months after arriving in Prek Praloung village, Kratie province.
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Chapter 2: Changing Family Forms and Womens’ Roles “…before the woman had to work, to come home and search for the fish, the rice, to cook it, care for the children. This was terrible. In communal living they only have to come home from work and eat.” —Ieng Thirith, DK Minister of Social Affairs67 The KR effort to transform Cambodia into a socialist regime emphasized the rhetoric of women’s emancipation, promising to accomplish it through restructuring of the family, redefining women’s status, and restricting gender relations. Like Thirith’s epigraph above, the KR regime emphasized that women had been exploited by both their families and former regimes – the Sangkum Reastr Niyun of the thenPrince Sihanouk and the Khmer Republic of Field Marshal Lon Nol. As an economic force, “family” was deemed incompatible with collectivization and viewed as oppressive to women. Male economic power that women traditionally depended on was seen as the root cause of female subordination. Hence, the family had to be supplanted by cooperative organizations to push women out of the home and into the labor force. Also, individualism had to be replaced with collectivization.68 Historians David Chandler and Ben Kiernan agree that KR communist ideology was distinct from other communist ideologies because the KR wanted their revolution to surpass others in its degree of efficiency and productivity. Its policy towards women was also distinct.69 The KR implemented a number of procedures and rules to supposedly liberate women (such as communal dinning which was supposed to free them from cooking duties); to force them to participate in the revolution (such as requiring them to become soldiers); to make them abandon their family domain; and to ensure that they would join the cooperatives completely. The KR believed that only then would women be emancipated and equal to men.70 While KR policies condemned the economic function of the bourgeois family and ignored its psychological and spiritual benefits, it simultaneously denied the possibility of oppression within the proletarian family. The proletarian family was better than the bourgeois family. The KR condemned and punished those who committed “moral offences.” In most cases, when a moral offence was discovered, both parties were punished, even in rape cases. They believed that they could suppress male sexuality and women would be safe from sexual violence; thus they made moral offences punishable. The rosy rhetoric of women’s emancipation was simply a political ploy that the KR used to mobilize women to join their revolution. The KR explicitly declared that their unique revolution would make men and women equal and free from oppression. In reality, women’s issues and concerns were not addressed seriously by the regime, even while it destroyed the women’s’ way of life. This chapter discusses the policies the KR implemented to change women’s’ role and status within their families and society. It also explores women’s responses as they struggled to hold on to their families and the traditional and cultural roles they once played. Some of their responses demonstrated the courage and tremendous sacrifice that Cham women made. The final section discusses motherhood and how Cham Muslim mothers persevered in maintaining their roles despite often dire and dangerous circumstances. Although KR policies toward women were ruthless and women undoubtedly found it extremely hard to adapt, they nevertheless made an all-out effort to deal with the treatment. Still, regardless of their responses to the policy, they now sometimes feel guilty about the past. In everyday life, women were treated merely as a labor reserve. They were forced to break their bonds with their home and family. The KR
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proudly declared that women were equal to men and could do anything men could. This belief was problematic, however. It demanded that women exert physical strength exhaustively in order to complete assigned manual tasks at the same level as men. Such demands jeopardized their health and the well-being of their families. Further, these brutal policies also altered their gender roles and social relations. Women were forced to renounce intimacy, affection, and sympathy for their family members, and especially their male relatives. Instead, they had to devote themselves to the Angkar. In this regard, the KR intended to fully integrate Cham Muslim women, along with other ethnic minority women, into their vision of an ideal Cambodian woman. This was a singular vision that did not allow room for any differences. For Cham Muslim women, this meant adjusting their roles from the mothers, wives, and daughters as prescribed by the Qur’an, to those who lived according to strict communal obligations. The stories below show that women responded in different ways, with both compliance and resistance. They complied with certain rules when they believed that it was impossible to refuse. They resisted, however, when they felt that the risk was low, when the benefit was high, or when they could be certain to succeed. Since women in Cambodian society were brought up to be less assertive than men and lacked men’s physical strength, they resisted in less aggressive but still effective ways in most cases. I argue that their various forms of resistance–negotiation, secret non-compliance, and outright refusal–demonstrate their effort to protect and preserve their families and culture. For example, under the regime, Cham Muslim women figured out ways to see their children who lived separately from them. In a Cham traditional family, members of the nuclear family, and sometimes grandparents and uncles and aunts, live under the same roof. Children live apart from their parents only after getting married. However, under the KR regime, parents and children were separated. In response, some Cham Muslim women secretly met their children at nightfall, or sometimes at the dining hall. During their secret time with their children, they lectured their children on being a good person, gave them food, and stressed to them that they did not belong to the Angkar.
people’s lives. In 1976, Radio Phnom Penh outlined the function of a cooperative: “Mobilize basic peasant forces to conduct production work in all fields; handle communication and transport of its products; deal with education, culture, welfare, and sanitation, barter of goods, ensure security, and inculcate in the peasantry the Organization’s political, economic, military, social, and cultural line.”75 Individual family members were divided into separate work teams based on age, sex, and marital status. The KR divided people into work units based on these categories to make them more disciplined and to more quickly achieve advanced socialism. Fathers were assigned to work far from their families and could come back to visit their wives and children only once a month or even every few months.76 Mothers or widows with small children, along with the elderly and mentally disabled people, usually worked in the village. If a widow did not have any small children, she was put in a widow’s mobile brigade (kang memay) and moved from one place to another. In Kampong Chhnang province, as a widow without any small children, Sary was drafted into a widow brigade. Usually, babies were placed with wet nurses in childcare centers when the mothers went to work. It was optional for mothers to breastfeed their babies at home during lunch breaks; otherwise, wet nurses would feed the baby. Children below age seven worked with other children in the children’s unit (kang komar) during the day time and were allowed to stay with their mothers at night. Children from seven to thirteen were drafted into a children’s unit and lived away from their mothers in special housing only for children; they were seldom permitted to return home and stay with their mothers.77 Adolescents (children over thirteen) were drafted into youth mobile brigades (kang chumtung) and had to work far away from their family members and likewise rarely had the chance to come back to see their parents. These brigades were considered vanguard units. Each work team was headed by a committee of three or more people, including a chief, deputy chief, and other members, each of whom held particular responsibilities.78 Hard Labor
Communal Living as Social Transformation At a “Special Center Assembly” held on April 17, 1975, Pol Pot called for the immediate implementation of his Eight-Point Plan: evacuating people from all towns; abolishing all markets; withdrawing the Lon Nol currency and withholding the revolutionary currency which had been printed; defrocking all Buddhist monks and putting them to work growing rice; executing all leaders of the Lon Nol regime, beginning with the top leaders; establishing high-level cooperatives throughout the country with communal eating; and expelling the entire Vietnamese minority population. After the forced evacuation on April 17, 1975, the KR quickly began to implement collectivization. This plan aimed to eradicate the concept of individualism; each person had to collectivize their private property and belongings and turn them over to the Angkar. Everyone had to learn to think in terms of communal interests. Families were supplanted by cooperative communal organizations. Some cooperatives had already existed in liberated zones since May, 1973, under the name of the Peasant Cooperative Organization.71 The organization of the cooperatives varied in size from place to place where solidarity groups (krom samki), mutual aid teams (pravas dai), mobile work teams, and associations72 were forged. May Ebihara, professor emeritus of anthropology at Lehman College, explained that in most cases, “Cooperative units were grouped together at the khum (commune) level of management; and the basic krom (group) were organized progressively into larger units using a military system of designation into platoons, companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, and divisions. Each consisted of three units of the lower level (i.e., three companies made up one battalion).”73 These formations marked the increasing militarization of economic production. The people at the front had to fight against the enemies while those at the rear, mostly women, had to work harder in the absence of men and take charge of men’s work.74 Sokha, who was recruited by the KR in 1973 and later in 1975 became the leader of a women’s work team, said that Angkar discipline was like that of the military because people were asked to address each other as “Mit” (contraction of samak mit, which means comrade) and wake up at dawn to exercise like soldiers before going to the rice fields. Cooperatives had multiple functions enabling the Angkar to control
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If a person doesn’t rest, he gets very ill. It is a strategic objective to increase the strength of the people. Therefore, leisure must be considered to be basic. The schedule of free time shall be one day off out of ten and in a year from ten to fifteen days off for travel and study. —Pol Pot Plans the Future79 The above statement reflects one of the many paradoxes of the KR regime. On paper, people were granted rest time, but in reality people were not allowed days off from work for rest or travel. Agricultural production was the center of social and economic life under the KR regime. Both old and new people were commanded to produce three metric tons of paddy per hectare per year, a nearly impossible goal. The irrigation systems, including canals and dams for rice production, were to be developed, maintained, and extended. Women were assigned the same work as men, including carrying soil, building dams and canals, chopping firewood, and removing tree trunks. Work schedules and conditions varied from cooperative to cooperative, but the workday typically ran from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. A night shift was usually implemented to maximize agricultural production. The majority of the population worked hard, but rarely received enough rice to eat. In Chrung Romeas village, rice production took place twice a year, in the rainy season and dry season. A group leader (mekang) led Halimah’s group to transplant rice in the Tuol Sangke cooperative. Halimah went to work on the rice paddy every morning and came back in the evening. At noon, she ate lunch and then resumed work quickly. Sometimes, she had to work the night shift when the KR demanded more rice production. In addition, she worked on various assigned jobs in her cooperative. She said, “I dug out tree trunks and carried dirt to build a small dam in my cooperative.” Her husband was sent to work in a fishing unit and her small children undertook work collecting cow dung, chopping Khmer herbs for natural fertilizer, preventing birds from destroying the rice production, and taking care of THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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cattle, among other tasks. Halimah’s children, like many other children, were indoctrinated in revolutionary politics under a tree or in abandoned halls.80 They stayed at a children’s unit dormitory with other children. Fortunately, however, her two small children, both under seven years old, were allowed to stay with her at her hut after she complained. In a raised voice, she recounted the conversation with the KR cadre: “I was shocked when they took each one of my children. They said, ‘your children have to go to work, they can’t stay with you anymore.’ They took all of my children from me one by one.” However, she was able to persuade the KR to permit her two younger children to live with her. Halimah said that she could not oppose the KR in taking her four older children since other children in the cooperative were also taken away. After her four children were taken away, she tried her best to fulfill the assigned work and safeguard her two youngest children who were allowed to live with her. Some Cham Muslim women were criticized when they worked too slow or too fast. Many of the women were not familiar with transplanting rice, since it was task they had never done before. They were afraid that they could not do the job well and would be sent for re-education in a detention center where they were subjected to manual labor, indoctrination in KR ideology, and sometimes torture. As a result, many of them worked as hard as they could and some even worked faster than base people. While some base people supported the work of Cham Muslim women by encouraging and accepting them, others criticized them and called them names. In Prek Proloung village, Riya did not know how to transplant rice. Prior to the KR regime, she was a housewife and worked in a factory. She said that at the beginning she transplanted the rice very slowly and some base people looked down on her. She persevered, concentrating on rice paddy work without complaining. Within a short period of time, she could transplant quickly, even more efficiently than others around her. She recalled, “Instead of praising my work, they scolded me, ‘why do you do it so fast, are you crazy? Don’t you care about your health?’” Riya commented that this was because they themselves were lazy and did not want new people to take over their jobs. “No matter what I did, whether my work was bad or good, they scolded at me,” she continued.81 Some women were asked to perform jobs that were considered taboo in Islam, such as raising pigs. The KR made everyone do the same jobs regardless of their background or ethnicity. In Sre Veal village, Kampong Cham province, Rohimah was forced to raise 50 pigs with four other women: two Cham Muslim women and two Khmer women. During the interview, she raised her voice and said, “I dared not refuse even though I know that it goes against Islam.” Her responsibilities included mixing food for pigs and bringing the food to the pigsties located about 500 meters from her work site. Twice a day, in the morning and afternoon, she and other women had to feed the pigs. She said every time she fed the pigs, she was afraid and felt disgusted because she had never performed this job before. She recalled, “Every time I dumped the food into the pigsties, I ran back quickly because these pigs were unruly and disgusting. I remembered one day when the pigs stepped on my toes, I was so scared of them. I regretted that I failed to [religiously] purify myself at that time.”82 For the most part Rohimah completed all of the tasks associated with raising the pigs. However, she resisted one task: rinsing the pigs. Secretly, she did not do this task. She said, “I asked other women to rinse the pigs, I did not do it.” Unmarried women were recruited to work with local KR authorities to train young children. In O-Chrov commune, when the KR approached Ros Aishah and other young women, Aishah refused to join the revolution because she did not want to live separately from her parents and did not know how to do the assigned job. After the KR recruited her a second time, however, she did not refuse. She explained, “When I was 14 years old, Uncle Saveth, a KR cadre, chose me to work as a revolutionary medical woman, but I refused because I did not have skills in medicine and did not want to leave my parents. Later, he recruited me to work as a children’s unit leader, teaching children. I forced myself to join because my parents were afraid the KR would mistreat my family because of my refusal.” Consequently, Aishah led a work group of children and taught them revolutionary lessons. All of the women worked hard with little rest or food. On the whole, they were unable to resist orders and tasks assigned to them even if
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these orders went against their beliefs and religion. However, some of these women did attempt to negotiate, resist, or secretly disobey. Communal Dining as a Tool to Replace Women’s Kitchen Based on the KR concept of a glorious revolution, communal dining halls were instituted across the country in 1976. One reason was to reduce women’s domestic duties like cooking and household chores. The KR said that in this way women would be free to work outside the home and their status would be equal to that of men. This expectation proved disastrous, however, for it dismantled the traditional and cultural ways of dining for all people. For women, the impact was even greater. Given that women traditionally bought groceries and cooked meals that their husbands or children liked, communal dinning meant that women were not able to fulfill one of the key activities in their life. The KR openly declared, “Rations range from three cans [of rice] a day to two cans a day…Desserts will be available in 1977 once every three days.”83 In reality however, this was not the case; the vast majority of people did not have enough food to eat. Essentially, everyone starved. The women interviewed list several explanations for the grave shortage of food. One was that since the KR relied on manpower rather than machinery to produce rice, production could not be maximized. Several women said that rice was exported to other countries such as China. Another source remembered that the KR kept a portion of rice to feed the soldiers84 at the front fighting with the Vietnamese. Also, the local authorities overstated the amount of production in reports to higher officials in order to avoid punishment for low yields. Thus, top and bottom leaders assumed there was more rice to go around than actually existed. Porridge was the common meal during the KR period. People who were given rice once in a while were considered lucky. Only the Khmer Rouge cadre received cooked rice. Most people received only porridge or cassava with corn kernels, water spinach and water lily. Usually, two meals were distributed per day at the communal dining hall, at noon and in the evening. No breakfast was given. When the bell rang, the people got off from work in the rice fields and gathered at the communal dining hall.85 Women and children were placed at different dining tables. Rice porridge was distributed to each able-bodied person who went to work; an infirm person received a smaller ration of food or sometimes received nothing at all depending on the local leadership. Food was also distributed at the work site when people were asked to work far from the communal dining hall. People at the dining hall or work site lined up to get a ladle of porridge. In the interview, Halimah recalled, “We no longer were able to eat with our individual family. I ate separately from my children and husband. I ate with my female colleagues in another hall. My children ate with other children at another hall. I was concerned about them. I did not know if they were full or not.” Many people reported that they were still hungry after lunch and dinner because the meager meals did not provide adequate nutrients needed to carry out the physical labor required of them. In some cooperative units, only four cans of rice were made into porridge and distributed for 40 people to eat. Such insufficient rations undoubtedly reduced workers’ strength and ability to labor in rice fields or perform other heavy tasks. Timah asked rhetorically, “How could we feel full if they cooked several cans of rice for three to four dozen people?” When a pork dish was served in the dining halls, everybody had to eat it. Those who did not eat the dish were seen as anti-revolutionary and sent to be re-educated or even killed. When Cham Muslims resisted eating pork, the KR told them that other Cham Muslims ate pork and that they should follow this example. When pork soup was put on the communal dining table in front of them, the Cham Muslim women interviewees said that they could not protest. Halimah begged the KR to allow her more time to adjust to the revolution. She requested that her Muslim neighbor, Phors, eat pork on her behalf. Halimah told the KR cadre, “Mit Phors can eat [pork] today, I will try to adjust myself to pork. I think I will be able to eat pork the following day or soon. Leave me some time.” She was excused, and asked for salt to eat with her porridge instead. THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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In times of great scarcity, some scholars assert that individuals found themselves hiding whatever food they could find to eat by themselves later instead of sharing it with family members. Such acts negatively impacted the relationship between family members. May Ebihara argued that these acts “destroyed family confidence and solidarity” and “sometimes led to feelings of distrust, hostility, and even vengeance between spouses.”86 The Cham Muslim women interviewed however, shared food with their family members and sometimes even sacrificed their own share for their children. For example, no matter how dire the situation, Aminah shared her meager ration with her sick son who was starving. To deal with the shortage of food, women found clever ways to cope. They sometimes bartered gold with base people, searched for extra food after work or at night, or offered to serve at the communal dining halls because those that worked at the dining halls could eat leftovers. When she needed palm sugar and tobacco, Maly bartered her gold ring with a base person in her village. This was called a ‘night or ‘black’” market. No one talked about this. She emphasized, “Some base people still wanted gold. They whispered to me asking if I had any jewelry to exchange for basic things. We did this several times. They usually hid palm sugar and tobacco.” Halimah and Aminah had similar ways of searching for food. Aminah picked vegetables at her small garden to mix with watery rice soup to make her feel full. Halimah secretly collected shells, clams, pty (similar to spinach), and crabs in the rice fields after the evening shift and then cooked them for her children and husband when they visited home. Halimah, like other Cham Muslim women, kept basic kitchen wares. She secretly kept a pot, kettle, and a few plates. These women had to be very careful, however, as hiding kitchen supplies and cooking at home was regarded as anti-revolutionary and punishable. Halimah explained: We had to find more food to eat; otherwise, we would be weak and have no energy to work. After the food was ready, I woke my children and husband up late at night and we ate silently together. But we had to be very careful of KR militiamen not to catch us cooking and eating by ourselves at home. Some people were arrested and never came back after they were accused of eating at home by themselves.
revealed, affecting relationships with family members and sometimes leading to animosity or even danger. Livelihood meetings and self-criticism sessions were held in the countryside before 1975 in some KR liberated areas, but became widespread after April, 1975. The Party repeatedly emphasized that such meetings were necessary to nurture people in “politics” and “consciousness,” to keep people in the revolutionary line, and to expose traitors.88 The livelihood meetings were held in a large hall where people in the cooperative unit gathered and listened attentively. A KR committee was tasked to develop political consciousness and struggle through criticizing individualism, capitalism, feudalism, and former regimes. Criticism/self-criticism sessions were held on a regular basis, as a forum where cooperatives and work teams criticized their members and discussed practical problems of work organization and productivity. People in cooperative units had to embrace the criticism to prove that they were devoted to the Angkar. After the night shift, people met in teams of 10 to 40 people in an open field for criticism/ self-criticism sessions. These were similar to people’s courts, with punishment meted out. Pol Pot once stated that there was no court other than a people’s court.89 In practice, chiefs of cooperatives or group leaders (mekang) stated the criticism. In Kratie province, Sokha worked in the childcare center with about five persons in her group. During a criticism session, each took turns criticizing the others for four to five minutes. Sokha criticized each wet nurse in the group and then asked them to criticize her activities, behavior, and devotion to revolution. According to most of the women interviewed, both livelihood meetings and self-criticism sessions were repetitive and boring, as well as scary because of the possibility of being criticized. Maly recalled that the chief of her cooperative instructed everybody in the group to learn how to criticize each individual about his or her work, behavior, productivity, and revolutionary thoughts toward the Angkar. When it was her turn, Maly dared not look directly at other people’s faces. She was afraid of them and did not want them to see her true feelings through her eyes. At a meeting of about a dozen people, Maly stared at the grass and said, “I devote myself wholeheartedly to the Angkar and I will continue to make it excellent. If I have any flaws, please tell me.” In the interview, she recalled how she trembled when she was picked to talk. She explained, “I talked only about good things. If you talked more you would make mistakes. Thus, the Angkar would recognize you. I did not tell them how I felt and how much I understood their political lessons.”
Livelihood Meeting and Criticism/Self-Criticism Sessions It is a shortcoming that the stance regarding class struggle and the stance regarding enemies are still rather limited in scope. This means that we have probably overlooked many [enemies], and it seems likely that we overlook many others now. The task of preparing to defend ourselves secretly and efficiently against them is not yet complete. The methods of defense must be secret. This is a different task from defending our territory. Technically, the fight must be swift and successful. Those who defend us must be truly adept. They must observe everything, but so those being observed are unaware of it. This is particularly true of the long term. —Pol Pot Plans the Future87 The KR called on people to fight the enemy embedded at all levels and to sharpen political consciousness. This produced anxiety and fear in people because it created distrust and a sense of betrayal. The KR organized livelihood meetings and criticism/self-criticism sessions where political revolutionary lessons were proclaimed, and people were told to reveal their revolutionary shortcomings. Women were asked to report on their own behaviors and those of others. Women were directed to speak out, but if they spoke out either way, they would be in trouble. If a woman spoke about her own shortcomings, the KR would criticize her shortcomings and possibly punish her. If she spoke about the shortcomings of others, the KR would criticize her for knowing too much and those that she spoke about would criticize her back in retaliation and defense. At these meetings, the shortcomings of individuals and their family members would be
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Some people dared not criticize others because they feared being severely criticized in retaliation or that the Angkar would identify them as lazy or antagonistic, so they just said they had nothing to criticize because they followed the KR plan. Riya said she dared not say anything about herself or others after hearing that one of her friends, Chhay (who was an April 17 person, or new person), was taken away after criticizing the group and the KR plan. Chhay was an educated person who was also evacuated from the city. His disappearance traumatized his sister, according to Riya. Thus, Riya dared not say that she kept leftover porridge for her children after distributing it to people in the village, for fear of being criticized. She added, “I remember that the Angkar did not like intellectuals like Chhay [to criticize].” In short, the KR created a system of mutual distrust giving rise to suspicion at all levels. Revolutionary consciousness and political lessons were given repeatedly during livelihood meetings and criticism sessions. Women chose not to talk much or to keep silent. They knew that talking too much would not only fail to benefit them, but it would also put them in danger. There was no advantage to revealing their shortcomings or those of family members. Although none of the Cham Muslim women were criticized in the sessions, some of them were criticized at work sites or in their villages for not working properly or hard enough. These meetings and frequent criticisms created an atmosphere of fear and paranoia for many Cham Muslim women during the regime. They had to be careful and disciplined during work and communal eating, even though this did not necessarily guarantee that others would not criticize them. Thus, it was hard for people to trust each other, especially base people and new people.
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Women’s Struggles in Pregnancy and childbirth The birth of a child in Islam is considered God’s gift to women. So for Cham Muslim women, pregnancy and childbirth are important moments in their life and their family’s lives. Their husbands and family members take special care of them when they are pregnant. During the KR regime, however, women were not taken care of by family members and received little or no medical attention. Adding to the stress, they had little to eat and had to continue agricultural work or other manual labor up until a few weeks or days before giving birth. Miscarriages were common under the regime and a large portion of women had infrequent menstruation or did not menstruate at all. As such, the number of pregnancies declined. If a woman was fortunate to have a successful pregnancy and delivery, she nevertheless encountered great hardship feeding and caring for her newborn. Throughout DK, Cham Muslim mothers, and women in general, had mixed feelings during pregnancy and after delivering their babies. Women worried about their own health and safety and that of their child. They were also uncertain about their child’s future. Nevertheless, many of the women interviewed said that having a baby brought happiness to their lives because they felt the new baby would replace separated family members. Shortly after giving birth, usually within several days, women were required to go back to work in the fields or at construction sites. They did not have time to care for their baby or themselves; some women were still recovering from natal bleeding and postpartum weakness in general. These extreme conditions caused a few of the Cham women interviewed to wish that their baby had died at birth. In Pursat province, Paung Lim said that she did not want her baby to live because there wasn’t enough food to feed her. She recalled, “I was exhausted from pulling out tree trunks along a dike. I almost fell down. Under this circumstance, I was told to rub my skin with a coin. I used a spoon, pretending it was a coin to rub my skin. I did not want my child to be weak and endure such pain like me. I think it would have been better if she had died the day she arrived.” Pregnancy also heightened the stark reality of inadequate food and produced extreme cravings for foods women once enjoyed. Halimah remembered how greatly she missed beef bone soup. Back in the early 1970s, an old man, a dirt laborer, often bought beef bones from her. Up until 1975, Halimah had a rather successful cattle business in Takeo province. With a sigh, she reflected on something he said to her. An old man told me that he would make beef bone soup to eat so that he could gain more energy and strength to carry dirt for a living. During the KR regime, I thought to myself that, ‘if I had that soup to eat, it would help me and my baby a lot.’ I felt very disappointed with how badly they treated pregnant women. When Halimah expressed her feelings and talked about her struggles with her husband, he told her to be patient because the KR regime would not last long.
delivered her baby herself. She said that she did not feel much pain. “After the baby came out, I removed the placenta, cut the baby’s natal cord and knotted it before washing the baby with warm water. The baby was wrapped with a piece of cloth, and then I put it on a tray. Next, I washed the placenta before I buried it. I put it in a coconut shell and filled the hole in order to protect it from evil.” Other women were attended by KR midwives or ‘medical revolutionary women.’ Overall, the health system during the DK regime was severely inadequate; it lacked proper medicine and equipment, superficially trained teenagers to be medics, mistreated patients, and misdiagnosed patients. Several of the Cham Muslim women said they almost died because of the poor care from KR midwives. Halimah complained that the KR midwives were young and poorly trained. “My placenta was stuck in my womb for about two hours and the medical staff did not know what to do. I felt the blood rushing to my head. I felt that the KR treated me like a dog or cat.” However, Halimah gave birth to her baby girl safely. Her daughter was born in 1977, two years into the regime. Initially, Halimah incorrectly recalled the birth year of her daughter; she said that her daughter was born in 1973, which was when she was evacuated to Chrung Romeas village. After asking the age of her daughter when the regime collapsed and considering the baby’s lunar birth year (year of the snake), it was determined that her daughter was born in 1977. Cham Muslim women, and Cambodians overall, usually are better at remembering events according to the lunar calendar rather than the solar calendar year because it is their traditional way of measuring time. Further, they more easily recall ages of people rather than the specific year of an event. Instilling Islamic Culture at Birth Cham Muslim women strove to raise their children according to Cham cultural and religious beliefs. Some Cham Muslim women performed Islamic rituals for their newborn babies and gave them Muslim names. Halimah remembered that every night she silently recited in Arabic the adzan (call to prayer) and shahada (declaration of faith) into both ears of her baby girl, starting with her right ear according to Islamic protocol. “It is our Islamic ritual practice. We normally do this to a newborn child. I wanted her to become a Muslim and adhere to Islamic faith.” Maisom, Zainoab, and Riya also whispered the call to prayer to their newborns; Maisom in Cham, Zainoab in Arabic, and Riya in Khmer. A majority of Cham Muslim women gave their children Muslim names, sometimes after a deceased loved one or a prophet. A minority gave their babies Khmer names. Zainoab named her baby Slaiman after her father, whom she loved dearly. Slaiman was an Islamic prophet. “My father passed away during the Khmer Rouge, so the only way to commemorate him was to name my child after him.” In Kampong Chhnang province, Tvae Put chose the name Aishah, the wife of Prophet Muhammad. “It is a beautiful name and lots of girls have that name,” Put said. Riya and her husband named their child Da because it is short and easy to call, although it is not a Muslim name. “We loved this name, so we chose it.” Motherhood: Caring for Newborns at Birth
She also longed for palm sugar but could not find any during the regime. Exhausted and hungry one day, she laid down on the loose soil and fell asleep when her work brigade went to lunch. She started to dream about the palm sugar. Halimah laughed as she recalled the experience: “You know, I was hungry for something sweet like palm sugar. I fell asleep at the work site and dreamt about sipping palm sugar. I imitated the dream. I dipped my index finger into the dirt and sucked the finger for a while. When I woke up, I realized that I was sucking dirt, not palm sugar.” A few of the Cham Muslim women interviewed delivered their babies themselves. In some cooperative units, husbands had three days off to care for their wives during delivery, but in most cooperatives husbands had to work as usual. Maisom, a traditional midwife,
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Under the KR regime, mothers were not allowed to stay with their children or devote extensive time to care for their babies because the KR believed that this could slow down the goal of agricultural production. As the KR Four-Year Plan stipulated, “…mothers must not get too entangled with their children; there should be time (for the mothers) to go and work.”90 In order to ensure efficient production, childcare centers were set up throughout the country.91 There were large halls reserved for taking care of babies or small children. Usually elderly women were assigned to care for them. Each elderly woman looked after ten or twelve children at most centers and in some, wet nurses also helped. A mother would bring her baby to a childcare center in the morning and collect the child after work. The mothers were not allowed to look after their children because this competed with their loyalty to the Angkar. This meant that mothers had to distance THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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themselves from their babies and children. According to the Four-Year Plan, women had two months’ maternity leave.92 In reality, however, real maternity leave did not exist in most cases because women who had just given birth were assigned light tasks to perform. New mothers had to perform these tasks for an average of one month (depending on the respective local authority and the need for local labor) before resuming heavy work in the village or cooperative. After Zainoab gave birth, she brought her son to a childcare center located in the middle of her village and left him in the care of an elderly woman. She then went to weave mats and rugs with other women in her village. While many followed the rules without opposition, some tried to extend their “maternity leave” so that they could continue doing light work in the village close to their baby, rather than far away in the agricultural fields. Halimah, extremely attached to her child and concerned about her health, felt that she was not ready to go to work in the field yet. She came up with a plan to convince her mekang to extend her maternity leave. I was shocked when my mekang demanded that I go to transplant rice, leaving my 30-day old baby with another woman at the center. I myself wanted to take care of her. I wrapped the baby with a warm wet cloth and made the baby looked ill. I approached my mekang and said, ‘look at my baby, she is not feeling well. I have to look after her. I cannot go to work.’ I started to praise the revolution, ‘Comrade, our revolution will last very long, allow me to stay longer. I will be able to contribute to our glorious revolution step by step.’ Her plan succeeded and Halimah was permitted to work in her village a bit longer. For Halimah, this was extremely important because it allowed time for her to bond with her baby. While the majority of women were granted “maternity leave” (assigned light work), other women were forced to resume heavy manual labor. Sarifah, a relative of Rohimah, talked about her mother’s death during the regime. Her mother had just given birth to her younger sibling. She was denied maternity leave and ordered to resume heavy manual labor less than a week after giving birth. While working, her mother died from exhaustion.93 Although women had the option of breastfeeding their babies during lunch break at the childcare centers, they had to come back to work on time. Women who were not breastfeeding were not allowed to visit their children. Halimah devoted part of her lunch break for commuting to breastfeed her baby at the center, located about two kilometers from her work site. “After I ate porridge at my work site and got permission from the mekang to feed my baby [at the childcare center], I ran quickly toward the place. I felt that my stomach was digesting and that the porridge almost came out of my mouth, but I tried to hold it back. When I got there, I breastfed my baby quickly so I would return to work on time.” For some women, caring for their baby ended abruptly with the death of their child. These women suffered from guilt and blamed themselves for their baby’s death. Even today, Rohimah still feels guilty about the loss of her newborn. In early 1977, her husband was taken away to be executed. Rohimah was traumatized by the death, but was somewhat comforted that her baby boy was still alive. Several months later, her ill son died when she left him in a hammock alone to get porridge at the communal dining hall to feed him. Afterward, she felt extremely lonely. She talked about her devastation in both interviews. With a solemn expression, Rohimah blamed herself in the following way: “I should not have left him alone in the hut, in the least I could have taken care of him in the last minute. However, I could not find anyone to look after him while I went to get porridge to feed him since he was sick. Sadly, I returned only to find out that he had passed away.”
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After her husband was killed, Seila made an effort to take care of her two children, a girl and a boy. She usually kept a portion of her ration for them to fill their stomachs. When she was asked to transfer outside her village, she brought her children with her. But after several days, her son’s testicle became swollen. She was told that her son’s disease was dangerous and could threaten his life. A child in her village had already died due to similar illness. One of the base people told her that palm sugar could cure his disease. The sun had almost set when she jumped on a bicycle borrowed from her mekang and rode towards her former village. Her mekang let her go but she had to come back to work on time the next morning. Seila recalled that the bicycle had no tire, and when it rode on the loose soil the ride was extremely bumpy. On the way, she thought of many incidents that might prevent her from getting palm sugar in time. With a lively gesture, she raised her voice, “I thought to myself, ‘what if I meet KR cadres and they stop me and ask me for a travel pass?’ At that moment I fell off a wooden bridge and was run over by the bicycle. I was frightened. I thought I was trapped by the metal gears under the bridge. After that moment I stood up and continued my journey.” Regardless of this difficulty, she finally reached the village. Once there, she dug some yams that her husband planted when he was alive and bartered them for palm sugar with the base people in the village. She returned to the brigade during the night and asked her son to sip the palm sugar. He later recovered. Seila emphasized that she prayed to God to protect her all the way to get the palm sugar, and appreciated his help in curing her son. Women nurtured their children from birth until adulthood in traditional ways. They wanted them to be free from unhalal food (or at least to have as little contact with pork as possible), stay healthy, and embrace Islam as much as they could under harsh conditions. This was a burden for them. In addition to caring for themselves, they devoted serious consideration to their children as they clung to their cultural obligations. The KR restricted relationships among family members, and, in most cases, women were blamed or punished when they asserted their emotions or showed concern for family members. The KR considered these a violation or an offence that could slow down rice production and weaken political consciousness toward the revolution. Despite this restriction, strong bonds between mother and child remained during the regime. In order to maintain this relationship, some women crossed jungles or rivers to visit their parents. Others confronted the KR verbally in order to protect their families. Sros was very attached to her mother. She said that her only wish at the time was to live with her mother. When the KR separated them and put her in children’s housing, she attempted to visit her mother. When she reached her mother, her mekang cursed her and took her back to the children’s housing, and sometimes beat her. But still she did this several times. One day a poisonous green snake bit her, and her mekang took her back to her mother to cure her.94 Halimah herself was grateful to her aging mother. She said that she missed her and wanted to show gratitude to her by bringing some palm cakes she made. During the KR anniversary in April,95 she took a canoe with her baby and cousin from her village to the other side of the river where her mother had settled. When reaching the shore, she carried a bag of palm cake in one hand and her baby in another. Unfortunately, she was caught by a KR cadre and was detained for two nights. She described: I really wanted to visit my mother because I did not see her for many years. So during the anniversary day, I was standing at a river bank to see if anybody could travel. I saw a woman traveling from the other side of the river and she told me that it was okay to travel. So I gladly asked my cousin to take me and my baby to meet my mother in Cham Leu village (my birth place). When I reached the other side, I walked silently toward my mother’s place. However, two cadres patrolling the area stopped us and yelled at me, ‘where are you going?’ I trembled and replied, ‘forgive me brother, I am visiting my mother.’ They did not let us go. Instead, they brought us to their office.96
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Halimah was not only concerned about her arrest but also the for fruit that she brought along. She felt that if it was found, she would also be accused of stealing communal food. She got rid of it along the way. She recalled, “On the way to the office, I pretended to ask them to go to pee. In fact, I wanted to throw the bag away. This way, it would not double my offence if I was to be found guilty.” Even though she explained to the cadre that she just wanted to visit her mother, she was not released. In an angry manner, Halimah exclaimed, “At the office, I pleaded for my release, saying that ‘I worked all year round from morning to night and devoted myself to the Angkar without time to rest. I just ask you for one day off to visit my mother during the Party anniversary.’” Instead, she was made to carry dirt to make up for her guilt and re-educated on political consciousness. During her re-education, Halimah thought of Po Tonle prison97 because she was afraid that she would be sent there. Two days later her chief of cooperative came to take her back. If the cooperative chief had not come to get her, Halimah would not have been released. After this punishment, Halimah returned home to a respectful greeting from her 13-year-old daughter. The girl still clung to Halimah whenever she saw her. When the child saw her mother, she saluted and hugged Halimah in public. She marked Halimah’s footprint with a small stick and kissed it to show that she had missed her. Halimah recalled, “I pitied my daughter when she left her row and came to hug me when we accidentally met after we got back from work. She said, ‘Mak (mother) I missed you, I did not know what to do, but I will mark your step with this stick so I can kiss your step every time I go to work. Seeing your footstep is like seeing you.’” This intimacy and bond of love motivated Halimah to protect her children even more than before. One day she learned that her other child was deprived of dinner because she did not report to work in the rice field on time. Halimah approached the mekang about this punishment. She recollected: I remember that it was 7:00 p.m. and the moon was so full that we could see each other clearly. The mekang got back from the river accompanied by many children. I apologized to her in advance, before I raised my question. ‘Mit, please forgive me if I say something wrong because I am naïve and illiterate. I have followed your revolution and rules so far. My question is whether the Angkar ruled that children will be deprived of a meal and punished if they did come to work on time? It is too strict. Actually, my daughter did not commit any serious offence that leads to that kind of punishment. This small mistake should be forgiven. If I had known that my daughter did not have her dinner, I would not have eaten as well.’ The mekang’s reply was very short: “Alright, I get what you mean.” This astonishing reaction ended their tense conversation. Halimah said, “I think the mekang got angry with me, but she acknowledged her fault. So I left home after that.” Although Halimah was able to convince the mekang at that moment, there was no guarantee that her daughter would be given rice the next time she came to work late. This episode shows the outrageous expectations the KR had of people both young and old, and that the KR did not clearly state levels of punishment. Instead, they depended on local leaders to decide on punishment.
Relationships between Wives and Husbands In addition to the role of mother, women also strove to be good wives, especially in times of danger. This was extremely difficult for several reasons. First, the physical separation of husband and wife severely limited the time they spent together. Men and women worked in different units, as organized by the KR to maximize productivity. At night, unmarried women and unmarried men slept in separate THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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housing units. Husbands and wives were permitted to sleep in the same room or hut; however exhaustion from the day’s hard labor prevented couples from physically bonding. Further, some couples were spied on and other couples were joined by arranged marriages ordered by the KR; these situations also limited physical contact between couples. Beyond restricted physical relations, married couples had few opportunities to socialize with each other. Along with the reasons described earlier that limited physical contact, the KR monitored social activities and conversations. People could not talk as freely or as frequently as in prior regimes for fear that they would be accused of criticizing the Party, revolution, or the Angkar. Lastly, the emotional stress that many people felt living under these conditions might have indirectly hindered romantic feelings that couples felt toward each other. Nevertheless, women still worked hard to take care of their husbands and protect them when possible. Their role as wives, although diminished in certain aspects, was also reinforced in other ways. Maly said that under the KR regime, she did not feel sexual desire towards her husband; their relationship was more like brother and sister. However, her care and concern for her husband grew stronger. She often advised him to work hard, be patient, and not to question orders so that he would survive. As a former battalion chief under the Lon Nol regime and a strong-willed man, Maly’s husband, Yeb Him, wanted to confront the KR every time they ordered him to do work that he considered inappropriate. At the same time, he was afraid that speaking out would make the KR suspicious of his identity and consequently kill him. Whenever he became frustrated by this situation, Maly consoled him and tried to give him hope in the future. She also prayed in her heart to God for her husband. Maly recounted, “I knew that he did not want to follow the KR orders because he used to command his subordinates when he held the [battalion chief ] position. It was not easy for him to listen to the KR. But I told him not to show any signs of resistance or express disappointment towards them. Working hard and being patient will help us get through this difficulty.” Maly’s husband listened to his wife and together they survived the KR regime. But their two children did not. After 1979, Maly and her husband had four more children. In 1986, her husband passed away. She has never remarried. Yeb Aishah, 66, married her husband, Rasath, before the Lon Nol regime. When the KR evacuated her to Battambang, she was eight months pregnant. She delivered her baby boy in Santuk village, Battambang province. The baby was named Sa Sokry. Unfortunately, because she could not produce enough breast milk, her baby died. One month later, the KR summoned her husband to meet with them. Rasath did not tell Aishah because he was afraid that she would be upset by the news. Indeed, Aishah said that if she had known that the KR had summoned her husband at that time, she would have been extremely worried about his safety. The KR had been spying on him for seven months on suspicion that he was Sen Mousa, a wanted man on their execution list. In fact, Rasath was Sen Mousa. Prior to the KR regime, Sen Mousa was an official in the Ministry of Agriculture, and thus a target for execution in KR regime. When he arrived at a new village after the mass evacuation, he changed his name to Sa Rasath to hide his identity. Suspecting his real identity however, the KR spied on him to observe signs that he was a former official. Fortunately, during the meeting when he was questioned by the chief of Region Rour, he was not accused of any crimes. Instead, he was asked to spy on Cham Muslims. Still concerned about her husband’s safety, Aishah told him to work without wearing a shirt, so that his light-skinned body would quickly tan. If others saw that he had a pale chest, they might accuse him of being a capitalist. If his chest was dark however, they would think that he was a laborer. She also urged him to work harder to avoid being targeted again. During our interview, Rasath expressed his appreciation towards his wife for her care and love for him. He said that Aishah gave him important advice during the regime and essentially saved his life. They now have four children together. Under the regime, Riya was conflicted over her duties as a wife and a mother. Riya’s husband, Oeun, got very ill and had blood in his stool. He was then hospitalized. When Riya visited her husband, she was torn between her responsibilities toward him and her responsibilities
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toward her baby. She wanted to take care of her husband at the hospital, but her six-month old baby was starving. Since Riya was physically weak and malnourished herself, she did not produce breast milk. She wanted to leave the hospital to search for milk, but her husband asked her not to. He felt that his condition was worsening, so he asked Riya to look around the hospital or in the logistical office located close by for milk. Riya did not want to leave him alone at all, but did not want her crying baby to starve either. She decided to leave her husband at the hospital and return to the cooperative to ask for milk from some base people nearby. She thought that she would be able to see her husband after she found breast milk. However, the search for milk took her several days, and when she finally went to visit her husband he has already passed away. Riya narrated: My husband begged me not leave him and he said, ‘Darling, we love each other so much, why can’t we live with each other longer? Do not leave me alone. I may die soon. If you do not have breast milk, go to Uncle Siv to ask for traditional herbs. Do not go home.’ I could not hold my tears back and pitied him so much, but I had to leave him in order to find breast milk for the baby. I went from one house to another asking for breast milk, but nobody spared me some because they saved it for their own baby. So I kept walking until I reached my home and found a little bit of porridge to feed my baby. A few days later, I asked my sister to ask for porcupine dates from the local logistical office to drink. And then I had plenty of milk. After Riya drank medicine made from porcupine dates98, she felt stronger and her body produced breast milk again. She quickly went back to the hospital, carrying her baby along with her. On the way there, she met her mother who was returning from the hospital alone. Riya expected to hear good news about her husband. However, her mother told her that her husband had passed away. Riya recalled, “My mother asked me not to panic before she told me about my husband’s death. After hearing this, I almost dropped my baby from my arms. I felt that my body had divided into two.” Immediately, she began to recall her final moments with him at the hospital. Before Riya left the hospital to search for breast milk, she made porridge for her husband because he was given little to eat at the hospital. Upon seeing this, the hospital chief began to scold Riya and her husband for being “lazy April 17 people” who didn’t “serve the revolution.” Riya began to cry and her husband quickly consoled her, telling her not to cry so that Kha, the hospital chief, would not become angry and punish them. As he spoke, he wiped her tears. “He just wiped my tears when Kha, the hospital chief, cursed me because I cooked porridge for my husband. He had said he wanted to live longer.” This is the last memory that Riya has of her husband. Kup Aishah Aishah’s father and nephew survived the KR regime in part because of Aishah. To save their lives, she confronted, pleaded with, and outsmarted several KR cadres. Born in Trapeang Chhouk village, Kampong Thom province, Aishah always loved her family dearly. Aishah’s father was a revered elder in the village who used his sword to defend the village from thieves. In the 1960s, he received several medals from King Sihanouk in honor of his bravery and his accomplishments. When the KR entered their village, Aishah was evacuated to Sangkat Baksna, Kampong Thom province, with her family and other villagers. When her family first arrived in the new village, the KR accused her father of being a former police officer and arrested him. Although the KR restricted contact between parents and children by physically separating them, Aishah was determined to plead for her father on his behalf. She confronted the KR cadre who arrested her father and begged the man to release him. She convinced the cadre that her father was not a former police officer, and the KR cadre let him go. However, her father was arrested a second time by the same cadre. This time she could not convince the same person, so she found another cadre to whom to plead her case. She succeeded again and her father was released from prison a second time. However, when he was released he had serious wounds on his back. Her father THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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has never spoken about those wounds, or about his time in prison. He passed away a few years ago. In late 1977, Aishah’s older brother and his family were accused of being capitalists and ordered to move to a “new location.” Aishah was suspicious about the new location and believed it was a bad sign for her brother’s family. She was distraught because she knew that she could not stop them from being sent away. However, she could protect one of her brother’s children by letting the boy stay with her. She quickly convinced her sister-in-law to take Yousof, her nephew, to her unit. She told her sister-in-law that he would return in a couple of days. A few days later, the KR came to take her brother and his family to the “new location.” They never returned. Aishah later saw some base people in the area wearing her brother’s clothes; she knew immediately that he and his family had been executed. The KR then searched for Yousof, presumably to kill him. Aishah hid him in a barn near her hut and brought him rice every day. She could only hide him for a few days, however, since the KR often came to ask about him. So she sent Yousof into the jungle, where he stayed until Vietnamese troops came in 1979. Health and Hygiene As for health, there has been some discussion that doctors are few, or of mediocre quality. Their training will be improved so they can practice more professionally. Hygiene is also a matter of importance. We must emphasize hygiene also. If hygiene is maintained, people’s health is good. —Pol Pot Plans the Future99
Maly recalled that she experienced irregular periods and worried about it. “I missed it for two months or so, and I thought it had stopped altogether.” When her period returned, she was careful about her hygiene. Maly used a clean piece of cloth when her period came. “We had to be careful with our health, especially during menstruation and childbirth. I was lucky that I could use some cloth I had saved when I was a seamstress.105 I had many pieces and used them interchangeably. After I used each piece, I washed and dried it. This way I could get rid of the germs. However, sometimes I had no time to do this properly as I had a lot of work to do.” According to Maly, sanitary supplies were not distributed and it was hard for women to find virus-free cloth. Maly was lucky that she had saved some cloth, but other women who had no supplies used their skirts or other materials. There was no time off for women during their period. They had to go to work as usual. Lacking sanitation supplies during menstruation, along with a heavy workload, greatly affected women’s health. They fell ill easily. Their lives were in danger.106 It was also difficult for many women to avoid reproductive problems because they were forced back to hard labor shortly after their childbirth. Commenting on this problem, Aminah was shy. In her soft voice, she recalled, “To tell you the truth, I had womb problems during the regime. I felt that it almost came out.”107 Likewise, Riya was reluctant to reveal her health problems. When recalling this, she lowered her voice. “I worked too hard after I gave birth. I started to feel that my womb was not working well. I felt pain. I was worried.”108 When asked how they dealt with these situations, Aminah replied that she drank medicine made from the branches and bark of milk trees to increase her breast milk and cure her discomfort. Riya used a typical Khmer traditional herb that she got from a dispensary in her village. “I got frank vine109 from my local logistical office. I was told to grill it and sit on it. I did and then I felt a bit better.” However, both of them admitted that their pain flared whenever they carried heavy loads. Conclusion
Although KR leaders recognized the inferiority of their health plan as stated above, nothing was done to improve it. Hardly anyone found health services that were helpful or met their needs. Hospitals were located in old buildings, schools, or offices left behind from the previous regimes. Each hospital was equipped with ill-trained revolutionary staff, lacked modern medicine, and was reportedly unsanitary. Many Cham Muslim women found hospitals scary, and one even called them “ghost homes” (haunted houses).100 With modern medicines inaccessible, traditional remedies were used. Leaves, roots and bark were said to be part of the ancient folk pharmacopoeia of the Khmer people. Khmer traditional doctors (Kru Khmer), who were trusted to have knowledge of traditional medicines, were gathered together in the base areas.101 One common pill that people usually received was black and made of roots called “rabbit-dropping.” It was prescribed to cure a wide variety of diseases, including malaria, fever, and diarrhea. Although the sick could ask for traditional medicines at the village dispensary, the herbal medicines were limited and poorly distributed. Sometimes, the medicine could heal only minor illnesses but not serious diseases. The ineffectiveness of the medicine, combined with exhaustion and malnutrition, claimed many lives. Further, some people were poisoned when they got sick. For example, when Fatimah’s child was ill, the KR medical staff gave him some pills. Her 9-year old son got worse, however, and subsequently died. Fatimah claimed that he was poisoned. She was very upset by this and said, “the KR must have provided him with poisonous pills, so-called “sleng” seed, because his excrement was filled with blood and he died right away.”102 In addition to common diseases that jeopardized many women’s lives and those of their family members, some married and unmarried women faced menstruation and reproductive problems due to hard labor, malnutrition, lack of sanitary napkins, and lack of access to modern medicine.103 Menstruating women used whatever materials they could find to absorb their blood flow. Some women were able to protect themselves from germs, but others were exposed and became very ill. Worse, during menstruation, both married and unmarried women were forced to carry out heavy work. This had a serious affect on their health; some women stopped menstruating completely and others died.10
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The KR philosophy of women’s emancipation was merely rhetoric that the KR employed to mobilize women and exploit their labor. Along with this, the creation of cooperative units, communal dining, childcare centers, wet nurses, and gender-oriented work brigades were also just tools to maximize manual labor from women. Women were separated from their loved ones and proclaimed equal to men. But in the KR regime, forcing women into hard labor and forcing them to abandon their traditional family roles considered was “gender equality.” As a result, during the regime, families became fragile. Women, more so then men, suffered from exhaustion while performing manual labor; when they were pregnant, they were forced to work until mere days before going into labor. After giving birth, women were granted “maternity leave” for one month and assigned light work, although some were still forced to do heavy manual labor. This was incredibly devastating to their health, as they were still recovering from postpartum weakness or serious pregnancy-related illnesses. Further, the KR regime woefully lacked basic health care supplies and qualified medics. As a consequence, women suffered many health problems, including postpartum-related maladies, that sometimes resulted in death. In addition, they received inadequate food with little nutrition. In response, some women bartered jewelry for food with base people, worked in the communal kitchen to get leftover food, secretly gathered and cooked anything edible they could find, and resorted to stealing. When caught committing these activities, some were arrested and sent to re-education camps. Others were killed. Math’s wife was executed for stealing food. She had been caught by her fellow unit members while secretly inserting rice grains into her skirt hem. Her unit members reported her to the KR and she was subsequently put to death. During DK, everyday life was under surveillance; people had to be alert at every moment-– while working, eating, and even sleeping. Socializing while eating or working was not allowed; people dared not express humor or laugh. The KR sowed widespread distrust among people by encouraging them to report on each other. Livelihood meetings were held to instruct people on the proper mode of “drinking, THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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sleeping, walking, and talking” so that they developed political consciousness; and criticism/self criticism sessions were created to root out traitors, anti-revolutionaries, and enemies from within. These meetings instead produced fear, resentment, and anger among those involved in the criticism. Following these meetings, people were arrested and sent away to be killed. The KR did not liberate women from being exploited and suppressed. In fact, women became more oppressed, were excessively exploited, and had no privacy. Under the regime, the subordination of women was evident in the system of forced labor, separating family members, restricting personal freedom, and creating fear and suspicion of others. Surprisingly, however, some women found ways to resist, often subtlety. During the regime, Halimah protected her children and maintained her relationship with her mother by arguing with the KR. She defied their orders and traveled to her mother’s place to because she believed that this was the duty of a daughter and critical to maintaining family ties. Despite tremendous suffering and pain, women sacrificed a great deal for their families, showing immense courage. In a sense, they became defenders of the family. At the same time, some women felt a sense of guilt about the decisions they were forced to make. Even decades later, they continued to wonder, “Was that the right decision to make?”
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CHAPTER 3: RELIGION AND IDENTITY UNDER THREAT In my dream, I was carrying my baby, and Chhron [a KR cadre and former acquaintance] grabbed my hand and dragged me to a papaya tree near my house and then put his sword, which was very shiny, at my neck and threatened, “I will kill you because you pray.” I tried to protect myself from being killed by the sword, but all of a sudden hakim Sos appeared and asked me to accept this killing. He said to me, “Let him kill you, Halimah. Dying in the name of Allah you will go to heaven.” I thought to myself that I have been trying to fulfill my religious obligation as a good Muslim in order to go to heaven, so why not follow his advice. Thus, I no longer protected myself from being killed. I stretched my body and remained motionless. But then I woke up from the dream immediately and looked for my small children who slept near me. I trembled, sobbed and was terrified. I thought it was real. Thanks to Allah, it was not. I felt relief when seeing my children near me. —Halimah, Cham Muslim survivor.110 Religion was incompatible with the KR regime’s socialist ideology and was an obstacle in building a pure socialist state, so all religions had to be eliminated. Ethnic groups were also seen as an obstacle to a utopian agrarian society. By assimilating all these groups into the Khmer majority and punishing those who resisted, the KR believed that it could achieve its goals.111 In order to destroy the foundations of Islam, the KR implemented a wide range of practices and policies targeting the Cham Muslim community: (1) killing religious leaders, Islamic teachers, and those who challenged the revolution, (2) destroying copies of the Qur’an and other religious books, (3) profaning mosques and graves, (4) closing down Qur’anic schools, (5) forcing people to believe in the Angkar, rather than God, (6) forcing people to work hard in the hopes that they would forget to worship, (7) forcing people to relinquish religion, so that they would work more, and (8) assimilating people into the majority Buddhist Khmer community and treating them as Khmer. The KR policies regarding religion and ethnicity had severe effects on Cham Muslims. These policies caused Cham Muslims to rebel against the KR to free themselves from the violent rule. Some male religious leaders risked their lives in the name of religion.112 Undoubtedly, Cham women also suffered greatly when leaders of their community and religion were killed. Further, segregation, suppression, and punishment during the DK regime created a dilemma for women; they were caught between their fundamental moral principles and survival. This chapter describes the various ways that the KR forbade Islam and ethnic identity, the effects of these policies on women’s issues, and the various responses. It also discusses the principle of patience in Islam, which provided Cham Muslim women with the moral strength to persevere and live under unimaginable conditions. Cham Muslim women felt guilty and sometimes felt they had betrayed Islam when they failed to practice Islamic rituals or were unable to properly comply with the traditional roles of their ethnic identity. Paradoxically, this reinforced their attachment to their Cham identity and their religion. As the women narrate their experiences, we learn more about the larger issues with regard to Cham Muslim communities and other minorities during the KR period. Through their narratives, I discovered that although state violence and genocidal policies had devastating effects on Islamic institutions and practices, they simultaneously produced moral strength and responses that, to some extent, motivated women to hold on to their religion and ethnic identity in new ways, which in turn helped women to survive. In response to these policies,
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women transformed traditional practices to accommodate the suppression and the loss of male religious leaders. These new practices were a combination of emotional and intellectual resistance. Women limited religious performances and suppressed ethnic identity, but increased profession of faith in their hearts (known as declaration of intention) and secretly performed religious rituals and rites in whatever way they could, based largely on the shabar Islamic principle. the destruction of the Cham Muslim Community Every citizen of Kampuchea has the right to worship according to any religion and the right not to worship according to any religion. Reactionary religions which are detrimental to Democratic Kampuchea and Kampuchean people are absolutely forbidden.113 The excerpt cited above from the DK constitution is paradoxical and contradictory. Although the first half suggests that the KR were sympathetic to any religion, the second part emphasizes that all religions are reactionary and need to be eradicated. The KR considered Buddhism an exploitative religion.114 As for Islam, the oral histories of Cham women illustrate that the regime considered Islam a polluted and inferior religion. In regards to the Cham ethnic group, the KR criticized them for the loss of their territory, the Kingdom of Champa, to the Vietnamese.115 Halimah felt extreme resentment as she commented on this issue, “They [base people and Khmer Rouge cadres], scolded us for losing our territory and settling in Cambodia. They humiliated us.” The banning of religious beliefs and practices flowed downward from top KR leaders to zone leaders, regional leaders, district chiefs, and cooperative chiefs. The cooperative chief, as well as the KR organization, played an important role in implementing the plans and policies. The KR organized meetings and warned of serious consequences for anyone who resisted KR policies. They closed down or destroyed mosques, pagodas, Buddha statues, relics, churches, and religious books. Copies of the Qur’an, muqqadam, kitab, Buddhist Tripitaka, and other so-called “reactionary items” were collected and destroyed. The KR had various means of destroying or profaning Islamic sacred texts. They burned them, threw them into the river, or used them as toilet paper, which angered many Cham Muslims. Aminah recalled: I was suppressed in all aspects of my life during the Khmer Rouge [regime]. Personally, I could neither laugh nor cry because I was asked not to express my emotions or mourn. When the KR collectivized all my belongings and destroyed my religious books such as the muqqadam, I could not hold my tears back. I think that I have the right to mourn what I lost, don’t I? But when the KR forcibly asked me what happened, I lied to them that dust accidentally got into my eyes. I dared not tell them the truth; otherwise, I would be punished.116 The attempted destruction of Islam and other religions became widespread in early 1976, after the DK constitution was promulgated. Before that, the KR banned religion in areas they controlled. In liberated zones, Islamic prayer had been banned before the KR came to power in 1975. In many villages in Kroch Chhmar district, such as Trea village, Koh Phal village, and Svay Khleang village, the KR forbade Islamic practices and arrested religious leaders, soldiers, officials, and Qur’anic teachers beginning in 1974. Suppression of Islam in other areas began as early as 1973. The former Cambodian representative to the United Nations during the Lon Nol regime, Peang Abdul Ghaffar, proclaimed in 1976, “When the Communists stressed that they would not allow prayers five times a day as the Khmer Moslems requested, the invaders, who had abducted only selected villagers, began to arrest the Khmer Moslems in earnest beginning November, 1973. To date, at least 300 Khmer Moslems have been arrested, a large majority of whom are from Kroch Chhmar district, Kampong Cham province. Most of the arrested persons were prominent Moslem villagers and religious leaders, especially Koranic teachers.”117 THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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To implement their ban on religion, the KR collected and destroyed religious texts, profaned religious shrines, killed religious leaders and teachers, and closed down religious schools.118 Some religious leaders, who were mostly men, were able to hide their identities and survived. Others could not. Cham Muslim women, who were not killed for being religious leaders since men occupied these positions, hid their religious texts. Alongside prohibiting religion, the KR proceeded to erase the identity of each ethnic minority group by ordering people to embrace a single race: Khmer. In the Cambodian context, the term race is more widely used than ethnicity. According to a linguist professor, race, “pouch” or “sas,” denotes a common origin or lineage of a group of individuals or animals, plants and so forth. Race further encompasses a religion associated with a group of individuals. For example, the Cham race is a group of individuals in which the majority of the people practice Islam. Ethnicity, or “cheat punthu,” refers to a group of individuals whose heredity is derived from genes which define their characteristics as different from others within a society. Nationality is membership of a nation or sovereign state. All Cambodian people, regardless of their ethnicity, hold Cambodian nationality. The KR instituted a racist, chauvinistic policy of forced assimilation which amounted to the “Khmerization” of the Cham and other ethnic minorities. The KR declared that all languages other than Khmer were illegal, and that the Cham language was considered foreign. Thus, Cham Muslims were not permitted to express their ethnic identity and had to become “Khmer” according to the KR concept of a perfect Khmer nation. In a decree sent to the provinces (with additions in brackets by David Hawk), the Khmer Rouge declared that: There is one Kampuchean revolution. In Kampuchea there is one nation, and one language, the Khmer language. From now on the various nationalities [listed according to province] do not exist any longer in Kampuchea. Therefore [Cham] individuals must change their names by taking new ones similar to Khmer names. The Cham mentality [Cham nationally, language, costume, habits, and religion] are abolished. Those who do not abide by this order will reap all consequences. After the KR victory in 1975, the implementation and enforcement of radical KR policies led to rebellions from Cham Muslims, and almost all were repressed. Researcher Ysa Osman found that in the Northern Zone during DK, the KR leadership considered the Cham an “enemy” and a “viable threat,” after the Cham rebellions. A report sent to Pol Pot on the topic of the “enemies” of the revolution by Ke Pauk, the Secretary of the Northern Zone and dated April, 1976, accused the Cham of being “former Lon Nol soldiers, some former chairmen of cooperatives who had served under the older smaller-scale system.”119 Those identified as a former Lon Nol soldier were not spared and were among the first groups to be immediately eliminated when the KR took power on April 17, 1975. The KR checked the background of all cooperative leaders put in place from 1973-1975. Many of these people were then removed from their position and some were killed. In order to erase the Cham Muslim identity, the KR forced all Cham Muslims to comply with the rules regarding race, religion, and everyday practices. The KR decreed that since all people were Khmer and there were no other ethnicities or religious groups, the whole population had to eat the same food and act the same way. All minority groups were forced to be “Khmer.” This had a severe impact on Cham Muslims, especially Cham Muslim women, because they could not comply with Islamic laws and rules regarding women’s code of conduct, such as wearing head scarves and traditional long dresses. These restrictions forced women to choose between maintaining their ethnic and religious identity or surviving; if they did not obey KR policies, they would be punished or killed. The killing of male religious leaders affected the Cham Muslim community and Cham Muslim women. As in many religions, leadership
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positions in Islam are generally held by men. Cham men led the practices and preached the principles of Islam which served as the foundation of the Cham community. Without these leaders, both the community and Cham Muslim women lacked religious instruction and guidance. Further, women’s important role as caretakers of Islamic practices was severely limited by the repressive policies. The system of maintaining and reinforcing religious and cultural practices in Cham Muslim society, in which the husband teaches his wife and the wife teaches their children, was transformed. Parents’ authority over their children was transferred to the Angkar. The family bond, as discussed in Chapter Two, was transformed to a communal one. Family law and discipline were destroyed by the Angkar, and in return the KR indoctrinated people with their own discipline and ideologies. The practice of visiting fellow Chams’ houses or shrines with family members and relatives, known as ziyarah, was not permitted. This custom is extremely significant in Islam and builds relationships among Muslims, uniting them under the brotherhood and sisterhood of Islam. Not making regular ziyarah is frowned upon and some regard it as weakening one’s Muslim identity. Further, Qur’anic recitations or religious gatherings were not allowed. Usually, those who were caught practicing religious acts were punished. When the KR applied its communist policies in liberated zones, it caused resentment among some people, which sometimes led to physical resistance. After the KR victory over the country in 1975, the enforcement of its policies and suppression caused many rebellions from both Cham Muslim and non-Cham Muslim communities. But almost all the rebellions were suppressed. Several rebellions in Cham Muslim communities have been identified; they took place one after another. Trea village of Kampong Cham province was the first rebellious site; a group of about a dozen young men burnt down the KR office in 1973 after the KR attacked religion and arrested educated religious persons such as hakim and tuon. Most of the protestors were arrested. Some escaped. Sos Rumly, who joined in burning the KR commune hall, escaped into a forest until the KR took over the country. “I knew about the arrests in advance, so I went to hide in the forest. I was not a leader of this rebellion, so they did not hunt me at that time.”120 In the same year, a group of young men in Chroy Metrei village of Kandal province protested the KR order that Cham women cut their hair and remove their headscarves. But it was not a physical confrontation. The head of the group, Sa Rasath, negotiated with the KR for more time for women to adapt to the new policy. The KR agreed to the proposal on condition that the people followed the policy soon.121 In late 1975, two open and large scale rebellions took place in Koh Phal and Svay Khleang villages of Kampong Cham province after the KR forbade Islam, forced women to cut their hair and remove their scarves, and arrested Cham Muslim elders and imam. This led to a physical confrontation between the KR and the people. As a result, several KR cadres were killed by the protestors and hundreds of Cham families were killed or arrested by the KR.122 A late rebellion took place in Tuol Toteung commune of Preah Sihanouk province in 1976. But it was different from the previous rebellions because it included Khmer men and women who resented the regime’s policies. About 40 rebels formed the resistance. They divided into two groups, with the majority hiding themselves in the mountains along National Road 4. Some of them were former KR spies and cadres. At first they wanted to take their families to Vietnam, but when they could not, they left the women at home. They hid some rice and weapons in the mountains, and fought from the mountaintops. Sometimes they bombed the KR in Chong Ksach and other nearby villages, and then hid again in the mountains. In response to this, the KR searched for anyone associated with the rebels, especially for their wives and relatives still living in the villages. They were to be killed. Another group of rebels took a boat to Thailand and then Malaysia to seek military and financial support from these countries to fight the KR. However, before reaching Thailand their boat was devastated by a storm, leaving two dead. The survivors continued their journey but could not return to help the first rebel group because they failed to secure support. 123 I had a chance to meet with the only two surviving rebels and a child of one of the rebels from among THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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those in the province. The two survivors reported that most of those who hid themselves in the mountains survived the regime; however, their families and relatives were all killed. For example, Yeb and Yaub’s families were executed. In all of these rebellions, men were at the forefront. Women remained in the background, supporting the men in various ways. They packed food and prayed for their husbands, fathers, and brothers in the fight for freedom. In Koh Phal and Svay Khleang rebellions, a few women were arrested and imprisoned. In Tuol Toeung and Chong Ksach villages, women died at the hands of the KR who hunted their husbands and family members. The Responses of Cham Muslim Women Cham Muslims were prohibited from carrying out required Islamic rituals, known as the Five Pillars of Islam. They entail the profession of faith (shahadah), prayer (solat), fasting (sawm), charity or tax (zakat), and a pilgrimage to Mecca (haj). Due to the KR suppression, only the profession of faith was practiced often by Cham Muslims because it could be done in the mind. Prayer and fasting were practiced in very limited ways by Cham Muslims. Fasting was slightly easier to do than praying because it was less noticeable; however, both were extremely risky. Prayer requires activities of the mind, body, and soul; the act of bowing, standing, and recitation during praying were hard to hide from others. Fasting, which requires strong physical and spiritual strength, could be done by requesting to eat at home. When at home, the food was not eaten and saved for a later time. Although the KR warned Halimah not to perform Islamic rituals, she secretly prayed. In Islam, before praying each time, a follower has to wash first for purification. To perform the wudu (ablution), Halimah went to the river near her village after she returned from work in the evenings. There, she hurriedly washed herself and then went on to secretly pray in a discrete location. She did this occasionally under the regime. In one instance, however, she was interrupted by a KR medicine distributor while praying. Cleverly, when the KR approached her house, she immediately stopped praying, covered her white prayer dress, and pretended to be sick. Speaking fast, Halimah described the meeting: I was performing the fard ashar [evening prayer], and had recited, I think, two rak’at [unit of prayer].124 My sister-in-law, who was not feeling well, did not realize I was praying, and she called a KR physician to come to my hut to get some pills. I was very afraid and did not know what to do because I was still in my white prayer dress. If I stopped praying it meant that I feared human beings more than God, but if I continued praying, the KR would see me and report to the chief of the cooperative and I would be punished or killed. I wrapped myself in a red blanket so the KR would not see my prayer dress and I pretended that I had a fever, asking for some pills to cure it. The KR medicine distributor, believing that she was a patient, gave her pills and then left. Quickly pretending to be sick saved her life while still being faithful to God. After the KR physician had been gone for a while, she continued to pray. The dream described in the beginning of this chapter suggests that Halimah believed that Chhron, the KR cadre, would kill her for worshiping God. She accepted this and decided to die as a martyr and go to heaven after hakim Sos appeared and told her to die in the name of Allah. Interestingly, however, after she woke, she quickly looked for her children. She said that she felt guilty after awaking because if she died, then she would not be able to take care of her children. Further, her husband, who presently is a hakim and at that time was well versed in the Qur’an, warned her not to pray in order to avoid punishment and to continue living so that she could take care of the children. Sitting with her during the interview, he explained his perspective on the matter.
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During the KR regime, Halimah was caught between different interpretations of Qur’anic verses on praying, one provided by hakim Sos and the other her husband. Halimah recalled that she told her husband, “It is hard for me to choose.” After much consideration, however, she decided not to pray anymore and hid her prayer dress (mukana) from the KR. “I folded the prayer dress and put it in the pillow of my newborn daughter while some women would use their prayer dress for diapers.” Although she did not pray, in her heart she declared to Allah her intention to pray, known as niat (declaration of intention). At this point in her narration, Halimah paused for a moment. Both she and I sighed as we recognized the tensions regarding prayer under Islam. As a follower of Islam and a researcher, I knew the debates surrounding the complexities of ritual interpretation and Islamic jurisprudence. I also knew that these debates and issues place people, especially women, in difficult positions when they strive to be devout followers of Islam during regimes characterized by suppression and punishment. Some Cham Muslim women adopted a form of sitting-gesture prayer. Under normal conditions, elderly persons and those who are physically weak may pray in this way for health reasons. Under the KR regime, Zainoab adopted this prayer position since prayers under Islam require the unification of specific gestures (posture and hand movements), a focused mind, and soul. She often sat down and prayed because she could not give up prayer immediately, even though the KR insisted that she do so. During the interview, Zainoab also carefully showed me how to perform a sitting-gesture prayer and explained: You have to know the kibla [direction of prayer which faces Mecca] so that you can pray no matter your physical movements, as long as you know its rukun [principles]. I think Allah, the Almighty, knows my intention. Besides adopting the sitting-gesture prayer under the regime, Zainoab said she fasted occasionally during the month of Ramadan in 1975, when she was still strong. At that time she had the physical strength to fast because the ration of food was reasonable and the labor was not yet back-breaking. In order to fast, she asked the KR if she could eat at home. Once home, she waited until sunset or before sunrise to eat. Thus, she kept her lunch ration for breaking her fast at sunset and her evening meal for eating before sunrise. Later, however, she forced herself to give up fasting due to exhaustion and growing suspicion from the KR. She recalled, “It was not easy to observe religious rituals during the KR, but I tried several times to fast [during Ramadan] because I did not want to miss so many times. Otherwise, I would owe God a lot.” During Ramadan, if a Muslim cannot fast due to sickness or weakness, they make up the missed days at a later time. Caught between religious observance and survival, Halimah and Zainoab embarked on similar, subtle forms of resistance. They found ways to still express their devotion to Islam by limiting the physical aspects of worship, while maintaining the spiritual and mental aspects of worship. Therefore, on a small level, they were able to observe their religion and preserve their relationship with God. Since the KR prohibited funerals in general, Cham Muslims could not perform Islamic burials. For Cham, the funeral ceremony is considered both a religious ritual and an expression of their Muslim identity. When a person has passed away, water is first poured over the body for purification. The body is then wrapped in white cloth. A religious authority recites blessings in Arabic for the person’s soul, that it may escape God’s punishment and enter heaven. Lastly, the body is buried. It is extremely important for Cham Muslims to perform the ceremony so that the soul will rest in peace. Whether the person’s soul will escape punishment and rest in peace is dependent upon the deeds of the person while they were alive. Under the regime, proper Cham funerals did not take place, but some Cham Muslim women secretly recited shortened blessings and quickly poured water on the bodies of Cham Muslims. After her husband was killed in Po Tonle prison, Kalichip and her children were evacuated to Pursat province. She had to do heavy work,
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including carrying soil to build a dam, working the rice fields, and performing other agricultural jobs assigned by the KR. Although busy and exhausted, she volunteered to bury the dead on several occasions. The KR, seeing that Kalichip worked hard, assigned her the regular task of burying bodies. After work each evening, she helped bury those who died of starvation, exhaustion, and disease in her cooperative. At least three or four people died every day from 1977-1978 due to starvation and disease. Kalichip did not remember the total number of people she buried because there were too many to keep track of. Although the job was not fully sas (pure) according to Islam, she still continued her work as best as possible because she felt it was important. She felt that she was playing a part in helping the deceased to rest in peace, and she felt a sense of blessing from God for her work. When she had to bury a Cham body, Kalichip secretly blessed it and poured water over the body. The KR did not ask me to do this task [bury the dead], but I pitied the dead bodies. Some were not buried properly, allowing wild animals to dig them out of the pit. Some people asked me to help bury them when they died, and I promised to do so. I rarely asked permission from the KR to bury the dead and pour water to purify the Cham Muslim bodies before I buried them; I did it on my own without telling them. Samraub, an evacuee, helped me with carrying the dead bodies for burial.125 Kalichip recalled talking with a hajaj (female Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca) about her burial: I pitied her so I tried to help her as much as I could. Before she died, she pleaded with me to help take care of her body so that it would not be torn by wild dogs or other wild animals and also to recite blessings so that her soul will rest in peace. Some Cham women pleaded with the KR to allow them to perform their relatives’ funeral; the KR were not sympathetic. People were not even allowed to mourn over the dead bodies of their relatives. After her husband died, Riya tried to have his body prepared (rinsed and wrapped in cloth) and buried by several Cham Muslim men who were also April 17 evacuees, but she was not allowed to perform the rites. Kha, head of a hospital in her area, criticized those who cried over their husbands’ deaths. Riya recalled: They used about seven pieces of bamboo to carry my husband’s body to burial on a hill. It was miserable. At the burial site, I did not cry in front of Kha because I did not want him to scold me. Another woman whose husband’s body was buried near my husband was crying, and Kha scolded her by saying, “Look at Mit Ya [Riya was called Mit Ya]. She is not crying at all. What about you? Why are you crying?’ I was sick of his sarcastic words.
Cham Ethnic and Religious Identity Persecution No ethnic identities were recognized during the regime because there was only one race, the Khmer race. Everyone was forced to dress in the same clothing (black pajamas), speak the same language (Khmer), and adopt KR revolutionary names (“chhmuoh pakdevat”) which involved adding the prefix mit (“comrade”) to one’s name. This affected everyone, particularly ethnic minority groups because they had to completely adapt to this new order. For Cham Muslims, it severely affected ethnic and religious identities that are bound by strict Islamic law. It commands all Muslim followers to comply. Local KR cadre in Halimah’s area claimed that Cham names were difficult for them to pronounce and were not smooth like Khmer names. Cham Muslim women were not permitted to wear headscarves and forced to cut their hair short. In order to avoid discrimination or being targeted, most Cham Muslims shortened their names or changed them THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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to Khmer names, and tried to behave like “Khmer” at all times. According to the Cham Muslim women interviewed, Cham names were changed in several ways: 1) from the original Cham Muslim name to another Cham Muslim name to hide one’s background; 2) from the original Cham Muslim name to a Khmer name, and 3) shortening the original Cham Muslim name. Maly’s original name was Chy Krim Naly (a Cham Muslim name), but due to her constant fear of being known as a student, she changed her name to Aminah (another Cham Muslim name) during the KR regime. Lek Riya shortened her original Chvea name “Riya” to “Ya”, and was called “Mit Ya.” Another Cham woman, Aminah, was given the Khmer name Thea by her unit leader.126 She said that she had to accept it. Some Cham Muslim women who were called only by their first name nearly forgot their last name. Sros was a child during the regime and placed in children’s work unit. She was only called “Sros” during those four years and was never called Teur Sros, her full name, nor did she have the occasion to write her full name. Regarding traditional dress, though Cham Muslim women wore both traditional Cham Khmer clothing, but they most often wore Cham dresses. During the KR regime, they were forced to dress in black clothing, or “Khmer Rouge style”.127 Traditionally, Cham women grew their hair long, rarely cutting it and usually wearing it in a bun. However, the KR forced them to cut their hair. For Khmer women, hair length was a matter of personal preference, but for Cham Muslim women, a haircut was a cultural violation. In Cham culture, long hair signified a woman’s morality and fidelity toward her husband. In ancient times, Cham women used their long hair to wash the feet of their husbands. This custom was also practiced in the recent past. Yeb Aishah said that after she married in the early 1970s, she washed the feet of her husband with her long hair. Zainoab said that she loved her long hair and was very upset when she had to cut it short. While wearing headscarves was not permitted, Cham Muslim women used the krama distributed by the KR to cover their head. This way they felt they fulfilled their obligation as Muslim women. Plus, the headscarf also provided protection from the sun. But even that wasn’t always possible. Sos Pheah, an Islamic religious teacher, recalled when the KR arrested and killed Cham leaders and villagers in her hometown of Tuol La-veang village; the entire village and her family were evacuated to a village far from her hometown. She resented the KR treatment of her religion and culture. I know that Muslim women are supposed to cover their heads properly, so I tried to use my krama to cover my hair. In this way, I felt better. However, my mekang grabbed it from me. It seemed like she did not want me to cover my hair.128 In order to further erase the Cham and Chvea ethnic groups, the KR forbade speaking the Cham and Malay languages. Many Cambodian Muslims are bilingual,129 speaking both Cham and Khmer or Malay (a language akin to bahasa Indonesia) and Khmer. For Cham families, Cham is spoken at home. For many Chvea people, Khmer is mixed with some Malay to communicate with family. Thus, when these languages were banned, people found it hard to communicate with their children and relatives, especially in Cham families. Some women received warnings or were even threatened with death when they were accused of speaking Cham. Even though they did not speak their language in public, some Cham Muslim women secretly used it to communicate with relatives. Halimah told a story about speaking the Cham language under the KR regime. The roof of her hut in the new village leaked in heavy rain and her family members were soaked. One day when she came back from work around 7 p.m., her sister-in-law, who stayed home with an ill child, spoke to her in the Cham language saying, “Halimah, tomorrow Ta [grandfather] will come to fix our roof.” Halimah replied in Cham language, “Great, if he comes tomorrow, we will not be soaked with rain anymore.” During the interview, she exclaimed as she touched her chest to signify that something unexpected happened. “[The three KR cadres] who spied on us appeared in front of my hut,
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dragging a long iron chain about two to three meters, and questioned us, ‘what language did you speak and what was it about?’ and I replied to them, ‘the same as mentioned earlier.’ They warned us, ‘Do not speak any foreign language [Cham] any longer. If you still resist, this chain will be used on you.’” She then explained her relationship with Chhron, one of the three KR cadres who spied on her, and her views on the usage of Cham language in Cambodia. I was distressed by this. I could not believe that Chhron accused me of speaking a foreign language; it is not foreign at all. Just before the KR came to power, his mother often came to my village to sell boiled corn in front of my house; we knew each other and were friendly. But he ignored our previous relationship. Cham people and their language are not alien to the Khmer. The former and the latter existed in Cambodia before the Chinese and Vietnamese came. The Chams and Khmer were like brothers and sisters. I could not understand why everything changed. This might be why he wanted to treat me badly. I dared not speak Cham anymore during the regime. Chhron and his mother lived in the village next to Halima’s . When his mother began selling corn in Halimah’s village, Chhron was just a child. Halimah met Chhron occasionally when he helped his mother. By the time the KR entered Phnom Penh, Chhron was in his late teens and a KR cadre. His relationship with Halimah changed; they were no longer old acquaintances. Chhron’s role under the regime was to spy on her and other people in the cooperative. Spying under the KR meant not just the activity of spying itself, but also threatening and arresting those spied upon. Thus, Chhron, the young boy that Halimah watched grow up over the years, was now a KR spy who threatened to kill her. Another Cham Muslim woman, Phaung Lim, whose husband had been killed, was warned by a KR cadre to not speak Cham anymore because it was against the rule of the Angkar. Lim recalled: When I spoke Cham, my mekang scolded, “Why do you still use Cham, why don’t you give it up?” I dared not speak it [again]. However, I could not help mixing a few Cham words when I spoke Khmer to my relatives during that time because my accent was more Cham and I could not recall some words in Khmer. I used it covertly.130 When I was interviewing her, I noticed that Lim still used Cham for some words which she did not know in Khmer. Both Halimah and Lim were confronted by the KR when they spoke Cham. Their responses were similar; they stopped speaking Cham for fear of being punished or killed. As the story of Halimah shows, the KR considered the Cham language a foreign language. In this way, they could easily target those who spoke Cham and eliminate them, thereby reaching their goal of eradicating Cham ethnic identity. The KR not only targeted people who spoke Cham; those with accents (Cham, Malay, or otherwise) were also threatened and sometimes killed. When the killings escalated in Kampong Cham province after several open rebellions in 1975, Cham and those who were assumed to be Cham were immediately murdered. Those who were not Cham Muslims but lived in the same village with Cham Muslims were also in danger during the KR search for rebels. Mouy Sreang Khauv, a native of Phum Kokor village, Kampong Cham province, recalled her experience during the searches: They pulled off my blanket to see my face. They could tell by my accent whether I was a Cham. The Muslims in my village were killed. They wanted to uproot them. I don’t know why. Hundreds of them; even children were killed. They killed Mas, the last Muslim woman, after they pulled her out of hiding. They arrested us with the intention of killing us. They first woke us up and pulled off our blankets at night. They made us talk to try to hear our accent to see if we THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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were Malay. They wanted to clean out all the Malays. Then to make it easy, they lied to us that the Angkar wanted the whole village of about 300 people to move to another district. They wanted to kill us all at one time. But we were lucky. We were stopped at a ditch full of corpses by a messenger who arrived at the last minute of our lives. He held a piece of paper telling our killers to wait.131 To achieve their policies, the KR also tried to force Cham Muslim women to marry Khmer men. Sem Fatimah called it a “one blood, one flesh,” policy. The KR meant to fully assimilate Cham Muslims through marriage. But not all women accepted the proposal. Some chose a Cham Muslim husband or remained widows. For example, Sary and Fatimah resisted and turned to hard work to deal with the issue. After her husband was killed, Sary was drafted into a widow’s mobile bridge. Her mekang asked her to take a Khmer husband. She refused, saying that she did not want to marry again so soon. She preferred serving the revolution. Another widow, Fatimah, was also asked to take a new husband, but she too refused. She recalled that when the KR came to Cham Krom village in 1973, she and other villagers fled to Vietnam by boat. She delivered her child in Koh Koy village, where she settled for several years. Eventually the KR called all refugees to return. A few decided to go back to Cambodia after the KR took power in 1975, including Fatimah’s family. Her baby was five months old when she returned. Soon after, the KR executed her husband and some other men because they had fled to Vietnam. Then Fatimah was evacuated to Kampong Svay Leu village, Kandal province, and was spied on. She said she worked hard to avoid execution. Her mekang instructed her in the KR policy of one ethnicity, “perfect Khmer,” and wanted her to marry a Khmer man so that she would become Khmer. Fatimah did not agree, but also did not refuse openly. She pleaded for time to decide. After several attempts to persuade her to take a Khmer husband, she decided to marry a Cham man, although she had little love for him at the time.132 All in all, the Cham Muslim identity was nearly destroyed. Cham were not allowed to dress in their traditional attire, speak the Cham language, worship Allah, or perform funerals; they were forced to eat and care for pigs, and some changed their names or had their names changed to KR revolutionary names. Some Cham Muslim women were also forced to accept a Khmer husband. This destruction was abrupt, brutal, and widespread. However, as some of the stories have shown, Cham Muslim women found ways to retain elements of their identity. Some adopted less noticeable prayer stances, some secretly recited Arabic blessings while burying Cham corpses, and other discreetly spoke Cham with their relatives.
They deprived us of everything from religion, culture and way of life, to personal freedom, so they have to be responsible for their acts before God and the law. I missed so many prayer times during the regime, and now I am making up the missed times. Women also struggled with a fundamental religious and moral conflict: they constantly had to choose between being faithful to their religion or surviving. In some cases, women were able to retain a small element of their religion and Cham culture despite fear and the risk of losing their lives. They secretly worshiped Allah and spoke their language in order to protect Islam and their identity; which in turn provided them the strength to continue living. Such acts as using a krama as a headscarf, bringing food home so they could fast, washing themselves before praying, and praying in their hearts, although seemingly modest, gave them a very significant connection to their religion and identity. These acts also show that Cham women used subtle and clever ways to resist and challenge the KR regime. The failure to observe religious rituals produced regret in Cham Muslim women; however these women adopted a “patience principle” from religious teaching in order to deal with their regret. This patience principle gave them hope and the strength to survive. When women talked about fear, which permeated all aspects of their lives, in the context of religious persecution and ritual practices, they blamed themselves for not being strong enough to struggle for their religion. Halimah regretted being unable to fulfill her religious obligations properly. “Every time I think about prayer and religious practices during the KR, I want to cry because we were oppressed in all aspects of our lives.” However, women remained patient because they believed that patience would transcend their fear. In Islam, patience has a significant meaning and it inspires people to accept a modest life. Women said that despite their experiences of hardship, they remained patient believing that they would be freed some day. Zainoab recalled that under the KR regime, she was always thinking of how to behave humbly and remain patient. “I could not find anybody to help under such circumstances, so I had to consult with religious teachings; the intrinsic knowledge that I have. It reminded me that I have to be patient no matter what happened.”
Conclusion The KR controlled every aspect of life, banned religion and all religious practices, and tried to eliminate the Cham Muslim identity. Those who opposed or resisted these policies were killed or punished. Many Cham Muslim men who were found to be violators of these rules, or who had participated in the rebellions, were slaughtered. Innocent religious leaders and prominent Cham were targeted and executed as well. Given that religious and community leaders were men, their deaths had a great impact on the Cham community and Cham women. Cham women lost their husbands, fathers, religious leaders, and freedom fighters. This loss was amplified under the Khmer Rouge regime because mourning and expressing similar emotions were banned along with funerals. Overall, KR policies prohibiting religion and the expression of one’s ethnicity and identity caused great distress and anger. Zainoab explicitly condemned the KR for banning religious and cultural practices and prohibiting the expression of her Cham identity. She explained:
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CHAPTER 4: IMPRISONMENT, TORTURE, AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE Nothing is more painful than seeing my father imprisoned in the same prison with me and I could not say even a word to call my father’s name. It’s even more [painful] when hearing that he [tried to] commit suicide in the prison and was buried alive. –Ros Aishah, former Cham Muslim prisoner at Koh Kyang prison133 For more than three years, re-education centers and security centers were an integral part of the Democratic Kampuchea government. In those places, inmates were tortured and executed. The extensive system of re-education centers and security centers scattered across the country at the zone, region, and district levels, particularly in the east, south and northwest areas, became an infamous symbol of the KR communist policy of terror known in Khmer as bansuth (purge). Democratic Kampuchea (DK) established munty santesokh (security offices or prisons) to re-educate and purge class enemies from within and without. According to DC-Cam’s mass grave mapping team, to date 196 security centers and 20,000 mass graves have been located across the country at the zone, region, and district levels.134 Most of the re-education and security centers were located in pagodas, schools, mosques, hospitals, or in old buildings. They were used to incarcerate prisoners of all ages, ethnicities, gender, and status.135 This chapter discusses imprisonment, including a summary of Cham women prisoners and their stories. It also provides some background on torture and its consequences in general which will help explain the circumstances that female prisoners faced. Two stories of Cham Muslim women who were imprisoned in different security centers on different charges will be profiled in this chapter. The occurrence of rape--rape before execution and rape in everyday life--will also be discussed. In the prisons, women were dehumanized and tortured psychologically and physically. The words that guards used to refer to prisoners are terms normally applied to children and animals. David Chandler asserts, “In the autobiographies that opened their confessions, the prisoners no longer noted their class background as required on other Party documents. Stripped of clothing, humanity, and class, they could be invaded, beaten, and humiliated until their memories coincided with the requirements of the Party, at which point they could be put to death.”136 For the Cham women who survived prison, this was indeed the case. The fear, shame, isolation, dishonor, confusion, and pain they endured in prison were revealed during the interviews. As expected, the memory of traumatic experiences was difficult; they were still overwhelmed by the terror and brutality that they have lived with for several decades. In regards to women in prison in Russia, Veronica Shapovalov, associate professor of Russian at San Diego State University, and author of Remembering the Darkness: Women in Soviet Prisons, argues that the totalitarian state and the guards stripped the prisoners of their identities morally and literally by putting patches of cloth with numbers on prisoners’ chests, backs, and kerchiefs. They called the inmates by the first letter of their last names, which sounded immoral, such as, “Who’s ‘M’? Step out!”137 This was similar to female prisoners in the KR security centers who were humiliated by the security guards.
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As in the Soviet prison, cadres at the security center S-21 worked on the assumption that prisoners were guilty because they had been accused, and were subhuman because they had been arrested.138 The prisoners were regarded as “less than garbage.” Turning the victims into “others,” in a racist fashion—and using words associated with animals to describe them—made them easier to mistreat and to kill. A similar process of dehumanizing has been described by writers dealing with the Holocaust and the Indonesian massacres of 1965-66.139 Background: Prisons, Rape, and Sexual Violence The KR believed that Cambodian society was besieged by both internal and external enemies. According to a KR cadre’s notebook, “internal enemies” referred to people in cooperatives ranging from the zones to the regions, about half of whom were deemed traitors to the revolution. “External enemies” included alleged CIA, KGB, and later in the regime, Vietnamese, agents. Prisoners were charged with treason, as enemies against the state and the revolution. The KR held a view that, as researcher Meng-Try Ea puts it, “Both categories of enemies were continually attempting to seize power and destroy the revolution, both on the battlefields and in the rice fields.”140 Five categories of security centers existed during DK (1975-79), ranging from sub-districts to central security centers.141 Each accommodated different kinds of prisoners. The sub-district militia center was considered the lowest level and used to detain people who had committed minor infractions such as stealing food, but who would generally be set free after a short period. The next level of security center was the district re-education and regional security center, used for “detention, interrogation, and execution.” Inmates were held for a variety of offenses, including being soldiers or civil servants of the Lon Nol regime (Khmer Republic), stealing, running back home, or speaking ill of the Angkar. Those held in the regional security centers were mostly Khmer Rouge cadres accused of betraying the revolution. The fourth category was the zone security centers. These huge prisons held a thousand or more prisoners, including Khmer Rouge soldiers and their family members. These centers served as both hard labor and execution sites. The central security center, better known as S-21 or Tuol Sleng prison, was the fifth level of the system and held political prisoners and counter-revolutionaries believed to be responsible for serious offences.142 From 1977-78, the number of inmates in each prison, especially S-21, increased dramatically due to political purges.143 As such, the KR regarded security centers as prisons. Several hundred thousand prisoners were held in security centers. Although the exact number of prisoners who died or were executed in all detention centers is unknown, Ea’s research on DK security centers in the Southwest Zone estimates that at least 153,000 died in just four prisons in that zone.144 Scholars argue that the Khmer Rouge seldom released prisoners, particularly those held in regional security centers and at S-21. People were confined and punished there, but they were rarely released, suffering the fate of death. David Chandler emphasizes, “The facility served primarily as an ante-room to death.”145 But primary documents show that about 178 prisoners were released from S-21 between 1975 and 1977, in contrast to often cited figure of seven prisoners.146 Inmates were also tortured and killed in great numbers at other top level security centers.147 Ironically, Saloth Sar (alias Pol Pot) explained to a Belgian delegation that visited DK in August, 1978, that his regime had no prison (kuk), only farming production or re-education camps.148 The farming production or re-education centers were just euphemisms, of course. In fact, prisons were widespread, with similar procedures to extract confessions of guilt from inmates, inflict torture, and execute prisoners. Although the death penalty is not mentioned in the DK constitution, most KR prisoners, especially S-21 prisoners, were executed after they confessed at the regional and zone security centers. Execution was the “final solution” to eliminating an enemy of the Party.149 Most of the prisoners were executed at or near the security center; S-21 prisoners were sent to a field located about 15 kilometers away, known
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infamously now as the “Choeung Ek killing field.” Some security cadres believed that when they executed prisoners they were merely defending the KR revolution’s goal of creating a pure society.150 As David Chandler writes, “Cadres at S-21 believed that when torturing prisoners, they were responding to the country’s needs and to the fears of those who led it.”151 Besides torture and execution, some of the prisoners died of hunger and some committed suicide in prison or requested the death penalty because they could no longer bear the torture. Ros Aisha’s father tried to commit suicide after being held at Koh Kyang prison for several days and Neang Ny requested the death penalty because she felt that she could no longer endure.152 Punishment was widespread at security centers even if prisoners were found not guilty, as was the case in some sub-districts. These prisoners were re-educated (indoctrinated in KR ideology) at the prison facility and forced to do physical labor. The “released prisoners” were exploited for hard labor so that the KR could justify that they were being re-educated to gain political consciousness. Once they demonstrated that they had been re-educated (they had worked hard), they were released from prison.153 Before the release, they were made to sign a document stating that they will never disclose any information about the places of confinement; any violation of this rule was punishable by death.154 For some, the forced labor at the security centers lasted for years after interrogation and torture. Research indicates that all of the 41 Cham Muslim prisoners at S-21 were men; there were no Cham Muslim women reported to be detained at the security prison.155 But there were women in other prisons. Based on my own research, female prisoners made up a sizeable number of all prisoners in detention centers. Scholars agree that women prisoners were more exposed to sadism and sexual abuse before being executed,156 reflecting a form of patriarchy that reinforced gender inequality.157 Some female prisoners were forced to remove all of their clothes or remain half-naked.158 The KR would then laugh at or rape them. In other cases, the KR cadre did not rape or sexually assault female prisoners for fear of punishment but physically abused them to release their aggression. Prak Khan, an S-21 interrogator, admitted in the documentary film, “The KR Killing Machine,” that he wanted to have sex with one female prisoner who was good-looking, but he could not because he would be punished. He said, “This passion instead reinforced my seeing her as an enemy and I whipped her as much as I could until she urinated.”159 Apparently, one reason female prisoners suffered tremendously from physical abuse was the inability of interrogators to rape them due to a strict rule prohibiting physical affairs with female prisoners. Consequently, sexual desire within male cadres worked to reinforce their hatred of female prisoners. Khan also said that some S-21 women prisoners were sexually abused before being executed. In her study of abuse in Timor Leste, Elizabeth Stanley argues that gender is one of the disparities that impacts “decisions to torture and the kind of treatment that victims receive.”160 This is not to say that women suffered more or less than men because they were female, but to suggest that women suffered a particular form of torture. According to her findings, some Timor Leste women prisoners were interrogated and tortured until they miscarried and some were sexually abused during the Suharto occupation.161 Cases of rape not only occurred in security centers, but also in cooperatives or at work sites. Rape was regarded as moral offence (“6th Code of Moral Conduct”) because it violated the Angkar discipline. The KR warned men not to sexually abuse women. On the surface, the law appeared to protect women from sexual abuse, but in reality it did not. Rather, it put them in danger. The law itself was limited and there were no functional mechanisms to enforce it, given that no courts existed in DK. Furthermore, a KR cadre could easily deny any allegations and the victim would be punished instead. This enabled men (junior or senior Khmer cadre) to break the law and escape justice. Also, in cases of consensual sex, both parties would be punished. In a meeting during the KR regime held in Wat Preah Net Preah, Battambang province, Youk Chhang witnessed the killing of a couple accused of having engaged in sexual intercourse without the permission of Angkar. The couple had violated the 6th Code of Conduct which stated, “Do not abuse women (forcing a woman to have consensual sex or having sex with a woman who is not your wife).” Thus women were caught in a dangerous place. If they resisted sexual advances by a KR cadre, especially a high ranking one, they would be punished. Women were often threatened by the rapist/offender; if THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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they talked, they risked death. If they had consensual sex and were caught, their life was in danger. They were terrorized and most feared being sexually assaulted in their everyday lives. In such situations, some women remained silent, some committed suicide, and others appealed to the Angkar.162 In their stories, Cham women describe pain and suffering, what they witnessed in prison, their relations with other female prisoners, and how they survived. Patience, adaptation, and hard work allowed women to survive. While in prison, they compared their status with that of male prisoners, and their personal accounts with those of the larger group. They felt that male prisoners were treated worse because men could physically confront the guards, so they posed a threat to the regime. Spiritual strength through prayer and meditation helped Cham Muslim women overcome the fear and torture they lived through. Even so, the physical and mental scars the women bear are with them still. This study of the women’s experiences does not support the argument that only women who were regarded as enemies of Angkar were raped. Such claims overlook women who were sexually abused or raped at work sites and in the cooperatives. In fact, rape and sexual assault happened in everyday life during the regime, according to women interviewed. Given that victims were silenced by their offender with threats, or were killed, or were raped before being executed, it is hard to give an estimate of how many women were sexually abused or raped under the DK regime. Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, Youk Chhang, believes that “a significant number of documents suggest that there were at least 156 cases of rape by Khmer Rouge cadre working in the cooperatives and detention centers. However, the rapists were not punished. On the contrary, the women who were raped were accused of having served the CIA, KGB, or other enemies of the Angkar and taken to be executed.”163 Scholars agree that in every culture it is hard to document rape cases, and the subject is rarely investigated.164 As such, stories of rapes of Cham Muslim women in prison are rare, and the difficulty of documenting them is compounded by the sheer difficulty of talking about such traumatic events, and their cultural and societal consequences (i.e. humiliation, ridicule, rejection, and seclusion from the community). Consequently, we encourage the victims to talk.165 We can only hear the stories of rape victims killed for violating the 6th Code of Conduct (‘moral offense’) from survivors who witnessed these acts. The discussion and stories in the next section provide more detail of the experiences of imprisoned and raped women, their responses, the legacy of the trauma, and the legal context of such crimes.
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Part I: Imprisonment and Torture The watchdogs arrived in number To seize everything from us And even the prison walls Which belong to them The women wept Secretly We kept our smiles And faced pain As we knew That to be in prison was not the problem It was about going forward.166 Female prisoners, like male prisoners, were brought to the security centers without being informed of the charge(s) against them. At the S-21 security center, women were accused of betraying the Angkar and being spies for the CIA, KGB, and Vietnam. They were often guilty by association since women, unlike men, did not hold many high positions in the KR regime. At least several thousand women were sent to S-21, often because they were the wives or children of male KR cadres who were accused of betrayal. At the prison, female prisoners were separated from males. Mothers who were imprisoned with their children were shackled and handcuffed, but their children were not. Conditions in the prisons varied from one to another. However, women said that they were usually treated less brutally than men.167 Women were shackled individually, while men were shackled in groups with an iron bar. Interrogators assumed that all prisoners were guilty from the moment they entered the prison. But the guards did not know the nature of the offenses they were supposed to uncover.168 Prisoners had to explain why they had been arrested and what they were guilty of. They were forced to confess their “crime” and describe their anti-revolutionary activities. At S-21 and other security centers, torture was prevalent. Torture was used to obtain evidence or written confessions. In the law courts of continental Europe in late medieval and early modern times, suspects were openly tortured in the presence of the court, clerk, and court functionaries.169 The accused individuals were presumed guilty from the outset and the role of the judge was to prove this by obtaining a confession. The prisoner would not know the charges and could not be represented by others in his or her defense.170 The jurists and judges who administered this system were aware of the dangers of coerced evidence, even though rules to safeguard the suspect were regulated. But the safeguards were far from perfect and the accused were still tortured to produce evidence. Due to the failure of torture to produce reliable evidence, its use was banned from the European legal system during the eighteenth century.171 In the late modern period, Elizabeth Stanley argues, torture is not only a tool to obtain information about an alleged threat but also a means to exercise state control and power over populations. The nature of torture is, of course, to terrorize and dehumanize people. Article I of the U.N. Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted December 9, 1975, defines torture as “any act by which severe pain and suffering, whether physical or mental, is THE HIJAB2OF CAMBODIA
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intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he has committed, or intimidating him or other persons.”172 Ariel Dorfman concludes that torture is a “crime committed against both a body and the imagination.173 Empathy for a torture victim is repressed during and after torture. This dehumanizes the victim so their pain is not shared pain. Torture demands this of the torturer, placing the victim outside and beyond any form of compassion or empathy, demanding the same distancing, the same numbness, on the part of those who know and close their eyes.174 Torture, therefore, corrupts not only those directly involved in the terrible contact between two bodies, one having all the power and the other all the pain, it also corrupts the whole social fabric because it prescribes silence around what has happened between those two bodies. It forces people to believe that nothing, in fact, has been happening, necessitating that we lie to ourselves about what is being done not far from us.”175 There are no personal letters or memoirs written by Cham women who were imprisoned. Their forced confessions, prison biographies and case files have disappeared. The stories below are the first written accounts of these women’s experiences in prison. The stories of women who were sexually abused and died while in prison are remembered by surviving relatives. These women suffered all three forms of torture: physical, psychological, and sexual. The torture included: isolation, restricted movement, threats of death; threats of further torture; witnessing torture; verbal abuse; personal hygiene prevention; denial of privacy, overcrowding, and food, water, and sleep deprivation. The KR tried to break down prisoners’ memories while de-humanizing them. They were completely cut off from society and sealed in a dark environment. Their future was uncertain. Ros Aishah, who was imprisoned and tortured at Koh Kyang prison, said of her feelings while imprisoned, “I did not know where to find help, I found myself trapped in the cell.”176 Women in this study reported that after imprisonment and torture their ability to concentrate diminished and they felt embarrassed, humiliated, angry, and depressed. They suffered nightmares and flashbacks, and feared attack. They felt they were still victims. During our interviews, they were silent during parts of their narration. This silence is part of their testimony because it expresses reluctance, deep pain, and intense chaotic moments which cannot be easily put into words. Silence becomes a form of communication, a “legitimate discourse on pain.”177 Dealing with the aftermath of imprisonment and torture is, on its own, insurmountable. As Elizabeth Stanley notes, torture creates a devastating legacy for victims, their families and communities.178 The victims suffered a wide range of trauma--physical, psychological, and emotional. These conditions severely impact their ability to move forward; they still view themselves as recent “victims.” Family members of torture victims commonly experience a range of trauma, demonstrating “systematic and ripple effects that go through space and time, beyond the initial impact.”179 This is also true for former Cham Muslim female prisoners such as Aishah, whose story is told below. She saw her father in prison and knew that he was later buried alive. She herself was imprisoned in Koh Kyang and tortured three times. What she endured then was tragic, but what she is enduring now is long-lasting. She acknowledges that she is weak now and forgets things easily as a consequence of the torture. Her family members are concerned about her health.
Cham Muslim Femail Prisoners’ Narratives Ros Aishah Interview with Ros Aishah, female, age 50, Prey Nup district, Sihanouk province, July 17, 2009 Journey to the prison After she was recruited to work in Romeas Ngoab village as a children’s unit leader, Aishah was proposed to by Meth, a man who worked in the same office. She declined and told him that she already had a fiancé. However, she was not engaged at the time. In 1973 her cousin
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proposed to her, but she turned him down as well. Later Ngang, Meth’s brother, accused her and Meth of committing a moral offence. Aishah said that wasn’t true; Ngang was trying to slander her good name. Aishah was then sent to work in a female mobile brigade in another village. After working in the rice fields for a period of time, Aishah grew exhausted and started to miss her parents. Before being transferred to the mobile brigade, she had visited her parents a few times. Now she wanted to visit them again. She was not allowed to go. After being denied permission several times, she came up with the idea of forging a letter authorizing travel and going home without telling the Angkar. She said that without the document, one could not travel since the regime had strict rules regarding movement. She forged the signature of Brother Chet, whom she believed to be the supervisor of the female and male units of the regiment in Bath Semoan. When asked how she came up with the idea, she explained: Well, I remembered the letter of travel issued to me before and realized that Brother Chet was the one who has the right to approve and endorse the permission letter. Thus, I forged the signature. I was concerned about my safety, but nothing was more important than seeing my parents. Her desire to see her parents grew stronger as time went on. Although she did not want to break the travel rules, she felt that it was her last resort. While people sometimes forged travel letters to visit a family member, others traveled without any documents at all. Either way, most people were caught and punished. As described in Chapter Two, Halimah came to visit her mother without a letter because she thought that it was okay to travel since it was the Party’s anniversary and because she had seen another woman travel from her mother’s village. However, she was caught and punished. Before reaching her village, Aishah needed to show the letter at five checkpoints. She safely passed three checkpoints. But at the Boeng Taprum checkpoint she was caught. Her hands were tied behind her back with a krama and she immediately felt that her life would end. She said that she also felt guilty: I have no idea how they knew this, but perhaps they could identify a forged letter and signature. They [KR guards] did not seek the truth. They accused me of being a ‘free person’ and tied my hands at the checkpoint where I was caught. And I was in despair. I knew that my life would end at that time. This was my fault. People with fake papers were arrested at checkpoints. Very few were fortunate to get through because the even though the guards were generally illiterate or less educated, were skilled at recognizing signatures, ink quality, and the presence of certain words or phrases.180 When Aishah was arrested, the KR guards did not allow her to explain. She automatically became a prisoner of the Angkar. She was forcibly walked to the Phnom Tauch (“Small Mountain”) re-education center, located near the Koh Kyang security center. It was a temporary detention center for those who committed minor mistakes such as stealing food or vegetables. However, those that the Angkar considered a threat to the revolution were transferred to Koh Kyang prison. When Aishah arrived at the center, she was interrogated and put in a cell for two nights with two other women. One of them was Ny, a teacher. Ny was released and sent back to work in her cooperative. The other was also a Cham woman named Maly, from Kampot province. Maly and Aishah were both sent to Koh Kyang prison, where Maly later died of disease. Aishah remembers that she left the Phnom Touch detention center at about 6 p.m. and arrived at Kok Kyang prison around 10 p.m. She referred to her transfer as “trading criminals,” meaning that prison wards regularly transferred prisoners from one prison to another. At Koh Kyang Security Center Koh Kyang prison was one of the most notorious prisons of DK, holding an estimated 50,000 inmates during its operation under Pheap, THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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the prison chief.181 Located on Koh Kyang Island in Sihanouk Ville, the prison complex was vast, about 2 kilometers wide. The prisoners came from various provinces, including Sihanouk Ville. The length of imprisonment could be as long as one year. The prison complex had three main buildings and a house; one building served as an office and the other two held prisoners, while the house belonged to Pheap. Aishah arrived at the prison after several hours of walking along a mountain range and traveling by boat. When she arrived, she was put into a female prison cell where she was shackled and handcuffed. She stated that most of the time, female prisoners had to lock and unlock the shackles and handcuffs by themselves. She was isolated from her parents and her community. Being in prison was torture for her. Three days later, she was walked by a guard to the interrogation center. Her shackle was removed from her ankles, but her hands remained in handcuffs. A guard walked to her room and ordered, “Come here, come to the interrogation room.” She then walked behind the guard, who led her to Pheap’s house. The guard walked her to the veranda of Pheap’s house, where the interrogation took place. His house was located about 100 meters from her jail cell. She said that men were interrogated in a separate room inside Pheap’s house. There were three persons on the veranda: a guard, a note-taker, and the interrogator (who also administered torture). She recalled: When I arrived at the interrogation cell, I saw that several men were already inside. The interrogator asked me, “Did you commit a moral offense?” I replied, “No, I did not commit such an offense. In fact, I missed my parents and wanted to see them, but the Angkar did not let me go home. However, I still went.” Suddenly, I was suffocated with a plastic bag over my head; I could not breathe normally. Then the interrogator beat me with a wooden club the size of a child’s wrist and I was suffocated again. It was very painful. Being afraid, ashamed and in pain, I leaked excrement and urine, and then fainted. I was sent back to the cell.”182 Aishah’s story differed from other accounts of interrogation under the DK regime. Her interrogator did not begin with questions such as, “Why were you arrested?” or “Why did you write the forged letter?” Instead, he accused her of other crimes, “You committed a moral offence, right?” and urged her to confess accordingly. However, she did not. When recounting the interrogation and torture, I observed that she was emotional and her voice was shaky, but she continued her story. After four or five days, the second interrogation took place. She was sent to the same place where she was tortured before. The same strategy was employed and same question was asked; Aishah’s answer also remained the same: “I missed my parents. That’s why I went home without asking the Angkar’s permission.” The same torture was inflicted on her, but she kept repeating the same answer. She said that during the course of the interrogation, she did not give any silly or inconsistent answers or say more than few words to avoid excessive torture. However, being unsatisfied with her answer, the interrogator tortured her until she fainted again. She recalled, “They beat me mercilessly until I lost consciousness for half an hour at a time. When I was conscious, they tortured me again. I refrained from screaming. In my mind, I feared, I suffered, but I did not know where to find help, except declaring sahadah [one of the five pillars of Islam]. By so doing, it means that if I died [from torture], I die in the name of Islam.” Afterward, they took Aishah back to her cell. In this situation, Elaine Scarry argues, one motive for inflicting physical pain is to destroy the victim’s ability to resist or defend themselves, thereby eliminating any evidence of challenge to their charges and torture.183 During her imprisonment, she did not worry about being sexually abused; instead, she worried constantly about being killed. She said there were about 20 other female prisoners in the same building with her. She remembered that the building faced east.
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After three interrogations, Aishah was kept in her cell, to await a decision on whether to release or execute her. In general, prisoners’ confessions were submitted to the chief of the prison, then to zone leaders, and then to senior leaders, depending on nature of alleged crimes. Some prison chief had the authority to make decisions on the fate of the prisoners. Those found to be a threat to the Angkar were executed immediately, while those who were perceived to be no threat were released. However, release did not mean a return to the cooperative. “Released prisoners” had to re-educate themselves inside the prison to pass the “revolutionary consciousness stage.”184 Fortunately, Aishah was not executed; she was forced to re-educate herself until she passed this stage. Aishah speculated that she was released because she was a former leader of a children’s unit, and because she was a peasant. Although the interrogations ceased, Aishah was still shackled at night. She said, “I felt a little bit better because I was no longer interrogated and tortured. But I still suffered from my old wounds.” Re-education and Food Aishah worked during the day around the prison complex. Her tasks included gardening, and watering vegetables and fruit trees (jackfruit, papaya, and mango) under the surveillance of prison guards. She tried to work without showing fatigue. She dared not steal food because she feared being tortured again. Her background as a children’s unit leader meant she was given a reasonable amount of food to eat, or at least more than she had during interrogation. She asserted, “I was allotted very little food to eat in the cell but when I was released to work, I was given more food to eat.”
Witnessing Torture At the Kok Kyang prison, Aishah witnessed a brutal act inflicted on a fellow female prisoner named Nhanh who had also been released to work. Because she was hungry, Nhanh stole several green peppers and hid them in the upper edge of her sarong. Unfortunately, KR messengers saw her do this. They beat her with a wooden club until she died. “I witnessed this act and Nhanh was trying to breathe, but she finally left us.” Aishah also witnessed other barbarous acts on other female prisoners from a distance while working in the compound. She said that the KR cut a prisoner’s belly open because they learned she was part Vietnamese, and then buried her alive. Aishah remembered her reaction to this. “I was terrified by this act. I badly pitied her.” Because of the inhumanity she witnessed, she was unable to escape the trauma even though she herself was no longer tortured. Persistence of Brutality Aishah has a scar on her head from a brutal punishment. During her re-education, she was in a queue with other prisoners before starting work. In line, she was suddenly hit over the head with a wooden club. The prison guard who hit her claimed that her head was not straight like others. Below is an excerpt regarding this moment: Farina: You mentioned that you have a traumatic scar on your head, how did this it come about? Aishah: Well, one day I was called to form a line and apparently my head was not perfectly straight. The guard came over to me and suddenly struck my head with a wooden club. I began bleeding. Farina: They gave you bondage cloth dressing [to wrap your wound], didn’t they? Aishah: No, not at all. I was extremely afraid of them and dared not ask for dressing. They still assigned me to work even though my head was still bleeding. They did not care. THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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Farina: Was there any way to find help? Aishah: I had no choice. Nobody would help me because they feared the guards, too. I had to go to work. I just wiped the blood with a piece of cloth when it dripped while working. Farina: Were there any hospitals near the security center? Aishah: No, I did not see any. There were no doctors or medicine when I was injured. At that time I feared that I was about to die. Aishah said when the KR cadre hit her over the head, she was stunned and speechless. She did not know how to respond. She assumed that after being “released” and “re-educated” she was relatively safe from future prison brutality as long as she obeyed instructions. However, the violent blow to her head came without warning. There were no rules that required one to stand with a straight head while forming a line. Aishah spoke about the incident in a normal tone, but sighed heavily three times. A Tuesday Death During her re-education period at Kok Kyang prison, Aishah was given shocking news. She heard that her father had been arrested on charges of stealing a coconut and would be sent prison soon. Upon hearing the news, she became extremely anxious and wanted to see her father. A few days later, her father arrived at the Kok Kyang prison. 185 One day, when the prison staff went for lunch, Aishah secretly went to see her father. Standing outside his cell, she leaned her head into the cell and he stood near the door. As they looked at one another, each was stunned to see the other’s condition. Both were also fearful that they would be caught. Aishah recalled the moment: I had taken a risk to see my father, and I was arrested and imprisoned [for forging a travel letter]. I never expected that he would end up in prison, too. I pitied him so much. He was wearing only white shorts, and was tied and shackled to a chain with other male prisoners. Mosquitoes had bit him; he would have certainly died because he had no other clothes on besides shorts. I wanted to give him a piece of cloth to cover his body, but I was afraid that they would know about our relationship. After being imprisoned for only three days, her father tried to commit suicide by biting his tongue before interrogation. Aishah knew this from Kok, a former colleague and prisoner of the Koh Kyang security center who was later assigned to watch over prisoners (after he proved his loyalty to the Angkar by working hard and following orders during his re-education). Although he was rather kind to Aishah, she did not let him know that the imprisoned man she inquired about was her father. She just asked Kok to see if he was still alive. Kok came back and told her, “The prisoner [Aishah’s father] cannot speak because he bit his tongue.” She realized that her father was still alive. Unfortunately, the prison guards took him outside the prison compound immediately and buried him alive. A great sadness entered her heart at that moment. She recalled, “It was Tuesday, I remember, when my father was dragged away and buried near the detention site. Tuesday became the day of my father’s death.” When asked why he tried to commit suicide, Aishah said she believed he was overwhelmed with despair. He had no hope that either of them would get out of prison. She reflected, “He loved me so much. He did not know I was held at the prison. I was separated from him for a long time. He might have thought that I was working in a mobile unit or something.”
Surviving the Imprisonment In 1977 the KR were looking for prisoners to help transplant rice. Not many prisoners wanted the job because of a rumor that the KR would dump these prisoners in the forest. However, Aishah decided that she had to leave the Koh Kyang prison no matter what happened to her. She recalled, “I did not want to live under the daily violence in the prison. I wanted to get out because it may save my life.” As the truck came by the prison to pick up volunteer workers, Aishah quickly got on. The truck took her and others to a central location where people were divided to go to different villages. She was placed in Taing Cha village, Kampong Speu province, where she worked in the village with base people. Interestingly, it appears that when the truck delivered the workers, no-one told the cooperative chiefs about their prison background. Thus, prisoners could lie about their background once they arrived at a new village. Aishah was one of them. She told the chief of cooperative that she was a widow, and mentioned nothing about being a prisoner so she would not be discriminated against. Her life improved in the new village. She transplanted rice and did some handicraft work. She believed that had she not left prison, her future would be uncertain. About 20 minutes into our interview, heavy rains began to fall and thunder muted parts of our conversation. We immediately moved into house to avoid the rain. Inside, Aishah continued talking, her pace and composure seemingly unaffected by the rain and lightning. With the backdrop of pounding rain and intermittent thunder, she talked about experiences in prison--the torture, interrogation, and the death of her father. As the rain and thunder abated, her story too began to shift. As she spoke about escaping prison, the sky began to clear and the rain stopped. Aishah still lives with a sense of uncertainty. Minor issues in her life seem vastly complicated and difficult to deal with. She reflected, “I know how the torture has affected my life. I am no longer able to calculate quickly [prices at the market] because of the traumatic experience. I feel confused.” Sman Ny Interview with Sman Ny, age 50, at Koh Thom district, Kandal province, September 26, 2005 The KR came to Ny’s village, Cham Krom village, Koh Khom sub-district, Kandal province, in 1973. During the evacuation of Phnom Penh in April, 1975, the vast majority of villagers, including Ny and her mother, were moved to Sambuor village, in another district. In 1977 she was sent to Po Tonle prison on charges of persuading Cham people not to eat pork. Po Tonle was once a Cham village. The Khmer Rouge evacuated all of its residents and built a prison in an existing house, extending the original structure with construction materials from other smaller homes. The prison was on the Bassak River, opposite the Cham Leu village. Him Leh was the Khmer Rouge nominated chief of Po Tonle village in 1975, but he was later imprisoned on charges of encouraging Chams to flee to Vietnam. 186 Although Ny was arrested for not eating pork and telling others not to, she believes that jealousy among base people in the cooperative contributed to her arrest. The cooks in the cooperative liked her and secretly kept some rice for her. They also always cautioned her every time pork was served because they had sympathy for her. Seeing that Ny did not consume pork, other Chams in the village followed suit. Some of the base people in the cooperative noticed, and saw that the cooks were sympathetic. According to Ny, they became jealous and upset with her. Soon, the chief of her cooperative asked her to collect bamboo, but in fact he planned to send her to Po Tonle prison. The cooperative chief had already contacted the prison chief about Ny.187 As she talked about this moment, her voice was shaky: I sometimes shared the animals that I caught from the forest with the cooks, including Ta Leang and several other
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base people in the dining hall. That’s why they helped me and kept me some rice or other food that I could eat. One day, the chief of cooperative said to me “The Angkar asked you to go to collect bamboo shoots in the forest.” I quickly thought to myself, “Am I being sent to Po Tonle prison?” because I learned that some people had been told the same thing and ultimately they ended up in prison. I was sent by boat with people to the prison. When she arrived at Po Tonle prison, she was put inside a small hall with other women. Nearby was a big house which was used to hold people charged with serious crimes. Ny did not understand why she had been put in prison until she saw a friend who worked there. After her friend informed her of her charge, she became more afraid. I was accused of being the mastermind behind provoking Cham Muslims in my cooperative not to eat pork, but I did not do that. One of the prison staff, my friend, whispered to me, “you were sent to the death camp because they accused you of destabilizing the cooperative.” I became more fearful when I heard this. I did not do anything wrong, so I left them [those who falsely accused her] to God, who will take care of this for me. Ny was fortunate because four members of the prison staff were old acquaintances. During the Lon Nol regime, she used to buy rice from Vietnam along the Cambodia-Vietnam border and sell it to distributors in Kok Thom district. Four young distributors supported the KR movement. These four acquaintances now worked at the Po Tonle prison and treated her kindly. Ny was not put in a prison cell. Instead, she was placed in a re-education center near the prison. She was neither interrogated nor tortured. She remarked: “A few prison staffers knew my background and they tried not to treat me badly. Instead, they also gave me some medicine when I had a fever.” However there were several female prison staff members who were mean to her. They cursed and criticized those who could not transplant rice well. Ny also believed that these female staff discriminated against Cham, calling the Cham language ridiculous and exotic. Ny explained: Pach and Lai were female staffers at the prison. They scolded at us when we could not transplant [rice] well or perfectly. Our movements were restricted, and we were often disciplined. Besides criticizing our work, they also said, “Cham always make noise and the language is strange.” I was upset by their humiliating remarks. But I remained patient and worked very hard to satisfy them, so that I could save my life. Ny was assigned to transplant, harvest, winnow and mill rice, and various other jobs assigned by the KR. She worked from morning to evening, and always also worked the night shift, which started after dinner and ended around 10 at night. Her jobs usually involved agricultural tasks, such as removing corn husks. Ny said that the work in the prison compound was not heavy, but it kept her busy all day. Watery porridge or corn was the main dish for her and other prisoners.
seeing the victims, she began to cry because she pitied them and felt that her turn would come soon. She described this moment: We were asked to work near the big house at night. I did not know if it was their intention to make us frightened. The prisoners usually were pushed from the house to the ground before being dragged to be executed behind the house. Some died, while others were near death after being pushed down. About five prisoners were pushed from the prison to the ground because the sound of hitting the earth was strong. The victims moaned for a while, and then they were completely quiet. Next, the victims were dragged to the grave pit near a palm tree behind the house. I dared not observe the incident because I feared it could be my turn. But I could not control myself from witnessing the violence that night as I was working near the prison. Ny was also under surveillance. The next morning, Pak, one of the KR prison staff, approached her and asked her, “Did you see it [torture] last night?” “No, I did not. I was busy removing the corn husk,” replied Ny. Pak continued, “If you did not see it, why is your face pale? “No, I did not see,” she repeated to convince him that she did not witness the torture. Ny explained to me, “If you cared about other people’s business, you would be in trouble. Thus, it was better to remain silent.” She said when she remained ‘silent’ in the prison, she tried not to express her sympathy toward prisoners even though she pitied them and worried about her own safety. She did not know if her fate would be the same as theirs. According to Ny, many prisoners at Po Tonle were interrogated and executed near the vicinity of the prison and some dead bodies were thrown into the river. Ny was not released from the re-education center until the regime collapsed. When the KR regime was toppled in 1979, she left the center and headed to her hometown. Due to the shortage of food and forced labor under the regime, she was terribly malnourished and weak; she almost could not walk back home. Reflecting on her life in the re-education center, she said, “If I had not worked hard enough, had not known some of the prison staff, and had not sought harmony with other people in the prison, I would have had the same fate as the victims I saw.” While in prison, she could not perform prayer or other religious practices, but she performed them in her heart (niat) and pleaded for help from God. Overall , she concluded, “My hard work and prior acquaintance with several of the prison guards, and, of course, God’s blessings, contributed to my survival.” While Aishah was physically tortured, Ny endured psychological torture in the re-education center. Nonetheless, both were traumatized by their experiences. As prisoners of the Angkar, both were constantly fearful that their life could end at any moment. Fortunately both of them survived to tell their stories.
She met about a dozen other Cham Muslims at the prison. All of them were women. She heard that one of her uncles was imprisoned as well, but she did not see him. Later, she heard that he had been executed, but she did not know what the charges against him were. During the interview, Ny then compared the rights of prisoners during the KR to those of the present day. She said, “The prisoners had no right to know their charges, and every decision came from above (Angkar). It is not like today, we have rights and our case is heard.” Although she was not tortured while imprisoned, fear and a sense of danger still consumed her because she witnessed directly the torture of other prisoners. She felt pain on behalf of the victims, which added to her own pain. She witnessed the torture of several prisoners in the big house while she was working with other detainees at night. The sound of painful moaning greatly frightened her. Ny recalled that one night she happened to see the guards torturing prisoners while she was removing corn husks and kernels near the big building. Upon
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Part II: Sexual Violence As discussed in Chapter Two, the KR tried to control the sexual behavior of men and women because they claimed to want people to devote themselves only to the revolution. Married couples usually met only once a month or even every three months, since they were assigned different work locations. Unmarried men and women were not allowed to have premarital sex and their contact with each other was restricted. Girls were told to maintain a strong position against having sex with men and the KR warned men against having sexual intercourse. Those found guilty would be punished. Ironically, as Elizabeth Becker noted about the KR, “On the on hand they thought sex should be restricted because it took up too much time and detracted from the chores at hand, overnight industrialization and glorification of the motherland. Yet they also decided there should be many more Cambodians to carry out this program and ordered that the population double.”188 During the regime, moral offence included everything concerning male and female relations such that “contacts between the sexes was an offense called ‘moral incorrectness.’”189 Loving each other before marriage was considered a crime punishable with a trip to a reeducation camp, security center, or with public execution. The kind of punishment depended on the decision of the respective cooperative chief. Kan Chim said that she was fortunate because she was only sent to Koh Ko security center for nine months to re-educate herself after she was found guilty of moral offence. When she was released, she had to admit her moral offence in public, promising that she would no longer make mistakes. However, she believed that many other women were killed after they were charged with this offence. She recalled, “One couple was beaten in a pit and killed because they were accused of loving each other secretly. Both of them were asked to say that they deserved death because they loved each other.”190 In this respect, sexual abuse and rape were not weapons of war or genocide as in other post-conflict regimes191 because the KR stated clearly that it went against the Angkar’s morality of discipline (vinay). Given this strict policy, rape or sexual abuse should not have occurred in everyday life (except perhaps for female prisoners because the KR had a slogan that essentially encouraged the rape of female prisoners, “Rape women deemed Enemy of the Angkar.”)192 However, if we agree that only alleged enemies of the Angkar were raped, then we greatly overlook the many victims in the cooperatives. I argue that the KR vastly miscalculated the impact of suppressed sexuality. Consequently, women suffered greatly. Conversely, the law had the opposite effect of silencing women and protecting KR cadres who sexually abused women. Thus, if an ordinary couple committed a moral offense—identified by something as simple as holding hands—then both of them would be punished. However, if a KR cadre, especially a high-ranking official, committed a moral offense, he would not be punished and instead have the victim punished or killed. Even in the case in which a KR cadre did not want to sexually abuse a woman, he could not prevent others from doing so. The story of Tang Kim illustrates this well. Tang Kim was taken to the rice fields, along with several other women, to be raped and killed. While she heard other women scream as they were raped, she pleaded with the KR cadre guarding her to help her. He did not however, and allowed the other men to rape her.193 THE HIJAB2OF CAMBODIA
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Below are stories of women who were sexually abused or raped during the regime. The first story is told by the aunt of the victim, as she was executed after being raped. The second story is comes from a Cham Muslim widow who had three children. She was abused by a KR cadre and courageously reported the abuse to the cooperative chief because she wanted justice and needed to be alive to take care of her three children. Women’s Stories The Story of Noab, Told by her Aunt, Sles Phors “We heard her scream, but we do not know how she felt.”
Sles Phors, a Cham Muslim survivor and aunt of Noab, a victim of rape.194
Phors’s husband is a former Lon Nol soldier. He traveled back and forth between Phnom Penh and Kampong Cham. During the fighting between KR and Lon Nol in 1973, he left home and stayed in “Cent huit” fort (Fort 108). When the KR came to her hometown, Rokar Leu village, Sambuor commune, Kampong Cham district, Kampong Cham province, Phors moved to live with her uncle’s family, whose son was also a Lon Nol soldier, near her home village. Later, her cousin, Smael, was killed during the fighting between Lon Nol and the KR. In April, 1975, Phors was evacuated to another district (in the same province) with her uncle’s family. There she did a number of agricultural jobs. In 1977, her uncle and aunt were arrested because of their son’s background. Before the arrest, her aunt came to Phors and asked her to take care of Noab, her only daughter. She recalled: I pitied her so much when she came to me and pleaded with me to take care of Noab. She said, “Please help take care of my daughter for me because they [the KR] will take me away and kill me. I saw them spying on my house several times.” She and my uncle then disappeared forever. I assumed that they were dead because I saw their belongings and clothes. Usually, those who were killed, their clothes would be distributed to the people in cooperative. Phors took care of Noab, who was 15 years old at that time. As a young girl, she was traumatized by the death of her parents. Noab also felt that her turn would arrive soon. She started to become paranoid; she pleaded with Phors to hide her from the KR during the day.. Her face was always extremely pale. Phors took some mats to conceal her from the KR and brought her food for about three days. Phors described this moment while tears fell down her face: Soon after her parents were killed, she pleaded with me to hide her from the KR because she knew that they would arrest her, too. She was so frightened; she looked like a crazy person. Every time I think about the KR era, I think of her. She said to me, “Mak sit (meaning the sixth child in a Cham family), please help me, the KR will come to arrest and kill me soon.” I hid her in a large container and covered her with several layers of mats. Soon after her parents were killed, she pleaded with me to hide her from the KR because she knew that they would arrest her, too. She was so frightened; she looked like a crazy person. Every time I think about the KR era, I think of her. She said to me, “Mak sit [meaning the sixth child in a Cham family], please help me, the KR will come to arrest and kill me soon.” I hid her in a large container and covered her with several layers of mats.
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Sadly, someone reported Noab’s location to the KR, and soon they came to take her away. Phors recalled: Her prediction became real. Several days after I hid her, one night at around 12 a.m., four KR cadres came to my hut and asked for Noab to help take care of someone in the cooperative who had a stomach ache. I hesitated to call Noab, but since it was the Angkar’s order, I had to follow. Noab did not want to leave the hut, but she could not refuse. She walked toward the KR hopelessly as if she knew her fate was death. I did not know where she was sent to because I dared not watch all her way. While sleeping, I was waiting for her return, but she did not. I was confused by this situation. I felt that something bad happened to her. Faced with following a KR order or a threat to the life of her niece, Phors chose to follow the order. She said that she did this for two reasons. First, the KR did not declare that they would take Noab to be executed, so Phors was uncertain of how to resist. Second, Noab belonged to the Angkar since both of her parents had died. Phors had no authority over her. The next morning when Phors was transplanting rice, some base people, who heard about the incident, gossiped about Noab. The base people said that Noab was raped before being executed. Phors pretended not to hear and kept transplanting, but inside she was devastated by the news. She wept again as she spoke: When I heard them gossip about my niece’s screaming while being raped by four cadres before her execution, I could feel her suffering. I could not hold my tears back because I had sympathy for her. But I did not let them see my tears. It was very difficult for Phors to remain indifferent on the outside while her heart was breaking. She wanted to mourn and grieve the abuse and killing of her niece. But under the KR regime, one was not allowed to overtly express emotions or the Angkar would accuse one of resenting the revolution. After her niece’s death, Phors could not focus on her work for weeks. The chief of cooperative, Aung, noticed this and planned to take her away. She narrated: The four KR cadres usually came to my hut at night and asked me, ‘Phorn, (I changed my name to Phorn because the KR did not want me to use Cham name), have you anything to eat?’ I felt it was unusual that they came to ask me at night. Suspecting this unusual behavior, I decided to ask permission from the Angkar to stay in the hospital, telling them that I was sick. Later, I was sent to Steung Trang hospital. Some KR cadres were kind; others mean and cruel. Mit Aung was mean, while yeay [grandmother] Tan was kind to me. I thought to myself that if I had stayed in my village, I would have been arrested as well. I did the right thing by moving to stay in the hospital. Ultimately, I avoided being hunted down. The death of Noab, like many other children during that time, reflects the KR slogan, “If you dig a weed, take out the roots.”195 Noab’s parents were killed because they had connections with a former Lon Nol soldier and the KR killed Noab because she was the remaining member of the family. The KR wanted to destroy the entire family. Further, when she was raped before being killed, she was robbed of her dignity as a young Cham Muslim girl. The KR also planned to get rid of Phors, her aunt, but she cleverly faked being sick to escape arrest. Sadly, Noab’s story was not uncommon under the KR regime. There are reports of many women suffering rape before they were killed; few of these stories have been recorded. We can never know the extent of fear, pain, suffering, injury, and anguish that Noab and the other women felt as they were raped while knowing that they would be executed. The KR’s slogan of “raping women deemed enemies of THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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Angkar” legitimized and undoubtedly encouraged many KR cadres to sexually assault and rape women before killing them. As such, the true figure of women who were sexually abused or raped never will be known.
sudden, Sei cut through my pants, which made me more frightened. It was the most painful moment that I have ever had.
Rape and Sexual Assault in Everyday Life Lek Riya’s Story
Although Sei already had a wife, he wanted to have sex with Riya. Using his position as a KR solider, he believed that he would get away with raping her.
After her husband’s death in 1975, Riya was left with three children: one daughter and two sons. She was asked to live with a KR family, Pou (“uncle”) He, whose son was a logistical chief. Riya lived on the first floor with her children. Her mother, sisters, and other relatives lived upstairs with the house owner.
Escaping Rape and Speaking Out
As a widow, Riya was assigned to work in the village and her children worked in the children’s unit. At night, she returned to with her children while her mother, sisters, and other relatives worked in the female mobile unit far away from the village. Although it was quiet at night, she did not feel afraid. After a while, she was asked to move in with Ta Kuch, who had a foster son named Sei. Riya worked with Ta Kuch’s wife at home. Riya recalled, “I did several kinds of work, including sewing clothes, husking and winnowing rice, and other work assigned by the village chief.” The kinds of work that Riya did were typical for widows under the KR regime. Sei, a KR soldier in his 20s, tried to seduce Riya on many occasions. At night while Riya was knitting socks for one of the base family in exchange for oil for the lantern, Sei approached her and praised her skillful knitting. He said to Riya that if his wife could do as many things as Riya, he would be so happy. Sei often watched her and asked her if she needed a pair of flip flops or any medicine. She narrated: I said to him frankly that, well, I want a pair of flip flops, but I do not know where to get it. Then he asked me again, ‘Do you have medicine?’ ‘No, I do not,’ I replied. Then when I came down to mill the rice in front the house where I was staying, he also followed me.
As Sei was undressing her, ideas of how to escape from the situation rushed through her mind. At first, she wanted to scream for help, but she was afraid that the host family, Pou San and his wife, would blame her instead because Sei was their foster son. She’d already had an issue with Pou San once before. So then Riya thought of another solution. She told him that she would allow him to make love to her, but first she had to use the bathroom. He warned Riya that if she tricked him, he would kill her. Although Riya was concerned with leaving her three children near Sei, she decided that she had to get away. So she pretended to head towards the bathroom but instead went to lie near Ta Kuch’s wife, waiting until dawn to return to her children. She described the situation: I was afraid of him [Sei] and if he had known that I made this up [having to use the bathroom], he would have followed me and killed me. But I dared not return; otherwise, I would be abused. Thus, I ended up hiding myself near the host. I knew that he would not harm my children because the person that he wanted was me. After the incident, she was determined to prevent Sei from tormenting her again. “I could not stand him anymore; otherwise, he would do the same thing next time,” she said. At dawn, Riya left the house and reported the incident to Nha, He’s brother-in-law. Nha was furious with her at the beginning, but finally decided to take action against Sei. Riya sensed that He was initially angry because he had a crush on her and was jealous. However, Riya, in feeling that she was a victim of sexual abuse, continued to make her case against Sei. Below is a summary of their conversation, as told by Riya:
Next, Sei started to harass her in public. She continued: I was stepping on the side of a large device that pounded rice and Sei was on the other side. He usually flirted with me by using his hand to touch mine. I realized that this was unusual, so I talked to sister Sann, chief of my group, “Sister, I do not like Sei because of his bad behavior,” and I asked her to take my place for a while. She agreed. A few minutes later, she told me, “I feel the same. He is not usual.” So she asked me to be patient. However, I was concerned about my safety and asked her for help. Nonetheless, she had no solution for me, she just told me to be careful with him. She said to me, “Be careful and take care of yourself.” At night fall, Sei secretly approached when Riya was breastfeeding her baby. She was lying in the middle of her three children. He then came close to her and told her that he wanted to make love with her. Riya refused and explained to him, “It is not moral to do this. If the Angkar knew this, we would be killed.” But Sei guaranteed that nobody would know and if they knew he would be responsible for it. Riya still refused and said, “No, I can’t do that. Please set me free.” Suddenly, Sei took out his knife and threatened to kill her. She thought to herself: “If I scream, Sei would stab me with the knife and people will be awakened by this event. But what should I do?” I pleaded with him not to treat me that way, but he did not accept my plea because he wanted to rape me. All of a
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Riya: Nha: Riya:
Brother Nha, Sei intended to rape me last night, but he did not succeed. This was because of you, too. If you did not go to him, he would not have come to you. What did you say? I am not that sort of woman. Brother, do not scold me so strongly. You should review my family history before you judge. We are not hypocrites. I come from a decent family and was taught well about women’s code of conduct. I came to you in order to get help. I swore that if I had any bad intentions or committed a moral offense, I will take responsibility before the Angkar.
Seeing her tears, Nha changed his position on the issue. He told Riya not to worry; he would investigate the case. On the same day, Sei was found, arrested, tied up, and sent to the local logistical office. The case was heard by chief of Prek Prasob district. While waiting for the outcome of the case, Riya was seen as a bad woman by other people because they thought it was her fault. Some base people compared her to a female cow, “If a cow is comfortable with a pond, it will simply live with that pond comfortably.” This Cambodian expression means that if a person is a trouble maker they will cause trouble wherever they go. When said about a woman, it means that she is promiscuous. “They compared me to an animal, which was inappropriate. I resented such an analogy. However, I did not have the power to say anything to them,” she wept. She wept because nobody considered her a victim. She added, “Sei is a ‘person who struggled [in the revolution]’ in the eye of the Angkar and he was given a higher status than me. I am just an ‘April 17’ person who has no full rights. I am just considered as a deported person.” She said the only thing left for her was to pray to God for salvation. She recalled, “I am an THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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honest person and if God wanted to end my life now, I accept it. But if not, please intervene.” She also told her children, “My lovely children, please help take care of each other if I happen to be executed.” She knew that if she was accused of committing a moral offense, the Angkar would not let her live because other people had been killed based on similar charges. A Way Out Her worry and concern did not last long. She was fortunate to meet uncle Khun, the district representative who heard her case in person. She pleaded with him to be fair in handling her case. She said, “Uncle, I am completely innocent. I never committed anything that the Angkar forbade. Look at my small children, they need me to take care of them. So please help me.” Sann (chief of her work group) was also present and defended Riya’s innocence because she knew firsthand about Sei’s bad behavior and knew that Riya had health problems which prevented her from having sex with any man. Sann testified, “Mit Ya would never ever do that because she has a problem with her ovaries. This chronic illness does not allow her to make love with men.” Riya was found not guilty and was set free. Upon hearing this, Riya said, “I was glad to hear that I was not found guilty. This was not the end of my life yet.” She was asked to go back to work as usual. As for Sei, he was arrested and sent to another area. Riya’s story of reporting sexual abused or attempted sexual assault was rare under the KR regime. In many cases, women dared not speak out because their lives would be threatened. For example, Makham Vanny, a Stung Treng province resident, was raped several times, but she dared not tell anyone for two reasons. First, the rapist threatened to kill her if she told anybody. Second, she was concerned about her safety if she talked; she might have been punished or killed by the Angkar. Therefore, Riya’s story is significant in understanding not just sexual violence, but violence overall under the DK regime. Her narrative is a powerful voice against the silence that surrounds sexual violence. Riya believed that her innocence and support from God Almighty, as well as people around her (Sann and Nha), helped her through her difficult situation. Conclusion About 40 Cham Muslims were among the 14,000-16,000 S-21 security center prisoners. All were men and they suffered brutal torture before execution for alleged crimes ranging from treason to being ‘political enemies’ to being a ‘counter-revolutionary.’196 Many other Cham men in other DK security centers had similar fates. Cham Muslim women, who were not among the primary targets of the KR, were also arrested and imprisoned at regional, district, and militia security centers. In prison, some of these women were sexually abused and tortured in other ways. The KR slogan of “rape women deemed enemies of Angkar” helped to almost institutionalize rape and sexual assault in prisons. This type of atrocity occurred not only in prisons, however. Sexual abuse and rape also occurred at work sites and in the cooperatives (villages). The strict prohibition of “moral offense” did not effectively protect women from being abused. Instead, given the lack of enforcement and the superiority of KR cadre above all others, cadre from senior officials to soldiers to prison guards could easily manipulate the rule to threaten women’s lives. Rape reinforced the inequality between men and women. When encouraged as it was in KR prisons, it becomes systematic not only in its frequency but also in its effect upon the victims. The victims feel that they are alone in suffering this abuse and they fear denial, rejection, and humiliation if they speak out. Rape victims usually choose to remain silent because they find no motivation to tell their stories. As the stories in this chapter reveal, however, some women do talk about their traumatic experiences. They detail the darkness, guilt, silence, fear, and pain they endured, along with their responses to the abuse. A few escaped death and lived to courageously disclose the truth. Their stories break the silence of torture and sexual abuse and provide a fuller picture of violence under the DK regime.
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Likewise, Zainoab did not return to her hometown in Tanung village, Kampong Cham province, after her journey from Battambang province. It was not safe. She heard that the KR were still living around her village. She decided to stay on in Kampong Sambour village, Kampong Cham province. She taught Islam and lessons from the Qur’an to young children with her husband in a surav and then in her own house. She and her husband still teach students today. Both of her parents died during the KR regime, along with many of her relatives.
ConClusion Cham Muslim Women and the Khmer Rouge Legacy Cham Muslim women had different strategies for survival and preserving their identity under the regime. They sometimes complied but also sometimes resisted in response to the daily threats and violence. They had neither physical weapons nor forces to fight a battle, but they had spiritual and moral strength. Their strong identity as Cham Muslim women enabled them to engage in verbal resistance. They drew from inner strength because they were limited in physical strength. This is illustrated in Halimah’s story in which she argued with the children’s unit leader when the leader deprived her daughter of food. After living under the KR regime for nearly four years, many women returned to their home village. Others decided instead to search for a new place. Some left the country altogether. Most of the women interviewed decided to return home because they wanted to reunite with family members and help reconstruct the Cham Muslim community. After the KR regime was overthrown, Halimah recalled that just before the explosion of an ammunition warehouse in Neak Loeung, everyone was called to a meeting. She was skeptical about the meeting, asking herself, “Why are the old and young called to a meeting at this time?” She did not go. As it turned out, it was a trick; the warehouse was booby-trapped. After the explosion, she went looking for her children and took them home, along with her two cattle. One of them had a symbol of a star on its head, so it was called phkay (star). Halimah and her children decided not to sell it because she wanted to sacrifice it to God. Every year, at the time of the Islamic New Year, a korban (sacrificial ceremony) is held to offer thanks to Allah. A sheep, goat, or cow is scarified in the name of the family members who are conducting the ceremony. Seven members of Halimah’s family, including her husband, her parents-in-law, and three of her children performed the ceremony by sacrificing a cow. When Halimah arrived home, she quickly performed prayer in the prayer dress she had hidden in her baby’s pillow. Since mosques had been destroyed, she donated her upper house to villagers to use as surav (prayer house) for one year, until her community built a new surav. She said that she was happy to give the space to the villagers to observe religious activities such as jamuan (religious party) and mawlid (commemoration of Muhammad’s birthday), because this helped strengthen her Cham and Muslim identity. Those who decided to move to places other than their native village did so namely for two reasons: (1) their home village was destroyed during the fighting between Lon Nol and the KR soldiers, and the KR were still living near their villages; and (2) they did not want to return to the place where they would remember loved ones who had disappeared or died. Riya knew that her house and other houses in Kampong Luong village had burned down during the fighting in 1973. After the fall of the KR regime, she headed back from Kratie province by boat with her children and other members of her family. She stopped in Kilometer 7 along the Tonle Sap river bank and lived there for a while. She described the place as being occupied by a large number of people. Some were living on boats and some near the mouth of the river. She recalled, “I dared not go to my hometown because the KR sporadically came into the village and I had no house anymore. It was burned.” She decided to live with one of her relatives in Kilometer 8, in Chrang Chamres village, and then with her neighbor until she could buy a piece of land to build her current house. In her new village, she sold traditional herbs, the profession of her father when he was alive, to support her children.
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A few women decided to immigrate to other countries. Zarah and her family were evacuated by the KR to west of the country when Vietnamese troops entered in January, 1979. Zarah said that one of the reasons that the KR forced people to go with them was to use them as hostages in case they were discovered by Vietnamese troops. Fortunately, she was liberated by the Vietnamese troops a few days later and continued her journey to the Thai-Cambodian border. She stayed in the Mairu refugee camp. She then left for the Philippines and finally the United States. She currently lives in the U.S., but returns occasionally to Cambodia. The full story of her journey is in Appendix A. No matter where these women lived, they tried to reside with other family members because they feared another separation. In most cases, they decided to live collectively with extended family around a local mosque. Riya emphasized that, “Living together in one community makes us strong. The KR separated us and divided us into small groups so that they could easily kill us.” Defending their Community After the KR regime fell, a low-intensity civil war between KR guerillas and the new PRK government began in 1979. It continued for nearly two decades. As with many civil wars, ordinary citizens become entangled in the violence and chaos. According to interviews, the KR arrested some survivors and killed them when they entered KR territory (KR strongholds along the Thai border). Interviewees also described how KR entered villages, including Cham villages, to abduct people to live in the forest with them or to use as hostages. In response to KR incursions into villages, some Cham women decided to take up posts to help protect their community. Seila joined the K-5 mission197 after hearing a recruitment announcement from the local authority. The People’s Republic of Kampuchea created the mission in 1984 to protect Cambodian territory from KR soldiers. Seila’s task in the mission was to help clear forests in Pang Alim village, Battambang province. She sent her younger son to join the police force to safeguard local communities against KR troops. Later she was recruited to represent women in her community. Seila was trained for one month on how to respond to KR soldiers and was even given AK-47 assault rifle. She knew how to fire the gun, but luckily she never encountered any KR soldiers. Seila said that her job was a man’s job, but since most of the men were dead after the KR regime, women had to fill these positions. Part of her job was to gather women, most of whom were widows, to patrol her village during the night. She was also responsible for caring for the women. She patrolled her village until about midnight and afterward accompanied each woman home before she could go home herself. Seila explained, “I had little time to rest because I tried to make a living during the day and then had to patrol the village at night to make sure the women in my group arrived home safely. I usually went to bed at one or two in the morning.” Kalichip was elected to represent Cham women in her Prek Thmei commune. This was a position that she wholeheartedly undertook as she saw herself as a sincere servant of her community. She also knew that as their representative, she could help other Cham women grow and develop so that they could work to prevent conflict or dispute in the community. She wanted to contribute to the strengthening of the Cham community. Like Seila, her sons also served in the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) forces. Her two sons joined the local PRK army to fight against KR on the battlefield. Kalichip said that if her sons had died in battle, she would not have regretted it THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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because they would have died serving the nation and preventing the KR from returning. She hopes that the KR regime never returns because she does not want her children, or any child, to be treated the way she was during the regime.198 Perceptions on Khmer Rouge Crimes When asked their opinion of the KR regime, Cham women interviewees said it was extremely miserable, difficult to describe, and called the KR thamil or thmil, meaning atheist or non-believer. Most of the Cham Muslim women interviewed called the crimes committed by KR regime “genocide” or ampeu bralai pouch sas in Khmer. They asserted that the KR committed genocide against the Cham people and Cambodia as a whole. Some women did not provide a term for the crimes of the KR regime, reasoning that it was beyond their knowledge. Those who used the term genocide had been influenced by the People’s Revolutionary Tribunal, which tried Pol Pot and Ieng Sary in absentia on the charge of genocide. After the guilty verdict in 1979, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) government (1979-1993) compiled a petition containing over one million names and listing the crimes of the KR regime against the international community. In the document, the crimes of the KR regime are called “genocide.”199 The Cham Muslim women interviewed said that they first heard the term genocide used during the 1979 trial and repeatedly thereafter by the PRK. The term genocide under the 1984 U.N. Genocide Convention is defined as “acts with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” The current Khmer Rouge tribunal, which began operating in 2006, has charged four senior Khmer Rouge leaders with genocide against the Cham and Vietnamese minorities. However, the Cambodian concept of genocide is different. According to Cambodian linguist, Professor Chour Keary, ampeu bralai pouch sas is the act of killing members of a racial, religious, ethnic, or national group; there is no mention of “intention” in his definition. He argues that the KR committed genocide against all people in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, not just the Cham and the Vietnamese. Maly agrees with Professor Keary. She labeled the crime genocide because the KR killed Cambodian people, a national group; she did not specifically say because they killed Cham Muslims, since she felt that the KR treated all people badly. However, she also believes that Cham Muslims suffered tremendously due to their religion and ethnicity. She claimed: We are Cham Muslims and we have our distinct culture and religion. We pray five times a day and we do not eat pork. But we were forced to go against our culture and religion during the KR regime. For non-Muslim people, they do not have any problem with pork. Thus, this made things more difficult for us. The women who did not refer to the crimes of the KR regime as genocide simply described the ways the KR regime was horrible. They said that KR cadre did not have hearts or a sense of humanity because they committed such unbelievable violence, violence beyond human understanding. For them, the magnitude of the crimes and degree of their suffering cannot be fully expressed. As Halimah declared, “From the time I was born until the age of 64, I have never gone through such a horrific experience. I do not know how to fully describe it.” Yet it is interesting that Halimah has tried to talk about the regime to her children, who were all born after the KR regime. Outrage and Anger After the fall of the KR regime, Cambodia was in a state of “massive trauma.” According to Antonius C.G.M. Robben, massive trauma, “is more than the sum total of individual suffering because it ruptures social bonds, destroys group identity, and undermines a sense of community.”200 Survivors experience a range of emotions and psychological disorders which may come and go over the years. These
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individual post- trauma experiences, as Robben noted, greatly altered Cambodian society as a whole, stripping it of values, responsibilities, and cohesiveness. Thus, Cambodians not only struggle with healing themselves, but also struggle with living in a broken society. Surprisingly, many Cambodians have managed to hide or suppress their post-traumatic wounds. Nevertheless, these wounds are still present and indirectly affect the next generation. Cham Muslim women reported feeling depressed, extremely regretful, and sometimes emotionally unstable. Under the regime, they lost many family members and nearly all of their property and wealth. While some women had gold (usually in the form of jewelry), which they hid during the KR, and could use it to jump-start their new lives, many did not. Maly was left with nothing after the regime. She explained: “My parents were better off before 1975. We had a big house in Kampong Cham. When the KR came, they killed my parents and my brother. And our wealth and property disappeared.” Further, the Cham community itself was in a weak state. Secular and religious education needed to be re-built from the ground up because the majority of teachers had been killed and schools had been destroyed. Halimah raised her voice when asked about the status of Islam during the era and exclaimed: My outrage lies in the way they forbade Islam. It is a big issue. They did not allow us to perform prayer and other pillars of Islam. They destroyed our culture and way of life. Our language was deemed alien or foreign. They made us eat pork even though they knew Islam forbids us not to eat that meat. And they starved us. Furthermore, they asked me to go transplant rice when I was about to deliver a child and forced me to work just after I delivered my baby. I hate the regime. Nearly every Cambodian lost a family member under the Khmer Rouge regime and some lost entire families and were orphaned. Noab, whose story was told through her aunt Sles Phors, was an orphan after the KR killed her parents. Later, the KR killed her as well. The loss of family members leaves a deep scar; the loss is exacerbated by the knowledge of how brutally family members were treated and the guilt from not being able to protect relatives. Riya used the term maghisal (regret in Arabic) when talking about her younger sister’s death, which she felt responsible for. Riya painfully reasoned that if she had allowed her younger sister, Aisha, to come with her during the evacuation, the KR might not have been able to identify her sister as the wife of a former Lon Nol solider, and she would have survived. Nup, Saleh’s wife, becomes angry every time she thinks about her son’s death under the KR regime.201 The KR threw his body into a kiln in an extreme act against Islam because Islam does not allow cremation. A body must be buried in a proper religious funeral. Many Cambodians are also outraged over the KR’s non-acknowledgement or denial of the atrocities that took place. Although most of the Cham Muslim women interviewed suspect that the genocide was God’s curse, they also believe that it was committed by human beings—Khmer Rouge leaders, cadre, cooperative chiefs, and village chiefs. The anger and outrage that these women feel stem in part from the KR’s denial of their crimes. “I wonder why they deny their atrocities; in fact, they ordered the killings and caused people to die,” said Halimah. The outrage and anger that some Cham women feel towards the KR regime is at times contested, just like their memories of the regime. When memories of a kind KR cadre surface in the course of thinking about a cruel KR cadre, the emotions associated with the memories are also in conflict. Riya and her family feel that they owe their gratitude to Siv, whom Riya describe as a kind and good KR cadre. Siv worked in the KR logistical office and sometimes shared food or traditional herbs with Riya’s family in their time of need. He seemed to know when they were facing great difficulty and helped them out as much as he could. Riya said, “bang Siv helped us a lot. When I needed traditional herbs, I asked my sister to get it from him. We were like brothers and sisters or friends. He came to visit us occasionally after the regime.”
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The Struggle to Locate Loved Ones The separation of family members combined with the deaths of nearly two million individuals marked Cambodia as country of missing and displaced people. After January, 1979, many people returned to their home villages, in part to locate missing or separated family members. Some families reunited but others remained divided. Consequently, the burden and pain of not knowing what happened to missing relatives remains an everyday part of the lives of many Cambodians. Some of the Cham Muslim women interviewed have discovered the truth about their missing relatives after years of searching. Others have yet to know for certain the fate of their loved ones. El Rosinah was shocked when she was given information about her missing brother a few years ago. The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) located documents in their archives on her brother, Ismael Ahmad, and made copies for her to keep. Her family thought he was still pursuing Islamic studies in Egypt, and her mother fainted when she learned that her son had actually been executed at S-21 prison. It turned out that while he was studying in Egypt, he was told by word-of-mouth that he needed to return to Cambodia to help the KR revolution. The KR knew that he was studying in Egypt from members of his home village. When he arrived in Cambodia, he was ordered to Kroch Chhmar district before being sent to the S-21 prison. According to his confession document, he was executed in 1977. Rosinah did not recognize her brother’s prison photo because his left eye was swollen, presumably as a result of torture. She kept the confession, his mug shot photo numbered 25, and other related documents given to her. Those documents are living memories of Ismael Ahmad for his family. Rohimah and Sarifah do not know if their family members are still alive. However, both of them are convinced that their loved one is still living. They are fixated on old photographs of their loved ones and wait patiently for them to return. Rohimah and Sarifah have also sought help from fortune tellers. The true fate of their loved ones is something that both women do not want to confront because they feel it may hurt them; yet they also acknowledge that they cannot find peace as long as they do not know the truth. After dreaming about her husband several times, Rohimah went to see two fortune tellers who told her that he is still alive. “I dreamt about him still alive and the fortune tellers also said that he is still alive, but living far from me.”202 Upon hearing the news, she continued to wait earnestly for his return. But he did not come back, and now she is tired of going to the fortune teller. She also does not want to hear the truth because she is afraid that it might be bad news. Rohimah recalled that some base people in her cooperative told her during the regime not to think about her husband anymore because his disappearance meant that he was already dead. Rohimah remembered what a base person told her, “He said to me ‘[you] do not need to wait for him; for those who were taken away or have disappeared like this, it means they are already dead.’” Rohimah said that it is hard for her to confront this issue. She dares not ask this person whether her husband was killed because she is afraid that if he answers “yes,” she may not be able to deal with the situation. After the fall of the regime, she and her son were concerned about their safety and security. She feared that the KR regime might return. Rohimah presently has three children whom she has struggled to raise. She showed a photo of her husband to me and noted that her “older son looks like his father.” She said that her husband was a “good husband,” he was responsible, and had a moral character. Her neighbors consider her a widow, but she does want accept this label yet and still waits for him, even though she has a very little hope. Similarly, Sarifah, who is in her early 80s, also awaits the return of her loved ones--her two sons Ly Yousib and Ly Smael. Both of her sons were well-educated and could write in Khmer, Cham, Arabic, and Malaysian. Smael had curly hair while Yousib had straight hair. Every time she looks at photographs of her sons, she feels an expectation that they will come back one day. Her two sons first went missing in 1976; she last saw them in 1973, when they returned to Khleang Sbek village with her husband to work as fishermen. Later, the villagers there told her that they saw two men, one with straight hair and one with curly hair, searching for their mother. Both of these men were
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taken away by the Angkar to be killed. Sarifah still believes that her son Smael is alive, but that Yousib probably died because “his face in the photo has become very pale.” She has been to a fortune teller to learn the fates of her sons. The fortune teller said they are both still live.203 “I have waited for them to come for many years now,” Sarifah says. She continues to wait for them today. Prevention All of the women interviewed for this book emphasized their hope that the KR regime will never return. I asked them if they had ideas for preventing another KR regime, and for preventing genocide in general. The women offered the following ideas: prosecution, intergenerational dialogue about the KR regime, teaching KR history in classrooms, and religion. Some of the women discussed the prosecutions at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) as a mechanism for preventing future genocide. The idea that legal punishment will deliver some level of justice for the atrocities committed by the KR is accepted by the women interviewed. They see the court as a warning for states or governments not to repeat the actions of the KR regime, and as a form of justice for victims. Further, they believe in karma, such that those who commit good deeds will receive good things, and those who commit bad deeds will receive bad things. Thus, legal punishment is seen as a form of karma for the KR leaders and cadres. Their cruel deeds are now being returned to them in the form of legal prosecution and punishment. Cham Muslim women believe that talking to their children about the KR regime not only educates the young generation about KR history, but also builds communication between the survivor generation and those born after the atrocities. About half of Cambodia’s population is under 25 years old, meaning that at least half of the population knows little or nothing about the KR regime which killed 20 percent of the population from 1975-1979. Until last year, Democratic Kampuchea history was not formally taught in schools. At most, this part of Cambodia’s history was included as a small section in history lectures about changing political regimes in Cambodia. At home, some parents abstain from telling their children about the KR. Those who do discuss it are sometimes met with disbelief or skepticism. Regardless, the women interviewed expressed their belief that survivors should talk to the younger generation about the KR regime so the future leaders of Cambodia do not commit such destruction and terror again. All the women interviewed also supported teaching KR regime history in classrooms in order to reach as many young people as possible. As such, they support the current effort by DC-Cam and the Ministry of Education to incorporate KR history into high school curriculum, using the textbook A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979). They stressed that it is very important that KR history is preserved and taught, so that Cambodians will never forget it. Seila, who has children of her own, takes care of three nieces and nephews whose parents are dead. She was particularly pleased to hear that DK history was finally added to school curriculums, so that her nieces and nephews can learn about the regime that killed their parents. Women in this study also discussed how religion can help to prevent genocide. They urged all groups of people to unite and to be tolerant of each other. Some of the women interviewed believed that agama (religion) is important for preventing conflict and violence. Halimah opined that people must adhere to religion because when they have religion, they dare not kill people. She feels that after the KR regime, Islam in Cambodia was incredibly weak and she advocates that Islam be strengthened within the Cham communities. Healing and Forgiveness During the midst of the chaos when Vietnamese forces and defected Cambodian troops overtook Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979, THE HIJAB2OF CAMBODIA
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thereby ending the KR regime, some people decided to take justice into their own hands by torturing or killing KR cadres who they believed killed their family members. It is not clear how widespread vigilante justice was during this transitional period, but certainly many people had the desire to take revenge. Some of the Cham Muslim women interviewed also wanted to take revenge on those they believed were responsible for their suffering and the deaths of loved ones. Over time, however, most of these women’s anger faded. But several still seek to avenge the deaths of their family members. Riya is one of them; she still desires revenge for the death of her husband. The person who killed him, according to Riya, is a KR cadre from Kampot province. She believes that he intentionally killed her beloved husband in a hospital in Prek Proloung village, Kratie province. Riya recounted what happened: “I was told that he injected my husband with water. Furthermore, he brazenly humiliated me and other patients in the hospital. He distinguished ‘new’ and ‘old’ people, cursing the ‘new people’ patients who did not contribute to the KR revolution, but instead became ill.” The majority of Cham Muslim women interviewed do not wish to seek revenge, citing Islamic teachings as the main reason. There are two tenets of Islamic law related to justice and forgiveness. First, Islam allows people to seek justice by doing to their enemy what their enemy did to them. For example, if Person A cut off Person B’s right hand, Person B has the right to cut off the hand of Person A. However, Islam also encourages its followers to forgive their enemies. God will bless them if they can do this. Forgiveness is the path that most of the women in this study chose because they wish to break the cycle of revenge and violence. Moreover, many of the women said that reciting Qur’an or the Muqqadam and dedicating offerings to their loved ones brings them relief. Some women pray every day, some every Thursday or Friday night, and others during the month of Ramadan. They believe that their dedication to Allah will help their loved one rest in peace. Religion is like the medicine to heal their pain and suffering; most of women interviewed find it effective. Every Friday, Maly recites the Qur’an and then dedicates the sura to her parents, brother, and sister who were killed during the Svay Kleang rebellion, and to her husband who passed away after the Khmer Rouge regime. “I feel relief and I believe that my family members also feel this, too,” said Maly. As a teacher of Islam, Zainoab said that instructing students is like a healing process because she can transfer her knowledge to the next generation to strengthen Islam. After class, she dedicates her Qur’anic verse recitation to her parents and siblings, who lost their lives during the regime. Besides teaching, she helps deliver babies in her community. For others, objects left by their deceased loved one can be a source of healing. Although the KR banned personal property, some people secretly kept photographs, jewelry, religious books, silverware, mukana (women’s prayer dress) and even swords. Some of these items were buried just before the evacuation or during the KR regime. Ros Aishah saved the plates that her father buried. Her father, who died in Koh Kyang prison shortly after seeing Aishah in prison as well, buried the plates just before the evacuation of April, 1975. The plates remind Aishah of her father; she uses the plates on a regular basis in memory of him. She donated one of the plates to DC-Cam, as well as the sword her father used to defend their village against thieves and intruders, to commemorate her father’s tragic story, and to teach the next generation about the sacrifices and hardships that people experienced under the KR regime. Aisha is now a representative of Cham Muslim women in her village. She provides services to women in her community and the whole Cham Muslim community in Kampong Thom province. In addition to her career, she is a dedicated wife and mother. She takes on the role as head of household because her husband cannot earn a living. She has sent all her children to school and one of them is now a soldier serving on a mission at the Preah Vihear Temple, an ancient temple complex currently disputed by Thailand and Cambodia.
daughters so that they will rest in peace. She makes the 100-kilometer journey from the “Kilo 8” quarters (in Phnom Penh) to Speu village either alone or with relatives. She usually travels on a tourist bus. She visits them during Islamic holidays and when she has free time. Next to her daughters’ graves are two more graves belonging to her nephew and a neighbor. Maly said, “There are four graves in that area, two are that of my daughters. I removed the grass and put their names on a cement plaque for each of them. It is important for me to take care of the gravesite so that the dead will rest in peace and so that I can also feel peace myself.” Maly currently has four children, three boys and one girl. All of them have graduated from high school. The Importance of Oral History By examining the on-going legacy of tragedy at the individual and societal level, oral history creates a greater awareness of past injustices, and therefore helps ensure future justice. Such endeavors also allow us to honor victims and survivors, build understanding between conflicting groups, and establish a more accurate, collective truth. This collective truth must come from all groups of people: the victims, the perpetrators, men and women. For Cham Muslim women, their experiences were also influenced by their ethnicity and religion. Their stories, however similar or dissimilar from the other survivors’ stories, provide an important lens through which to study and analyze Democratic Kampuchea. This study and analysis is important for preserving the history of Cambodia and for seeking justice for victims. The recorded oral accounts of Cham Muslim women’s experiences under the KR regime may be essential for the ECCC in its case against the senior KR leaders Noun Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, and Khieu Samphan. They are charged with genocide and crimes against humanity, among other crimes. As a researcher and a member of what Susan Kaiser calls the “post-memory of terror generation,”204 I believe that it is important and necessary that we hear the stories of Cham Muslim women survivors. Although deep scars remain, Cham Muslim women have struggled to survive, raise their children, and rebuild the Cham community. Their memories and narratives are their treasured personal belongings, and they serve as reminders of the human spirit and its resilience. They tell their stories to remember and reconstruct the events that make up their existence, and in the process break the silence surrounding violence and build hope for their children’s future. This book will resonate among the KR survivors who will read it because they will discover that they share much in common. This book, although chronicling 60 Cham Muslim women’s stories and based on interviews with hundreds of Cham Muslims, is just a small step towards the larger goal of studying women’s experiences under the Democratic Kampuchea regime. In this respect, much work remains to be done to investigate other women’s experiences, and subsequently, to investigate how these women’s lives have changed and how they themselves have contributed to the rebuilding of their communities and the nation.
For Maly, gradual healing comes from visiting the gravesites of her daughters. The girls were age six and eight in 1978 when they died of disease, and they were buried next to each other in Speu village, Chamkar Leu district, Kampong Cham province, where Maly lived under the KR regime. When her children died, she asked the unit chief for permission to bury them; he agreed because Maly was a hard worker in the cooperative. Since the fall of the KR the regime, she has gone to regularly clean the burial sites and recite the Qur’an for her
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Appendix A The Journey of Sos Zarah After The Fall of the KR Regime Both of Zarah’s parents passed away under the regime. Her mother died in 1973 from a disease and her father died in 1977 from disease and exhaustion. After Zarah gave birth to her child at a KR hospital, Vietnamese troops arrived. The local KR forced Zarah and her family to travel with them. She did not have enough medicine for her recovery from childbirth, so her husband took the herbal bark of a special tree called green onion roots and boiled it for her. “It was very bitter, but it helped,” she recalled. Following the local cadre’s order, she walked from Phnom Baktra (Baktra Mountain) up to the forest, carrying her newborn child and a kettle, along with her husband and her five-year old son. After a dangerous and long trek, they reached Mairu Camp. Zarah narrated: The KR forced both of us to go with them as if we were their hostages. They planned to kill everybody, both ‘new’ or ‘old’ people, but we were fortunate because the plan was interrupted by the rain. After waiting for the rain to stop, we heard the arrival of Vietnamese tanks and bullets throughout the forest, and the sound came closer to our gathering place. Seeing this, the KR ran away, leaving us with the Vietnamese. We then traveled back to Pursat. I packed rice and other food and caught a cow that I saw along the way in order to feed my children. Unfortunately, my husband got a fever and my older son got wounded and could not walk by himself. I was very concerned about our safety because everybody left us. I had to take care of my husband and my children for a while before we could continue forward. When I reached National Road 5 in Pursat, I saw a lot of people selling food along the road. There was plenty of fish, rice, and vegetables. I was very surprised to see the revival of normal life. I shed tears: “Oh, I finally survived. I am no longer starved.” I did not realize that people gathered in town and some got back their home villages because I spent so much time in the forest with the KR. I kept walking straight and thought to myself that I no longer wanted to live in Cambodia; I have to leave my country. After passing the town in Pursat, I continued walking west to Battambang, and stayed there for several nights. One thing that I remember even now was that I should not have let my 12-year-old cousin, whom I just met again after about a four-year separation, carry my sixmonth old baby across the small wooden bridge. If she had fallen off the bridge, they both would have died. The water was rushing underneath the bridge, which was scary. But at that time, I was preoccupied with my belongings and so was my husband, and that’s why I underestimated the risk. After that episode, I heard about bandits at the Thai-Cambodian border. It was rumored that in order to get through the border checkpoint, we had to pay for the person who walked us through the gate the amount of one chi [about 3.6 grams] of gold. When we reached the other side of the gate there were some bandits. They were not Thai soldiers, but Thai people who secretly stole from travelers. After we heard about this, I recited some Qur’anic verses or sura (a chapter of a Qur’an) to protect myself and my family from this evil. One of the sura I remembered was Qurasi. 205 My father told me that this sura is effective to help people overcome bad things. So I inhaled and exhaled with the verses of the sura and prayed to God everywhere I reached. I felt that I was protected all the way. After a long journey, we reached Mairu Sea, where we were transported by bus to Mairu camp. I was the last one among my siblings and
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relatives to reach the camp, but we were luckier than some of the other travelers, who were dropped off by the Thais near Dangrek Mountain. When our bus arrived, a humanitarian official riding a motorbike stopped it and other buses and asked us to wait until another bus came to take us to the camp. On that bus to the camp, it was raining so much all the way and I was not feeling well after a long journey. We were asked to get off the bus and walk from the bus stop to our camp, which was about 2 kilometers, because the bus was stuck in a big hole and could not go further. After getting off, I became very concerned again. The sky was dark, the rain kept pouring, there had been a landslide, and the crowded refugees bumped into each other so much that I could not find my husband. So I took only my two children and some belongings that I was holding. I used one hand to carry my newborn baby and another hand to hold a bundle on my head. I asked my other child to grab my sarong so that he would not get lost. As I was walking, I was crying as well because of the miserable experience. Three of us kept moving until we reached the camp where I found my husband. At the camp, I thought that we would be accommodated appropriately, but there was only a vast area of white sand with some weeds and the sky was like our roof. Lots of heavy rain poured when we got there, but we were still able to cook rice to eat under such heavy rains. Our clothes were soaked and my two children got ill due to the temperature. I almost gave up hope because it was so difficult, but I pushed forward. I bought some food, and materials to make a tent to live in temporarily from the Thai vendors who came to sell their products in our camp. We stayed there until humanitarian workers brought some wood and logs to build a long shelter for us. Later, they distributed rice, fresh fish, and canned fish. We could survive because of their donations. We were taught English and Malay in the camp. I just learned these languages and did not know where we will be sent. A few months later, some officials came to our camp and tested the refugees to live abroad. I could not decide to which country I should go to. My husband and his family wanted to go to Malaysia because Cham Muslims were encouraged to live in that country. Many non-Cham Muslims decided to go to Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and America. My brother, Ahmad, was the first who was brought to the U.S., so I also wanted to live in the U.S. In fact, I used to dream about beautiful green grass and the nice landscape of the country when I lived in my home village. I wished my dream would come true. However, I felt that if I did not follow my husband, we would be separated and I did not want to live apart from him. I knew that he did not want to live in Malaysia, that he just followed his parents. Things turned good for us. At that time, officials from Malaysia did not come a second time to take us. A letter read, “the U.S. will accept all refugees if other countries do not come to take them.” So we all decided to go to the U.S. Now I live in Santa Ana, California, with my husband and three children.
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This term was first used by Norodom Sihanouk in the 1960s to refer to Cambodians who were members of the Communist Party and other leftwing organizations. This study uses both the terms “Khmer Rouge” and “Democratic Kampuchea” to refer to the regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979. Documentation Center of Cambodia, D42188. Debates on the term are presented in the Documentation Center’s Searching for the Truth, 6 (June 2000): 56. The Malays or Chvea (Javanese) practice Islam like the Cham, but they do not speak Cham. They speak Khmer mixed with a little Malay. The term Cham Muslim both refers to the Cham and the Chvea. There is a small group of the Cham called Cham Jahed. This group is well known for maintaining Cham customs and traditions. Scholars argue that the Malays migrated to Cambodia a bit earlier than the Cham, probably in the 14th or 15th centuries A.D. In “The ‘Khmer Islam’ Community in Cambodia and Its Foreign Patrons” (Lowy Institute for International Policy, (November 2004) Milton Osborne claims that the Chvea made up 15 percent of the total Cham Muslim population. Also see interview with Sos Aishah, 74, Stung Trang district, Kampong Cham province, 2006 and interview with tuon Haji Zen, Phnom Penh, 2006. The Cham fled the Vietnamese incursions in Mi Son, the capital city of the Champa Kingdom,Panduranga, and other Champa territories to Cambodia in several waves, but it is believed that the first Cham settlers came to Cambodia in the 16th century A.D. (National Council of the United Front of Kampuchea for the Building and Defense of the Homeland, 1987), p.7. The Khmer Rouge divided people into two main classes: New People or 17 April People and Base or Old People. April 17 or New people referred to those who had lived in the capital city and other cities before April 17, 1975 and were evacuated to the countryside when the KR marched into the city. In contrast, Old or Base people referred to those who had lived in the Khmer Rouge liberated zones before 1975. Most Cham Muslims were classified as the New People, or “deportee.” For more details, see Pivoine Beang and Wynne Cougill’s Vanished: Stories from Cambodia’s New Peoples under Democratic Kampuchea (Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2006), p. vii. Member of military unit of the former regime trained as shock troops for hit-and-run raids against the KR. This term literally means “organization” which referred to the inner circle of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). It was used to refer to the collective authority at the highest level of the Party. It was renamed Lycee Preah Sisowath in 1935 and located on the Doudart de Lagree Boulevard (today Norodom Boulevard). See John Tully, Frances on the Mekong: A History of the Protectorate in Cambodia, 1863-1953 (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2002), p. 222. Kampuchea Krom refers to an area in the lower Mekong delta in southern Vietnam populated by ethnic Cambodians. In Khmer, the term refers to both the people and the region. According John Ciorciari, until the 14th century the delta region was predominantly Khmer, but Vietnamese migration into the area rose and by the 19th century, the French authorities included the Mekong delta region into Cochinchina, one of its colonies. The Khmer population in the area became a small minority after the South Vietnam gained independence in the 1950s. See John D. Ciorciari, “The Khmer Krom and Khmer Rouge Trial” (DC-Cam). The Lon Nol regime was led by General Lon Nol from 1970-1975 after the constitutional monarchy known as the Sangkum Reastr Niyum was overthrown in 1970. By abolishing money and bank system, the KR believed the organ of capitalism and feudalism would be destroyed. Chandler, Kiernan, Boua. Pol Pol Plans the Future:, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, p. 40. Chandler. Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot. (Westview Press,1999), p.1. Chandler. Brother Number One, p. 1. Chandler, Kiernan, Boua. Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 157. See Francois Ponchaud, trans. Cambodia: Year Zero. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1978, p. 88. David A. Ablin and Marlowe Hood (eds). The Cambodian Agony. M.E. Sharpe, 1990, p. xliii. Many Cham Muslim men were arrested and killed during the rebellions and subsequently persecuted. See Ysa Osman. The Cham Rebellion: The Survivors’ Stories from the Villages. Phnom Penh: DC-Cam, 2006. According to a census conducted by King Sihanouk administration, the Cham population was about 150,000. This census however, like colonial surveys before them, counted only male adults who paid taxes, and neglected women and children. There was also a sizeable number of fishermen with no indication of village or origin and living in boats sailing on the Mekong, the Bassac and the Tonle Sap. The Lon Nol administration in 1974
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16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23
24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
reported 700,000 Cham Muslims in the booklet “The Search for Peace.” Also see Ysa Osman’s Oukoubah: Justice for the Cham Muslims under the Democratic Kampuchea regime. (Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2002) which gives a figure of 700,000 as well. In contrast, Father Francois Ponchaud places the Cham population in 1975 at 250,000 according to The Ethnic Minorities in Cambodia, 1995, p. 10. Michael Vickery, referring to Jacques Migozzi, places the estimated number of Cham pre-war at about 173,000. Some other foreign scholars estimated the number of Cham people at about 87,000 (Michael Vickery. Kampuchea: Politics, Economics, and Society. London: F. Pinter; Boulder: L. Rienner Publishers, 1986), p. 174. Bhavia C. Wagner and Dubasky, Valentina. Soul Survivors: Stories of Women and Children in Cambodia. (Berkeley: Creative Arts Book Co., 2002), p. 15. “Islam in Kampuchea” National Council of the United Front of Kampuchea for the Building and Defense of the Homeland, 1987, p. 11. The estimated number of the Cham Muslim population before 1975 varies from one source to another. This figure (700,000 Cham Muslim population) is close to that of the research of the Central Islamic Association of the Khmer Republic tiled “The Martyrdom of Khmers Muslims,” ed. the Directorate of Islamic Association of the Khmer Republic and the Association of Islamic Youth, 1974, p. 36. Also see footnote 21, p. 17. Interview with Haji Muhammad ibn Sraleh, Ponhealeu district, Kandal province, 2006. The other Islamic schools are: Hannafi, Maliki and Hanbali. There are three levels of imam in Cambodia: 1) village hakim who serves as the imam masjid (mosque); 2) the imam srok (district imam); and 3) the imam khet (provincial imam), all of which are supervised by a mufti. This term is derived from a Malay word, which has various meanings. One of them is Sir but later was adopted by Cham Muslims to refer to a person who is knowledgeable about Islam. In the Cham context “tuan” refers to a Qur’anic teacher. “Islam in Kampuchea,” p. 11. See also interview with Haji Ibrahim, Trapeang Sangke commune, Kampot district, Kampot province, 2005. The Directorate of Islamic Association of the Khmer Republic and the Association of Islamic Youth (eds), “The Martyrdom of Khmers Muslims,” Phnom Penh: Central Islamic Association of the Khmer Republic (1974), p. 36. This hierarchy was developed under the reign of Sihanouk and remained during the Lon Nol regime. Gaffar Peang-Meth, “Islam, Another Casualty of Cambodian war.” in Khmer Representation at the United Nations, London. ed, Douc Rasy. (London: 1974), 253. Peang-Meth was one of the first Cambodians to join the Indochina Communist Party. After the French defeat, he traveled to Hanoi and began his political studies. He returned home in 1970 and joined the Eastern Zone Communist Party of Kampuchea committee. He also established the “Eastern Zone Islamic Movement,” which he ran with his son Mat Ly. Sos then traveled around the zone to encourage Chams to “carry out the revolution.” Also see Ysa Osman. The Cham Rebellion: Survivors’ Stories from the Villages. (Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2006), p. 13. “Islam in Kampuchea,” p. 8. See also interview with Haji Ibrahim, Trapeang Sangke commune, Kampot district, Kampot province, 2005. See also Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations 2nd ed. introduced and translated by Michael Sells (Oregon: White Cloud Press, 2001), p. 39. According to Islam, a person must be buried soon after they died. Michael Vickery. Cambodia 1975-1982, (Boston, MA : South End Press, 1984), p. 11. Douc. Khmer Representation at the United Nations. (London, 1974), p. 251. See also, the Directorate of Islamic Association of the Khmer Republic and the Association of Islamic Youth (eds), “The Martyrdom of Khmers Muslims,” p. 54. John L. Esposito and Natana J. DeLong-Bas. Women in Muslim Family Law. (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2001), p. 40. Interview with Lek Riya, Russey Keo district, Phnom Penh city, 2009. Interviews with Sman Zainoab, Kampong Cham province, 2007 and 2009. Yow, Recording Oral History, p. 50. Ibid., p. 50. Paul Thomson. The Voice of the Past. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 146-47. James Scott. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 26. See Risa Whitson, “Hidden Struggles: Space of Power and Resistance in Informal Work in Urban Argentina,” Environmental and Planning A. 39 (2007): 2915-2916. DOI: 10.1068/a393394. www.dccam.org/Projects/Public_Info/Public_Information.htm (accessed 10 May 2009). www.dccam.org. See Charlotte Burck, “Comparing Qualitative Research Methodologies for Systemic Research: The Use of Grounded Theory, Discourse Analysis and
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Narrative Analysis.” Journal of Family Therapy. Blackwell Publishing, 27, 3 (Aug. 2005): p. 240. 40 See Yow, Valerie Raleigh. Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2nd ed. (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2005), pp. 8-11. 41 See also Kathryn Anderson and Dana C. Jack. “Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analyses” in The Oral History Reader, 2nd ed, ed. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson. (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 129-142. 42 Ablin and Hood (eds), p. 24. 43 25 riel was a reasonable amount of money during that time. However, it is now equal to 0.0062 USD (1dollar=4,000 riels). In 1970, about 55 riels equaled 1 USD. 44 One of the Lon Nol’s army headquarters was located in Kampong Tralach district, Kampong Chhnang province. 45 Sos Man was the father of Math Ly (also a former KR cadre) and a member of the pro-King Sihanouk communists, a more moderate group than the hardliner KR. See Kiernan. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979) , p. 258. See also Gaffar Peang-Meth, “Islam, Another Casualty of Cambodian war,” footnote 29. 46 Her stories can also be found in Searching for the Truth, Documentation Center of Cambodia http://www.dccam.org/Projects/Magazines/ Magazine_Searching.htm. According to Sokha, Rakiyah went missing after she left her wedding in 1975. Sokha assumed that Rakiyah was killed because she was a moderate KR cadre, not a hardliner. 47 Quoted from “Voice of the National United Front of Cambodia (Clandestine)”, 16 April 1975, in U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Asia Pacific, 16 April 1975, H6, in The Pol Pot Regime. Kiernan, p.31. 48 Kiernan. The Pol Pot Regime, p.39. 49 Chandler. Brother Number One, p. 103. 50 Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, p. 62. 51 Meng-Try Ea. The Chain of Terror: the Khmer Rouge Southwest Zone Security System. (Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia. 2005), p. 9. 52 Martin Stuart-Fox. The Murderous Revolution. (Bangkok: The Tamarind Press, 1986), p. 17. 53 Interviews with Seth Maly in Phnom Penh city, 2007 and 2009. 54 Ismael also came to work in the factory and got stuck there with Riya. 55 Interview with Kalichip, Prek Thmey commune, Koh Thom district, Kandal province, 2005. Kalichip has some knowledge in medicine. 56 These places were under the control of the Lon Nol forces. 57 “Telegram of the Khmer Rouge No. 15,” dated November 30, 1975. Documentation Center of Cambodia Catalogue No. L01045. See also Ysa. The Cham Rebellions, p. 114. 58 Interviews with Cham Muslim interviewees. 59 Interview with A Aisha, Svay Dangkum commune, Siem Reap district, Siem Reap province. 60 Interview with Kalichip, Kandal province, 2005. 61 One of the infamous KR prisons. For more information, see DC-Cam’s mapping reporthttp://www.dccam.org/Projects/Maps/Memorials_Study_ Report.pdf. 62 Kiernan. The Pol Pot Regime, p. 48. 63 Fox argues, “Not all 200,000 or more army officers were killed, though most of those who were not were subsequently executed. Of the 30,000 civil servants, few seem to have been killed at first, though many died later” in The Murderous Revolution, p. 19. 64 Almost all of the Cham Muslim interviewees were called evacuees or deportees. 65 Riya said that the KR divided people because they did not want Cham Muslims or other people to live collectively. “If we united, we would retaliate,” she said. 66 The KR had told her that Pursat province was a rich place full of agricultural crops and other foods. 67 Quoted in Elizabeth Becker’s When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution. New York: PublicAffairs, 1998, p. 186. 68 See Zal Karkaria, “Failure of Negligence: Khmer Rouge Policies Toward Women.” Searching for the Truth, 46, (October, 2003): 19. 69 Chandler, Kienan, and Boua, Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 49. 70 Women had to quickly submit themselves to Angkar without exception. The Khmer Rouge leaders superficially declared, “Our revolutionary movement is a new experience, and an important one in the whole world, because we do not perform like others. We leap from a people’s democratic revolution
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71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87
88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103
to a socialist revolution, and quickly build socialism. We do not need a long period of time for the transformation. We do not follow any book. We act according to the actual situation in our country.” See The Party’s Four-Year Plan in building socialism in all fields (1977-1980), Documentation Center of Cambodia Catalogue Number D 00591. Also see Chandler, Kiernan, Boua. Pol Pot Plans the Future, 49. This rosy rhetoric is similar to that of Engel’s philosophy. However, while Engels emphasizes the inclusion of women into large-scale industries, the DK leaders drove women into subsistence agricultural production. Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 5. The Khmer Rouge created several associations, one of which was the Youth Association, also known as the Youth League. May Ebihara, “Revolution and Reformulation in Kampuchean Village Culture” in The Cambodian Agony, ed. David A. Ablin and Marlowe Hood, p. 27. A small number of women were sent to fight at the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. See FBIS-APA, IV, No. 23, February 3, 1976. See also Chandler, Kiernan, Boua, Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 17. Interviews with Seth Maly, Russey Keo district, Phnom Penh city, 2007 and 2009. Interviews with Teur Sros, Battambang district, Battambang province, 2007 and 2009. Interview with Mousa Sokha, Kratie province, 2009. See also May Ebihara, “Revolution and Reformulation in Kampuchean Village Culture,” p. 32. Documentation Center of Cambodia Catalogue Number D00591. Also see Chandler, Kiernan, Boua. Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 158. Interview with Ros Aishah, O-Chrov sub-district, Prey Nup district, Sihanouk province, 2009. Interview with Lek Riya, Chrang Chamres sub-district, Russey Keo district, Phnom Penh city, 2009. Interviews with Tulors Rohimah, Kokor commune, Kampong Siem district, Kampong Cham province, 2007 and 2009. “The Party’s Four-Year Plan in Building Socialism in all fields (1977-1980)” Documentation Center of Cambodia Catalogue Number D0059. See aslo Chandler, Kiernan, Boua, Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 158. Khamboly Dy. A History of Democratic Kampuchea. Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2007, p. 27. Interview with Lek Riya, Phnom Penh city, 2009. Ebihara, p. 30. Chandler, Kiernan, Boua. Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 211. See also Ebihara, “Revolution and Reformulation in Kampuchean Village Culture,” p. 33. Besides criticism sessions, the KR created associations, political study schools, radio broadcasts, magazines, newspapers, and plays with song and mime as further instruction and propaganda. Ibid., 175. Becker, When the War Was Over, p. 426. Also see interview with Mousa Sokha in Kratie Province in 2009. Chandler, Kiernan, Boua, Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 159. Ibid., pp. 16-17. Ibid., p. 158. During my second interview with Rohimah, Sarifah was also present and shared her mother’s story. Interviews with Teur Sros in Phnom Penh, 2007 and 2009. This anniversary was usually celebrated on April 17 and lasted 3 days. It was celebrated the KR victory over the former regime and to commemorate those who died during the civil war (1970-1975). Interviews with Halimah, Kandal province, 2005 and 2009. It was an infamous prison located in Po Tonle village, Koh Thom district, Kandal province. So-called ‘porcupine dates’ (krapeah kamprama) are stone-like objects found in the stomachs of porcupines. They supposedly contain medicinal properties and are used in traditional healing in Southeast Asia and China. Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, Pol Pot Plans the Future. p. 157. Mousa Sokha recalled that in addition to lack of hygiene and medicine, she was haunted by ghosts while she stayed in a hospital. Being frightened by this episode, she swore she would not stay in the Khmer Rouge hospital again. Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, Pol Pot Plans the Future. p. 157. Interview with Fatimah, Angkor Borei district,Takeo province, 27 October, 2005. After giving birth, Cham Muslim women could not find modern medicine or traditional herbs to deal with their post-natal problems. Most of the
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104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140
times, husbands obtained traditional herbs from the jungle and boiled the herbs for their wives. Furthermore, sanitation pads were also hard to find, so people used whatever material they had. Becker, When the War Was Over. p. 235. Many women stopped menstruating entirely, partly because of malnutrition, partly because of the trauma. The cloth that she asked Ta Seang, a Khmer Rouge cadre, for when she sewed the clothes for him. Interviews with Seth Maly, Phnom Penh city, 2007 and 2009. Interview with Tae Aminah, Kampot district, Kampot province, 2005. Interview with Lek Riya, Phnom Penh, 2009. An indigenous vine that naturally grows in the jungle and is believed to have medicinal properties. Interviews with No Halimah in Kandal province, 2005 and 2009. DK constitution, “Chapter 6: Law Implementation,” pp. 8-9. Ysa, The Cham Rebellion, pp. 2-13. Also see interviews with Seth Maly, Russey Keo district, Phnom Penh, 2007 and 2009. “Article 15 on Worship and Religion” in DK Constitution, 1976. Documentation Center of Cambodia. Ian Harris. Buddhism under Pol Pot regime. (Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2007), pp. 1-30. The Kingdom of Champa, situated in what is now central and south Vietnam, lost its territory through several annexations by Vietnamese dynasties and eventually fell in the early 19th century. Interview with Tae Aminah, Trapeang Sangke commune, Kampot district, Kampot Province, 2005. Douc Rasy, Khmer Representation at the United Nations, 1976, pp. 251-155. “Islam in Kampuchea,” p. 11. Of the 113 mosques in Cambodia, only five were not reportedly destroyed or profaned. The report did not state why they were not profaned. Ysa, The Cham Rebellion, p. 115. Also see “Telegram of the Khmer Rouge No. 15,” dated April 2, 1975. Documentation Center of Cambodia Catalogue No. L01187. Interview with Sos Rumly, Kroch Chhmar district, Kampong Cham province, 2007. Interview with Sa Rasath, 12 December 2007,Siem Reap district, Siem Reap province. Interview with No Min and Sos Ponyamin, August 2010, Kroch Chhmar district, Kampong Cham province. Also see Ysa. The Cham Rebellions. Documentation Center of Cambodia. 2007. Interview with Sokry, Prey Nup district, Preah Sihanouk province in 2010; interview with Ai Yaub, Prey Nup district, Preah Sihanouk province; and interview with Teb Yeb, Preah Sihanouk province, 2010. Daniel Brown. A New Introduction to Islam, 2nd ed. (Malden: Wiley-BlackWell, 2009), p. 162. There are five daily prayers: Fajr, Zuhr, ‘Asr, Maghrib, and ‘Isha’ and each consists of various units of prayer. Fajr, Zhur, and ‘Isha’ comprise four units; Magrib, three; and Fajr, two. Interview with Kalichip, Koh Thom district, Kandal province, 2005. Conversation with Thea, Phnom Penh, 2005. Interviews with No Halimah in 2007 and 2009 and Kalichip in 2005. Also see Becker’s When the War Was Over, p. 263. Interview with Sos Pheah in Kampong Thom Province, 2005. Most Chvea or Malays descendents speak Khmer and a little Malay, while Cham Muslim people speak more Cham than Khmer. Interviews with Phaung Lim in Pursat Province, 2007 and 2009. Quoted in Ly Y’ Heaven Becomes Hell, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 155 Conversation with Sem Fatimah, 2010, and ollow-up phone interview, 2011. Interview with Ros Aishah,Prey Nup district, Sihanouk Ville province, 2009. Documentation Center of Cambodia’s ( Mapping project. http://www.dccam.org/Projects/Maps/Mapping_1975-79.htm DC-Cam’s Mapping project and interviews. See also Ea’s Chain of Terror, p. 3. David Chandler. Voices from S-21: Terror and History of Pol Pot’s Secret Prison. Berkley: University of California Press, 1999, p. 122. Veronica Shapovalov. Remembering the Darkness: Women in Soviet Prisons. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001, p. 2. Chandler, Voices from S-21, p. 122. Ibid., p. 151. Notebook of an S-21 cadre, Documentation Center of Cambodia, D00512. Also see Ea’s The Chain of Terror, pp. 2-4. Cooperatives were first formed
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in Cambodia in 1970, and by 1977 most of the population had been placed in them. 141 Ea, The Chain of Terror, pp, 2-3. See also Ysa’sThe Cham Rebellion, pp. 19-21. 142 Laura McDonald, “Duch Trial Resume” The Cambodia Tribunal Monitor. May 18, 2009. http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/blog/2009/05/duch-trialresumes.html. Also see Chandler’s Voice from S-21, p.41. 143 Chandler, Voices from S-21, pp. 68-69. 144 DC-Cam Mass Grave Mapping Team, Takeo Province, 1995 and Craig Etcheson, “The Number: Quantifying Crimes against Humanity in Cambodia” Searching for the Truth. Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia. 13-18, January-June, 2001. 145 Chandler. Voices from S-21,p. 15. 146 Dacil Keo, “Fact Sheet on “S-21” Tuol Sleng Prison” Searching for the Truth. December 2010. 147 Ysa, The Cham Rebellion. pp. 46-47. 148 “Conversations of Pol Pot with Delegation of the Belgium Kampuchea Society, August 5, 1978,” Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, D00108. 149 Chapter 7 of the Constitution of DK in Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea, 1976, Documentation Center of Cambodia, D21447. 150 Ea, The Chain of Terror. 2005. p. x. 151 Chandler, Voices from S-21. 1999, p. 120. 152 Neang Ny’s full letter can be found in Ea‘s The Chain of Terror, p. 129. 153 Ea, The Chain of Terror, p. 12. 154 Ysa, The Cham Rebellion, p. 27. Before being released from Kroch Chhmar district prison, El Him was asked to promise that he would not release any information about the prison to others. 155 Ysa, Oukoubah, p. 9. 156 Bophana, former S-21 prisoner, was believed to have suffered sexual abuse before she was executed. Becker, When the War Was Over. p. 235. 157 Elizabeth Stanley, Torture, Truth, and Justice: The Case of Timor-Leste. (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 30. 158 Interview with Havae (Da) in Kandal province, 2005. In her children’s unit, from a distance she saw a woman half naked in a pit who might have been raped before being killed because Havae heard her scream. 159 Prak Kan in “KR Killing Machine,” a film directed by Rithy Pan, 2003. 160 Stanley, Torture, Truth, and Justice. pp. 27-28. 161 Ibid., p. 84. 162 Interview with Lek Riya, Phnom Penh, 2009. 163 Youk Chhang’s Letter, “The 6th Code of Conduct” Searching for the Truth. Documentation Center of Cambodia, 15, (March 2001), p. 1. 164 Katrina Anderson, “Tang Kim’s Dilemma: Responding to Sexual Violence under the Khmer Rouge,” Documentation Center of Cambodia, Searching for the Truth, Special Edition, 1st Quarter, (2005): 35. 165 Selma Leydesdorff, Luisa Passerini and Paul Thompson (eds). Gender and Memory, Piscataway: Transaction Publishers, 2005, p. xiv. 166 Poem quoted in Susan Slyomovics’s The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), p. 149. This was the last poem of Saida Menebhi, a strong symbol of female activism and martyrdom, composed during the first days of her imprisonment. 167 Interview with Ros Aishah in 2009 and Sman Ny in 2005. 168 Chandler, Voices from S-21, p. 77. 169 John H. Langbein, “The Legal History of Torture” in Torture: A Collection, ed. Sanford Levinson. (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 93. Also see Susan Slyomovics, The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco. Philadelphia, p. 3. 170 Stanley, Torture, Truth, and Justice: The Case of Timor-Leste, p. 22. 171 Langbein, “The Legal History of Torture” p. 93. 172 Quoted in Slyomovics’s The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco, p. 67. 173 Ariel Dorfman, “The Tyranny of Terror: Is Torture Inevitable in Our Century and Beyond?” in Sanford Levinson (ed). Torture: A Collection. Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 8. 174 bid., p. 8-9. THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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Ibid., p. 9. Interview with Ros Aishah, Prey Nup district, Sihanouk province, 2009. Ibid., p. 13. Stanley, Torture, Truth, and Justice, p. 32. Ibid., p. 33. Ea, The Chain of Terror. pp.42-43. Mapping Report. Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, p. 14. Son Sen called those prisoners held in sub-district militia center “the free people.” Even though the KR constitution and Son Sen did not consider “the crimes of the free-people” as part of a systematic process that deserved punishment at the highest level, these prisoners were severely tortured and some were sentenced to death. For example, Vou was executed of this charge. See Ea’s The Chain of Terror, pp. 3-4. 183 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 3. 184 Ea, The Chain of Terror, p.28. 185 It seems Aishah is confused about the timeline. She said that her father was sent to the male prison cell three days after her arrest. During the first three days she was in the cell, she was not interrogated. She was released about 10 days later. She said that her father was eventually killed two weeks before she was transported to Kampong Speu province. The length of her stay at the prison was about 6 months, from mid-1976 to early 1977. According to these statements, I conclude that her father may have been arrested around the fifth month of her stay. 186 Interview with Sman Ny, Kandal province, 2005. 187 In general, the accused did not know in advance that they would be taken to prison or what their charge was. The cooperative chief would contact the prison chief about persons he wanted arrested. Then the prison chief would send staff or guards to collect these persons. See Ea’s The Chain of Terror. pp. 42-43. 188 Becker, When the War Was Over, p.235. 189 Ea, The Chain of Terror. p. 68. 190 Mam Kalyanee, “Raping Women Deemed Angkar’s Enemies.” Searching for the Truth. Documentation Center of Cambodia, issue 15, March 2001, p. 4. 191 Catherine McKinnon. Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 143145. 192 Mam, “Raping Women Deemed Angkar’s Enemies,” pp. 4-5. 193 Katrina Anderson, “Tang Kim’s Dilemma: Responding to Sexual Violence under the Khmer Rouge.” Searching for the Truth. 194 Interview with Sles Phors, Kampong Cham district, Kampong Cham province, 2007 and 2009. 195 As Henri Locard puts it, “When pulling out weeds, remove them roots and all” in Pol Pot’s Little Red Book: The Saying of Angkar. Bangkok: Silk Worms, 2004, p. 77. 196 Chek Prahim’s confession, DC-Cam archives. See also Ysa’s The Cham Rebellion. 197 This mission lasted from 1984-1986, and attempted to protect Cambodian territory from the surviving KR forces. See Margaret Slocomb. The People’s Republic of Kampuchea 1979-1989: The Revolution after Pol Pot. (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2003). 198 Interview with Kalichip and Havae, her daughter, in Koh Thom district, Kandal province in 2005. 199 Council Nationwide Cambodia Protection, Construction, Solidarity Front, No.1619-82/NCC, Oct. 5, 1982, available in “Crime of Beijing Chinese Hegemony Enlargement and Servants Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan During 1975-1978,” Renakse collection, DC-Cam General File. 200 Antonius C.G.M Robben, “How Traumatized Societies Remembers. The Aftermath of Argentina’s Dirty War” Cultural Critique. 59 (Winter 2005): 125. 201 Interview with Saleh and Nup, 2005, Sa-ang district, Kandal province. 202 Interview with Tolors Rohimah, Kampong Siem district, Kampong Cham province, in 2007 & 2009. 203 Interview with Kong Sarifah, Phnom Penh, 2006. Her family’s story can also be found in Beang and Cougill’s Vanished, pp.118-121. 204 Susan Kaiser. Post-memories of Terror: A New Generation Copes with the Legacy of the “Dirty War.” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 2. 205 Interview with Sos Zarah, 2007. The Qurasi is believed to be effective in protecting people from evil living beings. 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182
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Ebihara, May, “Revolution and Reformulation in KampucheanVillage Culture” in The Cambodian Agony, eds David A. Ablin and Marlowe Hood. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1990.
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Abu-Lughod, Lila. Writing Women’s World: Bedouin Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2008. Amery, Jean, trans. At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Auschwitz and Its Realities. New York: Schocken Books, 1986. Anderson, Kathryn and Dana C. Jack, “Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analyses” in The Oral History Reader, 2nd ed. eds, Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson. London: Routledge, 1998. Armitage, Susan H., Patricia Hart and Karen Weathermon (eds). Women’s Oral History: The Frontier Reader. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. Baer, Elizabeth and Myrna Goldenber (eds). Experience and Expressions: Women, The Nazi, and the Holocaust. Detroit : Wayne State University Press, 2003. Becker, Elizabeth. When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution. New York: PublicAffairs, 1998. Best, Anne. The Monk, the Farmer, the Merchant, the Mother. Illustrated by Georgia Verey. Phnom Penh: Japan Printing House, 2005. Brown, Daniel W. A New Introduction to Islam, 2nd ed. Chichester: Wiley-BlackWell, 2009.
Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Carr, David, “Narrative and the Real World: An Argument for Continuity” in Memory, Identity, and Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences, eds. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman.Albany. New York: State University of New York Press, 1997. Chandler, David. Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. ____________. Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot. Boulder: Westview Press, 1999. Chandler, David, Ben Kiernan, and Chanthou Boua. Pol Pot Plans the Future: Confidential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1988. Crites, Stephen, “The Narrative Quality of Experience.” in Memory, Identity, and Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences, eds. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Dorfman, Ariel, “The Tyranny of Terror: Its Torture Inevitable in Our Century and Beyond?” in Torture: A Collection, ed. Sanford Levinson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Ea, Meng-Try, trans. The Chain of Terror: The KR Southwest Zone Security System. Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2005. THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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Beltsville: Amana Publications 1994. Vickery, Michael. Cambodia 1975-1982.Boston: South End Press, 1984. Osman, Ysa. Oukoubah: Justice for the Cham Muslims under the Democratic Kampuchea Regime. Phnom Penh: DocumentationCenter of Cambodia (DC-Ca), 2002.
_____________. Kampuchea: Politics, Economics, and Society. Boulder: L. Rienner Publishers, 1986.
__________. Cham Rebellion: Survivors’ Stories from the Villages. Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), 2007.
Wagner, Bhavia C. and Dubasky, Valentina. Soul Survivors: Stories of Women and Children in Cambodia. Berkeley: Creative Arts Book Co., 2002.
Peang-Meth, Gaffar, “Islam, Another Casualty of Cambodian war.” in Khmer Representation at the United Nations. Edited by Douc Rasy.London, 1974.
Y, Ly. Heaven Becomes Hell: A Survivor’s Story of Life Under the Khmer Rouge. Edited by John S. Driscoll. Monograph 50/Yale Southeast Asia Studies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Peer, Bashrat. Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist’s Frontline Account of Life, Love, and War in His Homeland. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Yow, Valerie Raleigh. Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2nd ed. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2005. Ponchaud, Francois, trans. Cambodia: Year Zero. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978.
Scholarly Journal Articles and Magazine Articles Portelli, Alessandro, “What Makes Oral History Different” in The Oral History Reader, 2nd ed, eds. by Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson. London: Routledge, 1998. Rasy, Douc (ed). Khmer Representation at the United Nations: A Question of Law or Politics? London, 1976. Riessman, Catherine Kohler. Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 2007. Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Schleifer, Aliah. Motherhood in Islam. Louisville: The Islamic Texts Society USA, 1996.
Alessandro Portelli, “Peculiarities of Oral History” History Workshop Journal, 12, 1 (1981): 99-107. Also see Yow, Recording Oral History, 22. Doi:10.1093/hwj/12.1.96. Bickford, Louis B, “Unofficial Truth Projects” Human Rights Quarterly, 29, 4 (November 2007): 994-1035. (accessed November 2008). Doi: 10.1353/hrq.2007.0036. Charlotte Burck, “Comparing Qualitative Research Methodologies for Systemic Research: The Use of Grounded Theory, Discourse Analysis and Narrative Analysis” Journal of Family Therapy. Blackwell Publishing, 27, 3 (Aug. 2005): 237-262. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6427.2005.00314.x
Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Chhang, Youk, “The Sixth Code of Conduct. Searching for the Truth. Documentation Center of Cambodia, 15 (March 2001): 1. Sells, Michael. Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations, 2nd Edition. Oregon: White Cloud Press, 2001. Shapovalov, Veronica. Remembering the Darkness: Women in Soviet Prisons. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001.
Etcheson, Craig, “The Number: Quantifying Crimes against Humanity in Cambodia” Searching for the Truth. English Edition. Phnom Penh: DocumentationCenter of Cambodia. 13-18 (January-June 2001): 32-35; 31-38; 32-35; 2933; 32-38; and 25-26. It can also be found at http://www.dccam.org/Projects/Maps/Mass_Graves_Study.htm
Slocomb, Margaret. The People’s Republic of Kampuchea 1979-1989: The Revolution After Pol Pot. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2003. Slyomonics, Susan. The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
Jones, Rebecca, “Blended Voices: Crafting a Narrative from Oral History Interviews” The Oral History Review 31, 1 (Jan. 1, 2005): 23-42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3675529. (accessed June 2008).
Stanley, Elizabeth. Torture, Truth, and Justice: The Case of Timor-Leste. London: Routledge, 2009.
Kalyanee, Mam, “Raping Women Deemed Angkar’s Enemies” Searching for the Truth. 15 (March 2001): 2-5 and 60-61.
Stuart-Fox, Martin. The Murderous Revolution on the life of Bunhaeng Ung amidst death in Pol Pot’s Kampuchea. Bangkok: The Tamarin Press, 1986.
__________. “Koh Ksach Tonlea: WidowIsland” Searching for the Truth. 4 (April 2000): 58-61, and 5 (May 2000): 55-60.
Thomson, Paul. The Voice of the Past: Oral History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Karkaria, Zal, “Failure of Negligence: Khmer Rouge Policies Toward Women” Searching for the Truth. 46-48 (October-December 2003): 17-32; 22-35; and 25-41.
Tonkin, Elizabeth. Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History. Cambridge: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1992. Tully, John. Frances on the Mekong: A History of the Protectorate in Cambodia, 1863-1953. Lanham: University Press of America, 2002.
Laura McDonald, “Duch Trial Resume” The Cambodia Tribunal Monitor. Documentation CenterCambodia, May 18, 2009. It can be found at http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/blog/2009/05/duch-trial-resumes.html
Ung, Loung. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.
Ner, Marcel, “Les Musulmans de l’Indochine Francaise,” BEFEO, 41, 2, 1941.
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in the 1980s. She has two jobs now: midwife and fisherwoman. Osborne, Milton, “The ‘Khmer Islam’ Community in Cambodia and Its Foreign Patrons” Lowy Institute for International Policy (November 2004): 1-10. It can be found at http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=191 Osman, Ysa, “Ethnic Cham under Democratic Kampuchea” Searching for the Truth. 13 (January, 2001): 17-21. (Accessed April 20, 2009).
Author’s interviews with Sman Zainoab, age 66, Kampong Sambuor commune, Kampong Cham district, Kampong Cham province, February 5, 2007 and July 25, 2009. Zainoab was born in Tanung commune, Koh Sotin district, Kampong Cham province. She has lived in Kampong Sambuor since 1979. She is a Qur’anic teacher and midwife.
Raphael Israeli, “The Muslim Minority in the People’s Republic of China” Asian Survey 21, no. 8 (August 1981): 901-919. URL: www.jstor.org/stable/2643890. (Accessed June 1, 2010).
Author’s interviews with Teur Sros, age 43, DC-Cam office, August 30, 2007 and August 18, 2009. Sros was born in Kampong Luong commune, Ponhea Leu district, Kandal province. She has lived near her siblings and parents in Slar Ket commune, Battambang district, Battambang province since 1979.
Robben, Antonius C.G.M, “How Traumatized Societies Remembers. The Aftermath of Argentina’s Dirty War” Cultural Critique 59(Winter 2005): 120-164. Doi: 10.1353/cul.2005.001.
Author’s interviews with Phaung Lim, age 73, Banteay Dei commune, Kandeang district, Pursat province, February 26, 2007 and August 8, 2009. Lim remains a widow after her husband was taken away by the KR. She lives with her daughters and grandchildren in Banteay Dei commune, her birthplace.
So, Farina. “Being Executed on Rice Charge” Searching for the Truth. Documentation Center of Cambodia, Cham Special Issue, (September 2006): 32-33.
Author’s interviews with Seth Maly, age 59, Chrang Chamres sub-district, Russey Keo district, Phnom Penh city, December 26, 2007 and August 13, 2009. Maly was born in Svay Khleang commune, Kroch Chhmar district, Kampong Cham province. She moved to Chrang Chamres sub-district in the 1980s. Her husband, Yeb Him, passed away in 1986. She remains a widow and is a former member of women’s association and now a seamstress.
________. “Promoting Genocide Education and Reconciliation through Oral History: The Case of Cambodia’s Cham Muslim Youth” Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2008.This paper can be accessed at http://www.dccam.org/Projects/Public_Info/Promoting_Genocide Education_and_Reconciliation_through_Oral_History.pdf Whitson, Risa, “Hidden Struggles: Space of Power and Resistance in Informal Work in Urban Argentina” Environmental and Planning A. 39 (2007): 2916-2934. DOI: 10.1068/a393394.
Author’s interviews with Tolors Rohimah, age 62, Kokor commune, Kampong Siem district, Kampong Cham province, July 25, 2009. She was born Kokor commune. She remains a widow after her husband was taken away during the KR regime. She currently lives with her children in her hometown. Author’s interview with Sos Aishah, age 74, Prek Bak commune, Stung Trang district, Kampong Cham province, December 23, 2007. She was born in Prek Bak and lives there still with her grandchildren.
Interviews Author’s interview with Sos Zarah, age 55, Chhouk Sar commune, Kampong Tralach district, Kampong Chhnang province, 2009. During the 1970s, Zarah fled her hometown, Chhouk Sar commune, to Phnom Penh city to catch a plane to Banteay Meanchey and then to Battambang. She was subsequently evacuated with her family to Pursat province. After the fall of the KR in 1979, she did not want to live in the country because she was afraid of further similar atrocities. She decided to go to a refugee camp and then to the U.S. She is currently living in California but she has frequently traveled back and forth to her hometown in the past few years. She is an assembly-line worker for an electronic company in Santa Ana, California. Author’s interview with Mousa Sokha, age 51, at Wat (monastery) Kambol, Chaom Chao district, Phnom Penh, August 18, 2009. Sokha was born in Kaong Kang commune, Ponhea Krek district, Kampong Cham province. Now, as a farmer she lives in Snuol village, Snuol commune, Snuol district, Kratie province with her husband and children. She was interviewed by Pheng Pong Rasy and Sou Bunsour on the topic of her old photos and her revolutionary background, September 28-30, 2001. Author’s interview with Lek Riya, age 63, Chrang Chamres sub-district, Russey Keo district, Phnom Penh city, 2009. Riya was born in Kampong Luong commune, Ponhea Leu district, Kandal province. She is a traditional herb seller and healer. She lives with her husband, children, in-laws, and grandchildren. Author’s interview with Ros Aishah, age 54, O-Chrov commune, Prey Nup district, Sihanouk province, 2009. Aishah married a Cham man in 1980, but divorced him when she was 8-months pregnant with her youngest daughter. She now lives in her hometown, O-Chrov commune, with her two children. Her oldest son married and moved to Kampot province.
Author’s interview with A Aishah, age 57, Svay Dangkum commune, Siem Reap district, Siem Reap province, 2007. Aishah was born in Kampong Luong commune, Ponhea Leu district, Kandal province. When the fighting escalated in her hometown, she fled to live in Km 8. After her marriage, she moved to Pailin city. When the KR came to power, she was evacuated to Battambang province and lived there until 1979. She currently lives in Siem Reap province. She has two children, a son and daughter. Author’s interview with Sos Seiha, age 50, Prek Saman commune, Chhlaung district, Kratie province, May 28, 2007. Seiha is a representative of Cham Muslim women in this commune (her birthplace) where she currently lives with her husband. Author’s interview with Toek Sary, age 75, Kampong Tralach commune, Kampong Tralach district, Kampong Chhnang province, May 17, 2007. Sary remains a widow and lives with her children in her hometown, Kampong Tralach commune. Author’s interviews with No Halimah, age 67, Kampong Kong commune, Koh Thom district, Kandal province, September 27, 2005 and August 17, 2009. Halimah’s birthplace was in Kampong Thmei commune. She moved to live in Kampong Kong commune, in the same province, after she married hakim Yahya. She is a housewife. Author’s interview with Kong Sarifah, age 84, Chrang Chamres sub-district, Russey Keo district, Phnom Penh city, September 9, 2005. Sarifah was born in Kampong Luong commune, Ponhea Leu district, Kandal province. She moved to Chrang Chamres sub-district in the 1970s, before the KR arrived. Author’s interview with Haji Ibrahim, age 55, Trapeang Sangke commune, Kampot district, Kampot province, 2005.
Author’s interview with Sles Phors, age 57, Kampong Sambuor commune, Kampong Cham district, Kampong Cham province, February 4, 2007. Phors is a clothing vendor; she sells Cham Muslim clothes and variety of scarves. Author’s interview with Yeb Maisom, age 58, Chrang Chamres sub-district, Russey Keo district, Phnom Penh city, September 8, 2007. Maisom was born in Peus commune, Kroch Chhmar district, Kampong Cham province. She married a Cham man and moved to Chrang Chamres sub-district, Phnom Penh
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Author’s interview with Tae Aminah, age 56, Trapeang Sangke commune, Kampot district, Kampot province, November 22, 2005. Trapeang Sangke commune is Aminah’s place of birth. Her first marriage ended in 1965. In 1968 she married a Cham man and moved to live with her husband in Prey Nup district, Sihanouk province. Her husband died of exhaustion during the KR regime. She remarried because of her children in the 1980s. She returned to THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
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live in Trapeang Sangke commune in the 1980s.
“Islamic in Kampuchea” National Council of the United Front of Kampuchea for the Building and Defense of the Homeland, 1987.
Author’s and Hin Sotheany’s interview with Kup Aishah, age 52, Trapeang Chhouk village, Boeng commune, Baray district, Kampong Thom province, October 16, 2005. Aishah was born in Trapeang Chhouk village. She was evacuated to Bak Sna village, on the border of Kampong Thom-Kampong Cham provinces. She returned to live in her hometown in 1979.
The Directorate of Islamic Association of the Khmer Republic and the Association of Islamic Youth (eds), “The Martyrdom of Khmers Muslims,” Phnom Penh: Central Islamic Association of the Khmer Republic, 1974. The Party’s Four-Year Plan in building socialism in all fields (1977-1980), Documentation Center of Cambodia Catalogue Number D00591.
Author’s interview with Sos Pheah, age 46, Boeng commune, Baray district, Kampong Thom province, October 13, 2005. Pheah’s birth place, Tuol Laveang village, was turned into a cemetery, so she could not return to settle there after the KR regime collapsed. She moved to a nearby village, the same commune. Both her husband and Pheah are Qur’anic teachers in the village. Author’s interview with Kalichip, age 67, Prek Thmei commune, Koh Thom district, Kandal province, September 27, 2005. Kalichip was a former head of a women’s association in her village. She played a vital role in advocating for gender equity in her community. Unfortunately, she passed away in 2007. Her family still lives in the same commune. Author’s interview with SmanNy, age 50, Prek Thmei commune, Koh Thom district, Kandal province, September 26, 2005. Born in Prek Thmei commune, Ny is a former chief of a women’s association in her commune. She is now a seamstress and still actively advocates women’s interests. She lives with her only son in the same village. Author’s interview with Timah, age 56, Kampong Trach commune, Romeah district, Svay Rieng province, November 27, 2005. Timah was born in Chhouk Sar commune, Kampong Tralach district, Kampong Chhnang province. She moved to Kampong Trach commune with her husband in the 1980s. Her husband is a blacksmiths. Author’s interviews with Uom Seila, age 52, Norea commune, Sangke district, Battambang province, August 3, 2005 and 2008. Seila was born in Norea commune and still lives there. She has two children. Her husband was taken away during the KR regime. She is a former head of a women’s association in her village and was recruited to join the K-5 mission. She is now retired. Author, Youk Chhang, and Kalyan Sann’s interview with Mayas, age 67; Khari, age 30; and Khati, Wat Tamim commune, Sangke district, Battambang province, April 2, 2004. Mayas and Khati are sisters and they went into labor on the same day, when the KR began evacuating people from cities and towns to the countryside in April 1975. Khari is Mayas’s daughter. After the KR collapsed, they returned to live in the same commune.
DC-Cam Archives and other Documents Democratic Kampuchea (DK), “Chapter 5: Rights to Beliefs and Religions” in DK Constitution. DC-Cam Archives. 1976. Pol Pot, “View on the Current Situation of the Revolution of Kampuchea.” Documentation Center of Cambodia Catalogue Number D02180. Notebook of an S-21 cadre, Documentation Center of Cambodia Catalogue, D00512. “Conversations of Pol Pot with Delegation of the Belgium about Kampuchea Society, August 5, 1978” Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia Catalogue Number, D00108. Royal Speech of His Majesty, Head of State, to the National Assembly. Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), D42188. Democratic Kampuchea (DK). Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea, 1976. DocumentationCenter of Cambodia, D21447.
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Index agricultural production, 2, 42, 54; farming, 95; fertilizer, 42; fishing, 8, 42 Angkar, 1, 2, 5, 31, 39, 40, 49, 50, 54, 58, 59, 60, 70, 75, 86, 87, 94, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 105, 106, 109, 111, 113, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 136 Arabic, 7, 12, 53, 81, 89, 133, 136 base people, 1, 2, 4, 10, 35, 43, 47, 50, 56, 57, 62, 64, 67, 72, 110, 111, 119, 123, 135 battalion, 7, 26, 40, 60 Battambang province, 30, 31, 33, 35, 61, 97, 128, 130 Buddhism, 71; karma, 137; pagoda, 34; Tripitaka, 72 Buddhsim, Buddha, 4, 72 California, 14 Calmet Hospital, 25 Cambodian concept, 131 Chamkar Leu district, 26, 140 chaos, 22, 129, 138 Chau Doc district, 2 checkpoint, 25, 26, 27 Chet, 102, 103 Chhlong district, 28 Chhon, 28 Chimoan village, 21 Chong Ksach, 77 Chrang Chamres village, 128 Chroy Changva bridge, 26 churches, 4, 72 Chy Krim Naly, 83 civil war, 17, 18, 22, 35, 129 collectivization, 16; communal eating, 14, 40, 50; communal living, 16, 37 crimes, 16, 61, 98, 105, 106, 112, 125, 131, 132, 134, 141; moral offence, 10, 38, 97, 102, 105, 115, 116; stealing, 58, 67, 68, 94, 104, 108
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Documentation Center of Cambodia, 13, 98, 135 El Rosinah, 134 Elizabeth Stanley, 96, 100, 101 ethnicity, 4, 8, 44, 70, 73, 88, 90, 131, 141; Cham, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 43, 44, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 58, 61, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 104, 110, 111, 112, 113, 117, 118, 119, 120, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141; Chinese, 5, 6, 34, 86; Khmer, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 34, 37, 42, 44, 45, 54, 65, 67, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 97, 98, 111, 127, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 139; Vietnamese, 5, 6, 23, 34, 40, 45, 64, 71, 86, 93, 107, 129, 131, 138 evacuation, 2, 4, 9, 14, 17, 18, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 35, 36, 40, 61, 111, 133, 139; relocation, 35 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, 136 family, 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 14, 16, 17, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44, 46, 48, 50, 51, 57, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 75, 77, 84, 85, 88, 94, 102, 103, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 127, 128, 129, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 139; separation, 9, 14, 18, 19, 60, 129, 134; family bonds, 8 food, 2, 3, 12, 16, 19, 23, 33, 34, 36, 39, 44, 45, 46, 47, 51, 52, 57, 58, 67, 75, 77, 78, 80, 90, 94, 101, 104, 107, 111, 114, 118, 127, 134; porridge, 2, 45, 46, 50, 56, 63, 113; rice, 2, 17, 21, 24, 28, 31, 33, 36, 37, 40, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 55, 57, 59, 60, 64, 68, 77, 81, 94, 102, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 119, 121, 133 forgiveness, 138, 139 Four-Year Plan, 54 gender, 8, 10, 16, 37, 38, 67, 92, 96 genocide, 116, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137, 138, 141 hakim, 6, 13, 69, 76, 79 Halal: unhalal, 2, 3, 16, 57 headscarf, 84, 90; krama, 84, 90, 103 health, 38, 43, 51, 53, 55, 65, 66, 67, 80, 102, 124; hospital, 25, 27, 62, 63, 65, 82, 119, 120, 138; hygiene, 65; medicine, 33, 44, 53, 63, 65, 66, 78, 108, 112, 121, 139 identity, 2, 9, 12, 14, 16, 19, 26, 61, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 81, 87, 88,
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90, 127, 128, 132 Ieng Sary, 23, 131, 141 Ieng Thirith, 37, 141 imam, 6, 76 Islam, 6, 7, 12, 43, 50, 51, 57, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 90, 91, 106, 128, 133, 138, 139; Allah, 36, 69, 79, 80, 88, 90, 127, 139; beliefs, 16, 44, 53, 72; charity, 7, 77; fasting, 7, 77, 78, 80; haj, 7, 78; hajaj, 82; Haji, 6; kibla, 80; Mecca, 7, 78, 80, 82; mosques, 4, 6, 7, 12, 70, 72, 92, 128; pilgrimage, 7, 77, 82; prayer, 78, 79; prayer dress, 78, 79, 128, 139; purification, 78, 81; recitation, 78, 139; sacrificial ceremony, 127; shahadah, 77; teachings, 91, 138; worship, 2, 5, 17, 36, 70, 71, 81, 88; ziarah, 7 Islamic religious books, 17; Kitab, 17, 72; Muqqadam, 17, 36, 139; Qur’an, 4, 17, 28, 36, 39, 70, 72, 79, 128, 139, 140 Ismael, 24, 135 Ismael Ahmad, 135 justice, 13, 97, 117, 137, 138, 141 Kalichip, 25, 26, 27, 32, 34, 81, 82, 130 Kambol village, 24 Kampong Luong commune, 1 Kampong Som province, 20, 26 Kampong Speu province, 110 Kampong Svay Leu village, 88 Kampong Thom province, 63, 64, 140 Kampuchea Krom, 2 Kan Chim, 115 Kandal province, 19, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 76, 88, 110, 111 Kbal Thnol, 29 KGB, 23, 93, 98, 99 Khieu Samphan, 141 Khmer Rouge, 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 45, 54, 72, 74, 84, 90, 94, 98, 111, 127, 130, 131, 133, 134, 139; April 17, 4, 24, 32, 35, 36, 39, 40, 74, 82, 124; combatants, 18; counter-revolutionaries, 94; enemies, 68; legacy, 98, 101, 140; policies, 37 Khmerization, 73 Koh Koy village, 88 Koh Phal village, 72 Koh Thom district, 29, 110 Kratie province, 1, 33, 34, 36, 49, 128, 138
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Kroch Chhmar district, 28, 72, 135 Kuch, 121, 122 Kup Aishah, 63, 140 labor, 3, 9, 14, 33, 37, 38, 46, 51, 55, 60, 66, 67, 68, 80, 94, 95, 114; animals, 73, 82, 92, 93, 111; canals, 2, 42; dams, 2, 42; dirt, 42, 52, 58 Lach, 29 Lek Riya, 10, 19, 83, 120 Les Kosem, 6, 7 Lon Nol regime, 4, 19, 32, 40, 60, 61, 73, 94, 112; coup, 19; Lon Nol soldiers, 17, 26, 30, 35, 74 Lors Rohimah, 10 marriage, 2, 6, 8, 20, 21, 88, 115 martyrdom, 11 math, 6, 68; sales, 6 mekang, 42, 49, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 84, 86, 88 memory, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 63, 93, 139, 141; collective memory, 12; confusion, 15, 18, 36, 93; consistent, 9, 10, 11; contested, 9, 10, 11, 134; fragmented, 10; inconsistent, 10, 106 mobile brigade, 1, 21, 41, 102; children’s unit, 41, 43, 44, 106, 107, 120, 127 motherhood, 9, 14, 16, 38, 51; bond, 55, 59, 75; breast milk, 61, 62, 63, 67; childbirth, 14, 50, 66; delivery, 51, 52, 67; maternity, 54, 55, 67; midwife, 28, 33, 52; newborns, 53; pregnancy, 14, 50, 51, 67 Mousa Sokha, 20 movement, 21, 101, 102, 112 mufti, 6 narrative, 8, 29, 125; episode, 59; perspective, 8, 79; silence, 100, 101, 125, 126, 141; stories, 1, 3, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17, 22, 23, 39, 89, 92, 97, 98, 101, 115, 116, 120, 125, 126, 141 national group, 131 Neak Loeung, 127 new people, 4, 34, 42, 43, 50, 138 No Halimah, 30 Noab, 117, 118, 119, 120, 133 Nuon Chea, 23 Ny, 95, 104, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115 Olympic Stadium, 26, 27 O-Many pagoda, 30 oppression, 38 Memories of Cham Muslim Women after the Khmer Rouge
oral history, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 140; empathy, 3, 15, 100; rapport, 15; selecting interviewees, 14; trust, 8, 15, 50; interviews, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19, 56, 93, 101, 129, 141 O-Russey Market, 20 Pang Alim, 130 Paung Lim, 51 Peam Chileang commune, 28 Peang Abdul Ghaffar, 73 Pheap, 104, 105 Phnom Penh, 1, 2, 4, 6, 15, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 34, 35, 36, 40, 86, 111, 117, 138, 140 Pochentong, 20, 24, 25, 27 Pol Pot, 4, 39, 42, 48, 49, 65, 74, 95, 131 policies, 4, 9, 11, 12, 38, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 88, 90 political consciousness, 21, 48, 49, 57, 58, 68, 95; criticism/self-criticism, 48, 49; discipline, 40, 75, 97, 116; violence, 3, 9, 14, 16, 18, 38, 71, 110, 114, 124, 125, 127, 129, 132, 138, 139, 141; principle, 70, 71, 91 Preah Sihanouk, 26, 28, 76 Prek Kdam, 31, 32 Prek Pnoeu chec point, 27 Prek Pnoeu commune, 25, 26 Prek Proloung village, 1, 43, 138 Prek Thmei commune, 110, 130 Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, 19 prison, see “security center” proletarian, 38 Pursat province, 29, 51, 81 rape, 38, 92, 96, 97, 98, 116, 117, 120, 122, 123, 125 re-education, 1, 35, 43, 58, 68, 92, 94, 95, 103, 108, 109, 112, 114, 115 refugee camp, 129 revolution, 4, 19, 20, 21, 22, 37, 38, 44, 45, 46, 49, 55, 57, 59, 60, 63, 70, 74, 88, 93, 94, 95, 104, 115, 119, 124, 135, 138 Rokar Leu village, 117 Romeas Ngoab village, 102 Ros Aishah, 10, 44, 92, 101, 102, 139 Sa Rasath, 61, 76 Sangkat Baksna, 64 Sangkum Reastr Niyum, 6 Sarifah, 55, 135, 136 THE HIJAB OF CAMBODIA
Saveth, 44 security center, 93, 94, 95, 99, 103, 108, 109, 115, 125; brutality, 107; confessions, 92, 95, 99, 100, 106; detention, 94, 96, 98,104, 109; execution, 5, 14, 18, 35, 61, 88, 92, 94, 95, 115, 119, 125; imprisonment, 9, 14, 16, 92, 101, 104, 106; interrogation, 94, 96, 104, 105, 107, 109, 110; Koh Kyang, 92, 95, 101, 103, 104, 109, 110, 139; Phnom Tauch, 103; Po Tonle, 32, 58, 81, 111, 112, 114; prisoner, 92, 96, 100, 103, 107, 109, 110; punishment, 95, 100; terror, 14, 92, 93, 137, 141 Sei, 121, 122, 123, 124 Seth Maly, 20 sexual abuse, 16, 96, 97, 116, 123, 126 sexuality, 38, 116 Shariah law, 8; inheritance, 8; Islamic jurisprudence. Sles Phors, 117, 133 Sman Ny, 110 Sman Zainoab, 28 Sophy village, 31 Sos Maisom, 28 Sos Man, 6, 20, 21 Sos Zarah, 20 Sre Veal village, 32, 33, 44 Stung Meanchey district, 29 surav, 128 Svay Khleang village, 72 Takeo province, 27, 52 Takmao, 27 Tapon commune, 30 Teur Sros, 29, 84 Timah, 46 Toek Sary, 20 Tonle Sap, 8, 29, 128 trauma, 11, 98, 101, 107, 132 Trea village, 72, 76 Tuol Toteung commune, 76 tuon, 76 unit leader, 44, 83, 102, 107, 127 Uom Seila, 30 Yasya Asmath, 6 Yeb Aishah, 61, 84
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Memory of Cham Muslim Women after the Khmer Rouge
So Farina has worked at the Documentation Center of Cambodia since 2003 and is currently team leader of its Cham Oral History project, which records the research monograph, drawn from Ms. So’s master’s thesis, focuses on Cham Muslim women’s experiences under the Khmer Rouge. Ms. So holds a BA in Accounting and Finance from National University of Management (Cambodia) and an MA in International Affairs with a concentration in Southeast Asian Studies from Ohio University (USA). She has participated in international programs related to genocide, oral history, Islam commissions in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Germany, Malaysia, South Korea, and the United States. Besides Khmer, her native language, she is fluent in English and familiar with Bahasa Indo-Malay and Cham.
head. The Arabic word hijab, which refers to modest behavior or dress in general, is often used to describe the headscarf worn by Muslim women. Muslim women wear the hijab for religious reasons, including the desire to be judged for their morals, character, and ideals instead of their appearance.
Documentation Series No 16—Documentation Center of Cambodia Funded by Open Society Foundations (OSF) Printed in Cambodia © 2011 | www.dccam.org
O F C H A M M U S L I M W O M E N A F T H E R T H E K H M E R RO U G E | F a r i n a S o
Hijab: Headscarves are scarves covering most or all of a woman’s hair and
M em o r i es
in Southeast Asia, memorialization, information and technology, and truth
T H E H I J A B O F C A M B O D IA
Cham Muslim community’s memories of the Khmer Rouge era (1975-79). This
Fa r i n a S o
THE
Hijab OF CAMBODIA
Memories of Cham Muslim Wo m e n a f t e r t h e K h m e r R o u g e
