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Published Date: 01 July 2009
By Sopheng Cheang

ONE of three living survivors from the Khmer Rouge's main torture centre testified yesterday that he endured beatings and electric shocks and had his toenails pulled out, but was spared execution because he knew how to repair cars.

Weeping as he spoke, 79-year-old Chum Mey said he still cried every night and any mention of the Khmer Rouge reminded him of his wife and baby – both killed under the regime whose 1970s rule of Cambodia left an estimated 1.7 million people dead.

Three decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, a UN-backed tribunal is piecing together Cambodia's dark past with the trial of Kaing Guek Eav – better known as Duch – who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh between 1975 and 1979.

Duch sat impassively and listened as Chum Mey spoke."I was beaten for 12 days and nights. I was beaten day and night. I could hardly walk," said Chum Mey, who was arrested in early 1975 and remained jailed until Vietnamese troops removed the Khmer Rouge regime in January 1979.

First he was hit with sticks, then subjected to a week of torture with electrical wires.Like most prisoners at S-21, Chum Mey was forced to make confessions that suited the regime's radical communist perspective. Many confessed to being spies for the CIA, Russia's KGB or Vietnam.

"I kept responding that I didn't know anything about the CIA and KGB, but they used pliers and twisted off my toenail," he said. "I confessed that I had joined the CIA and KGB but it was a lie. I said it because I was so badly beaten."

Chum Mey turned to Duch at one point in yesterday's hearing and asked him angrily why prisoners were accused of working for the CIA.Duch remained silent until a judge ordered him to speak. The 66-year-old calmly answered that the term CIA was used to refer to anyone who opposed the Khmer Rouge – but it didn't necessarily have anything to do with the US Central Intelligence Agency."The real CIA is different from people accused by the regime of being CIA," Duch said. "You were identified as someone who opposed the regime, that's why we called you CIA."

Some 16,000 men, women and children were detained and tortured at S-21 before being sent for execution at the "Killing Fields" on the outskirts of the capital where thousands were murdered and their bodies dumped. Chum Mey is thought to be one of only seven survivors, and one of three still alive today.

His torture stopped once his captors realised he had a useful skill. He was put to work fixing his jailers' cars, tractors, sewing machines and typewriters.