Relatives pray at Khmer Rouge (vs.Viets) mass grave

From war era between Khmers vs Viets mass burial site recently doscovered in Siem Reap (photo:Everydaynews)

(PP Post) ,8/8/2012: More than 200 villagers gathered in Siem Reap’s Kralanh district yesterday to pray and seek solice for relatives executed during the Khmer Rouge regime after their remains were found over the weekend at the southern base of Trung Bat mountain.

Do Dantrey village deputy chief Muth Samkhan told the Post by telephone that cars and motorbikes came to the village in droves yesterday to light incense and pray for the dead.

“Before, we just know that here is a former Khmer Rouge’s prison. We didn’t know they killed a lot of people and buried them underground. We have so much pity, and many cried when they prayed,” Samkhan said.

The village chief added that some villagers from farther afield who had heard the news of the gruesome discovery journeyed to the village to find out if the remains of their missing relatives were there.

Authorities yesterday continued to embargo any more groundwork in the area until experts could arrive to examine the one-time graveyard, now a commercial soil excavation site.

Siev Bun Sorn, 54, whose nine family members were killed in Trung Bat mountain prison, said that he was shocked and pitied his family, whom Pol Pot’s men murdered at the site.

“My anger disappeared for years, but when I saw the bones, I got angry immediately but could not let alone the thought of how much he had suffered,” Bun Sorn said, adding he had only escaped a similar fate by being transferred to a work movement unit.

He said he would be joining other mourners in a traditional Khmer ceremony once authorities allowed the public into the area.

“I am not sure I can find any bodies of my family members, because it was many years ago and they were buried in only one hole,” he said.

Vann Bunna, director of Siem Reap’s Department of Cult and Religion, said that his officials would begin research today to report to the province about the status of the bones and where they should be kept.

Khmer Rouge mass grave uncovered in Cambodia

6/8/2012 Indian Express

A mass grave thought to contain the remains of hundreds of Khmer Rouge victims has been uncovered in northwestern Cambodia, authorities said.

Workers found the skeletal remains of at least 17 people last week when they used an excavator to dig up soil for commercial use in Kralanh district, said Siem Reap province deputy military police chief Nhim Seila.

“Some of the skulls were found blindfolded and the hands and feet were tied up with shoelaces,” Nhim said, adding that many of the skulls appeared to have suffered heavy blows.

“According to locals, this was a place where the Khmer Rouge killed people every day during the regime. I think there are hundreds of skeletons in the grave,” Nhim said.

Military police have closed off the site for inspection. The Cambodian countryside is littered with thousands of mass graves from the Khmer Rouge regime’s reign of terror in the late 1970s when up to two million people died from starvation, overwork, torture or execution.

The Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which researches the atrocities, identified the area in Kralanh as a “Killing Field” in 1998 and estimated some 35,000 bodies are buried there, its director Youk Chhang told.

He said he hoped Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes court, which is currently trying the three top surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, would examine the site for potential evidence of crimes committed by the regime.

“The bones cannot find peace until the truth they hold in themselves has been revealed,” he said.

It is not uncommon for Cambodians to uncover Khmer Rouge graves and monks and villagers usually take the bones to a local pagoda or cremate them, Youk added.