Koh Khsach Tunlea, Koh Memeay or the Island of Widows on the Tonle Bassac

On the Tonle Bassac lies an island that the Khmer Rouge used to intern the wives of the regime's victims.

Before 1975

Koh Khsach Tunlea was a lush and fertile island located on the Bassac river, a tributary of the Mekong and Tonle Sap, about twenty kilometers south of Phnom Penh in the Sa'ang district, Kandal province. The place housed a peaceful farming community that lived in small villages from growing vegetables, rice, and fishing.

Internment Camp for Women

Sam Chang lived on Koh Khsach Tunlea with her husband Eang Heang, who worked as a lawyer. When Pol Pot's troops took power, the young wife had just given birth. With the arrival of the Khmer Rouge on the island, Eang Heang chose to flee, knowing his profession condemned him to certain death. But he couldn't resist returning to see his one-month-old son. That's when the Khmer Rouge took him away. Chang begged them to let her go with her husband, but they refused. She was never told where he was transferred, and she never saw him again.

The Angkar, the all-powerful political organization that ran Democratic Kampuchea, expelled almost all the families and created an internment camp there for wives whose husbands had been executed, accused of being "traitors." Thousands of grieving women from the surrounding district were gathered with their children and transported to the island.

Living Conditions

The women were confined ten or more to a house, with their children if they were under 10 years old. The older ones were sent to adolescent labor camps off the island. The women were forced to work long hours while malnourished. Some planted rice and vegetables or worked in the huge communal kitchen. Others served as nurses for the babies of other widows. They were forbidden to complain, and even if they were tempted to comfort each other and talk, hunger and exhaustion overwhelmed them with fatigue once night fell. Koh Khsach Tunlea quickly became known as "Koh Memeay — the Island of Widows."

Koh Khsach Tunlea

Exceptions

A handful of "base people" families—those from poor farming backgrounds without education, considered uncorrupted by the extremist communist regime—were allowed to stay but were separated from the rest of the island. Chang stayed against her will but was forced to move to the other side of the island with her sick mother. Her house became a "prison without walls."

Today, at 72 years old and still living on the island, Chang is a kind woman with a welcoming smile who might seem at peace. However, as she speaks of her experiences between 1975 and 1979, the grief of losing her husband, hunger, forced labor, and the fear of constant surveillance have made her withdrawn and taciturn. More than 40 years later, the memories remain very painful. She says that because of her husband's position and education, she received one of the harshest treatments on the island. She and her four youngest of six children fed exclusively on porridge and banana stalks, sometimes seasoned with a bit of corn. Chang worked excessively, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the vegetable and rice fields with a one-hour lunch break at noon.

She recounts living in constant fear of being taken away like her husband, with Khmer Rouge cadres or informants prowling her home to see if she criticized the regime: "At night, they spied on families to see if they did or said something wrong," she says.

With no medical facilities on the island, the Khmer Rouge let those who fell ill or suffered from severe malnutrition die. Chang says she never saw the Khmer Rouge kill or torture anyone on the island, but many widows were taken away one by one and probably executed elsewhere.

"It was a hard place to live, I had no more emotions, I didn't think anymore, I just tried to survive."

Avoiding Rebellion

Hol Ly, now 69 years old, was also forced to live on the island after her husband's murder. The Khmer Rouge told her that her husband, a former Lon Nol soldier, was going to be "re-educated," but instead he was taken to the neighboring island of Koh Kor, which housed a torture and execution center.

"When they told me he had been arrested, I lost hope of ever seeing him again," she confides. "I was devastated and cried constantly. Then the Khmer Rouge came and mistreated me for crying, so I had to stop." Like Chang, she says the most grueling thing on the island at the time was the lack of food and forced labor. "I worked in the kitchen husking rice for several hours a day," she says, also confiding that none of the widows tried to escape for fear that the Khmer Rouge would kill their families.

Youk Chhang, executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), says the Khmer Rouge feared rebellion and that the widows were probably sent to the island because it was isolated from the rest of society. "If you look at the mass graves of prisons in Kandal, you'll see that many murders took place—leaving behind many widows," he says. "They kept them at Koh Khsach Tunlea to ensure they had no way to rebel or seek revenge."

Research Work

Cambodian Kalyanee Mam, director and producer of the documentary "A River Changes Course," conducted a research project on Koh Khsach Tunlea about fifteen years ago, during which she interviewed several widows sent to the island: "I remember being particularly shocked that women who had recently given birth were forced to serve as communal nurses for other women," she says. "I was also horrified that, perhaps to appease the jealousies of 'base' women, the widows were forced to remarry."

It is difficult to know how many widows were sent to the island in total. Some claim there were several thousand. However, Youk estimates there were probably only "a few hundred." It is also hard to say how many women were raped and murdered on Koh Khsach Tunlea. Theresa de Langis, researcher and writer on women's human rights in conflict and post-conflict zones, who compiled an oral history of Khmer Rouge survivors, believes the situation on the island exposed widows to a high risk of sexual violence. "They were considered enemies, so sexually 'available'; thus, some were forced to marry disabled Khmer Rouge soldiers; they were in a prison situation under the absolute power of Angkar cadres with no recourse," she concludes.

Violence

Youk Chhang recounts that in the late 1990s, while investigating allegations of sexual assaults by the Khmer Rouge, he interviewed women who had been raped after being imprisoned on Koh Khsach Tunlea. He explains: "The prison guards had no social life and the island is very isolated."

In 2012, Sam Oeurn, who had been sent to Koh Khsach Tunlea in 1977 after her husband's execution, told the Khmer Rouge tribunal that she had seen at least one woman brutally murdered. "One evening, a woman stole a fruit, then she was executed by being beaten with a pole and thrown into a pit," confides Sam Oeurn. "And I thought my day would come soon."

Categorization

Craig Etcheson, author of "After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide" and former chief investigator for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal's co-prosecutors' office, visited Koh Khsach Tunlea nearly 20 years ago while working on DC-Cam's mass graves mapping project. He explains that places like the Island of Widows were created for two reasons.​

"First, if an individual was identified as an 'enemy,' it was often assumed that other family members were also enemies, in a kind of guilt by association," he says. "Second, the Khmer Rouge were concerned about the possibility of survivors of an enemy's family seeking revenge, which could be mitigated by the opportunity to imprison and/or execute all family members."​

Conditions in these prisons were much worse than those experienced by the general population: smaller food rations, more grueling work demands, and much stricter discipline, he recounts. According to Craig Etcheson, the prisoners were divided into categories, and some were treated better than others. Category one prisoners were identified as enemies and quickly executed; category two prisoners were constantly evaluated to be classified in the first category; category three prisoners were not considered a threat and could even be released in some cases.​

"Category three prisoners could also receive larger rations and slightly less heavy work requirements than the other two categories."​

Better Treatment

It seems not everyone on the island experienced the same level of hardship. Em Kan lived in the Sa'ang district in Prek Samrong village before the Democratic Kampuchea era. She returned there after the Khmer Rouge. She remembers being taken to Koh Khsach Tunlea in 1977 with many other widows. After sleeping three nights on the ground, she and her children were housed in a large stilt house with a handful of other women and their children. Having already lost a daughter to illness, her husband, her eldest son, her uncle, and most of her neighbors to the Khmer Rouge, she feared the worst, thinking she would end up executed. However, life on the island turned out to be much easier than before.

Her family received enough food, and even though the work was hard and endless, from early morning until 5 p.m., it was bearable. "I didn't have such a terrible life as at the beginning of the regime. I had already lived under strict discipline, so I knew I couldn't complain, otherwise I would have been taken away and killed."

Em Kan says she saw elderly people fall ill and die, but no one died of hunger, and she claims the only widows taken away to be executed were "Vietnamese or Chinese." Her son Em Poul, who was about 12 at the time, says Koh Khsach Tunlea was "paradise" compared to the children's labor camp where he was before. Poul, who pretended to be mentally handicapped to stay with his mother, spent his days collecting cow dung for fertilizer or helping the cook.

Leaving Koh Khsach Tunlea

The widows were finally allowed to leave Koh Khsach Tunlea after the Vietnamese arrived in 1979. Kan remembers picking rice one day when she noticed smoke and explosion noises coming from Phnom Penh. Over the following days, the widows with their children and the cadres began to disappear, and there was no one left to prepare the communal meal. Only one elderly Khmer Rouge cadre remained. After telling him to prepare the meal, he left, and Kan decided to return to her native village.

Chang and Ly discovered that the Khmer Rouge had been defeated when their neighbors began returning to the island. Although life remained difficult in the following years, they and their families felt relatively happy. Chang's six children survived the Khmer Rouge and gave her 16 grandchildren.

"We were happy to get our children back even if we struggled to feed ourselves," says Chang.

About 1400 families live on the island today. While recalling memories is still painful, Chang's family seems to have almost forgotten, living today from growing ginger, onions, bananas, mangoes, jackfruit, and cabbage—the same activities they practiced before the Khmer Rouge arrived.

"It's sunny and the soil is fertile. It's also a good place to live," concludes Em Kan.

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Notes : DC CamKoh Khsach Chunlea : une île des veuves par Kalyanee Mam

Illustrations : Enrico Stocchi, Rodney Topor et Bo Nielsen