The Tragic Story of Parliamentarian Buth Choun: Testimonies from the Khmer Rouge Era

In collaboration with the magazine Searching for the Truth, initiated by DCCAM, Cambodge Mag offers you a series of raw testimonies from those who lived through the Khmer Rouge regime. Today, the tragic story of parliamentarian Buth Choun, told by his daughter, Buth Chan Mearadey.

My father, born in 1920, was a true patriot and a very active figure in politics. He had been elected to the National Assembly for two terms, from 1959 to 1967, and participated in the 1970 coup d’état aimed at deposing King Sihanouk.

He had many friends in the Khmer Republic government. Two of them were Lon Nol, the Prime Minister, and Sirik Matak, the prince whom the French had sidelined from the throne in favor of his cousin Norodom Sihanouk and who had become vice-prime minister.

Under the Lon Nol regime, he first worked at the Ministry of Planning, then at Phnom Penh City Hall.

Even though my father held a lot of information thanks to his political connections, he always believed that Cambodia was a beautiful, safe country, and he did not want to flee when the Khmer Rouge took power.

In April 1975, our family lived in a large house in Phnom Penh. There were fourteen of us: my parents, my husband, me and our two children, my sister Rasmei, her husband and her two children, my sisters Sousdey and Thida, and two domestic workers. My father wanted the whole family to live together.

On the third day after the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and started shooting, we decided to leave the city in two small cars. There were so many people on the road that we couldn’t drive, so we had to push them. Along the way, we saw many dead bodies; there was so much fighting that they didn’t remove the corpses.

We headed toward Chbar Ampouv and Kbal Thnal; then we went to Chroy Ampil and left the cars there. My brother-in-law overheard people talking about my father in Chroy Ampil. They pointed at him saying:“It’s Buth Choun.”We didn’t know who they were, but they knew us. We didn’t pay attention, because we thought there couldn’t be any problems for us.

We went to the boat dock at Prek Por. At midnight, three or four young men dressed in black arrived at the dock. They said they had come to take my father to meet Angkar and ask him for information. My father wasn’t worried and decided to follow them.

We waited for him a long time. Around 2 a.m., Angkar brought a letter, saying it was from my father. He wrote that he was going to be arrested soon and that we shouldn’t wait for him. He also said that if he was lucky, he would rejoin us at Chamkar Leu. I remember everything the letter contained, even though I lost it many years later.

The next day, we took the boat to Chamkar Leu, then went to Speu village, my mother’s hometown, in Kampong Cham province. We hoped our relatives there would help us. The villagers told us we shouldn’t keep thinking my father was still alive, because the Khmer Rouge didn’t keep high-ranking people.

“I held on to hope, but after a year, with so many people killed, I started to feel the disillusionment of his disappearance. We never heard from him again after that.”

Chamkar Leu was a beautiful district. Our village had 16 families of elderly people and a few new arrivals. The land was fertile and there was enough food. I sometimes stole to eat, but I was never caught. The villagers, who were good people, taught me to transplant rice and pick beans, and I became stronger then.

The Khmer Rouge started sending people to be killed in July or August 1977. Before that, they only took those they knew were soldiers or high-ranking people. But in 1977, they started taking teachers too.

One of my neighbors was the widow of a Lon Nol soldier. One night, the Khmer Rouge came to take her family, but they fled. She knew Angkar would take them to kill them, so she called her four daughters at their workplace. The next morning, they found them with their throats slit under a mango tree.

The villagers had a homemade radio they kept hidden underground, and we sometimes listened to “VOA — Voice of America” at night. In January 1979, we learned they were evacuating people to Thailand, so we all decided to leave the village. About thirty of us left.

We walked for about a month, sometimes up to 20 km a day. When we arrived in Siem Reap, my sister Rasmei gave birth, so we stayed there for about a month.

Then we found a guide who took us through the jungle to Thailand. He tried to abandon us in the forest. But the villagers climbed trees, and when they saw no lights, they knew we hadn’t arrived and forced him to take us all the way.

When the Americans at the refugee camp heard my husband’s story, they registered us so we could emigrate to a third country. In the end, we all made it out. My husband, our three children, and I went to the United States and later brought my mother to live with us. My sisters Thida and Sousdey also came with their children, and my sister Rasmei and her family went to Canada. Today, I am a social worker in California.

My husband Ngak Kheang

One day, they tied my husband Ngak Kheang with a rope and took him to the security office, an hour’s walk from our village. A week after his arrest, I saw Hok, the regional chief, pass by our house on a motorcycle. I waved at him and asked why Angkar had arrested my husband. I said that Kheang was neither a soldier nor a businessman, that he had only been a teacher.

My husband had been a schoolteacher in Speu village from 1966 to 1968, then he went to Phnom Penh to teach fourth or fifth grade; he also taught French. One of the village chief’s children had been his student, so they knew him. His students liked him well, and when we were first evacuated to Chamkar Leu, they made sure we had enough food.

Around 1970, my husband left teaching and went to work at the French-language AKP newspaper. People from the National Assembly read it. Kheang was a translator and also wrote articles, some of which appeared on the front page.

Sometimes, people reproached him for writing about what was happening locally, especially his articles on politics and the National Assembly.

Hok said he would question my husband about his past, then left. Hok went to see my Kheang and told him he had also been a teacher. They agreed on many ideas, and Hok told my husband he had to leave Speu village because it was no longer safe; many of the village elders didn’t like us. Then Hok devised a plan to get my husband out of prison, and he was released to a nearby farm. Hok was a good man; later, he disappeared.

The Khmer Rouge tried to arrest Kheang again, but he escaped. When he returned home, the village chief was surprised; he thought my husband had already been killed.

After that, the Khmer Rouge wanted to send my mother and my sister Thida to Region 42. I asked On, a soldier from the Southwest Zone, for permission to go with them. But they said my husband couldn’t go. So I went to the village chief and told him I needed to live with my mother and my husband.

On and Hok wanted to help us, so they said that when the truck came to pick us up, we shouldn’t get on it, but go back home and tell Angkar that the truck had left without us. We followed their instructions, and four or five days later, we saw the clothes of the people who had left on the truck. They had been taken to a rubber plantation and thrown into a well. The Khmer Rouge gave their clothes to other people and sold their watches. My uncle and his family were also killed.

Buth Chan Mearadey’s sisters remember their father

In our culture, people always feared their father, but ours put us at ease when we were near him. He was a great entertainer, and he told us he had been the main character in the famous play Sophat. He played drums in a band with his friends, and the organ almost every evening. In 1960, he took us to a live concert where Mr. Chum Kem performed “The Twist.”

My father was a kind and gentle person who encouraged us to study. He took care of not only his family, but also his two sisters. He gave their sons a house and food when they wanted to study in the city. His kindness didn’t stop there; sometimes he also helped those who came from his hometown.

Thida

I was only 15 when the Khmer Rouge took my father from our family. It was very early in the morning, so I was disoriented. We were on the Khmer Rouge ferry when my father came up to me, gently touched my head, and said, “Don’t go anywhere, my child, wait here…”

He smiled gently to reassure me that everything would be fine. I felt loved and protected. That’s the last image I have kept of my father to this day. For some reason, I remember that moment very well; it was surreal. Since then, I have always dreamed of that love and protection.

Acknowledgments: Bunthorn Sorn