Ex-Khmer Rouge chief Ta Mok buried in Cambodia
Hundreds of followers and relatives today buried notorious former Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok.
He died before he could be brought to trial for his alleged role in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people during the regime’s rule in the 1970s.
Seventy-two Buddhist monks chanted prayers to bless Ta Mok’s body before it was put on a pick-up truck for a procession to his final resting place at a Buddhist temple in Anlong Veng, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold 190 miles north of the capital Phnom Penh.
At the temple, about 1,000 mourners watched as Ta Mok’s coffin was placed in a concrete monument. Some, including former followers, wept as they bid a final farewell to the man they regarded as their benefactor.
“I am shocked and deeply sorry… because he did a lot for us here,” Pauch San, 50, said at the funeral, tears running down her face.
Ta Mok, who died on Friday in a military hospital in Phnom Penh, had been in custody since 1999 awaiting trial in a UN-backed tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity. The Khmer Rouge trials are expected to begin in 2007.
“He has escaped legal prosecution but I don’t think he can escape from (history’s verdict) and public condemnation,” said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, an independent group researching Khmer Rouge crimes.
For most of his life, Ta Mok had been a feared guerrilla leader whose ruthlessness earned him the nickname “The Butcher”.
He was widely seen as a participant in atrocities during the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-79 rule, when about 1.7 million people died from starvation, disease, overwork or execution.
Hean Sophoan, a 27-year-old villager, was born after the Khmer Rouge were driven from power by a Vietnam-led resistance in 1979, but said he has learned from books about the atrocities committed by the regime.
“I have burned incense sticks to pray for him not to be known as a criminal when he is reborn in his next life,” Hean Sophoan said.
In Anlong Veng, where Ta Mok ruled as a warlord for years until his capture, many considered the one-legged veteran revolutionary a tough but benevolent leader who looked after his followers and brought much-needed improvements to local people’s lives.
Instead of burying him in the ground, relatives put his body in six-and-a-half foot by eight foot monument at the Buddhist temple.
Meas Muth, Ta Mok’s son-in-law, said yesterday that relatives wanted to give Ta Mok “the honour he deserves”.
Roughly €4,000 – a princely sum in impoverished Cambodia – will be spent on the monument, said Meas Muth, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who is now a major general in the Cambodian army.
The elaborate three-day funeral presided over by Buddhist monks contrasted sharply with the way the Khmer Rouge treated its victims.
They usually buried the dead in shallow mass graves that still dot the countryside. Many survivors still have no idea where to find loved ones’ remains for proper funerals.
Youk Chhang, a Khmer Rouge survivor, said that without Ta Mok facing trial and judgment, “it would be very difficult for the victims who suffered under his rule and those who continue to believe he was a hero, to reconcile”.
“Without prosecution, these two groups will continue to divide society for many decades to come,” he said. “This is the legacy Ta Mok has left us to live with.”
