May 23, 2007
Secrets of the Soil
John Vink
John Vink/Magnum Photos
Nearly 30 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, evidence of their brutal rule is still being discovered. On May 5, villagers of Koh Sla, while digging the soil, stumbled upon a burial site dating from the regime. Some people started exploring the site, looking for jewelry which would have been left in the graves. About 120 corpses were unearthed.
On a small hilltop nearby, the remains of a separate body were found, wrapped in olive coloured plastic sheeting, which indicates this was not a civilian victim but more probably a Vietnamese soldier who died during the 1979 campaign by the Vietnamese army to push back the Khmer Rouge to the strongholds from where they would remain active until 1998. The bones were recovered by the Vietnamese on May 10th and repatriated.
John Vink/Magnum Photos
The site probably contains about 9000 bodies of people who died from illness and starvation during forced labour imposed by the Khmer Rouge for the construction of the Koh Sla dam, an imposing construction about 10 km long and 15 to 20 meters high. Members of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DCCAM) went to the site to investigate and collect testimonies of the inhabitants, many of them being former Khmer Rouge.
May 20 is celebrated by some in Cambodia as the "Day of Anger". Previously called "Day of Hatred", it commemorates Pol Pot's 1976 directive about planified collectivisation and was instigated in 1984 by the Vietnamese then in power in the country.
Published on the Magnum Blog on May 23, 2007
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