Historical figure

Son Sen

Senior Khmer Rouge leader, head of the army's General Staff and supervisor of S-21, killed on Pol Pot's orders in 1997.

A pitted sandstone ledge with dry grass and a broad-leaved tree at the edge of an escarpment, looking over dense forest spreading across a plain to a hazy horizon, with a flat-topped forested ridge and bare cliff faces to the right
Illustration inspired by the Dangrek hills near Anlong Veng

Son Sen (1930 to 1997) was a senior leader of the Khmer Rouge (ខ្មែរក្រហម). He sat on the Communist Party of Kampuchea's Central and Military Committees, chaired the army's General Staff and served as Deputy Prime Minister for National Defence.[1][2]

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) found that he oversaw the security prison S-21 until August 1977. He was killed with members of his family in June 1997 on the orders of Pol Pot.[1][3][4]

Early party career

He was born in 1930.[1] In the 1940s and 1950s, while a student in France, he belonged to the "Marxist Circle" with Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and other Khmer students.[1]

At the First Party Congress, held from September 30 to October 2, 1960, he was made a candidate member of the Standing Committee, as was Sao Phim.[1][2] At the Second Party Congress in February 1963 he was named to the Central Committee with Vorn Vet and Ruos Nhim.[2] That year he fled to the Vietnamese border.[1] Norodom Sihanouk (នរោត្តម សីហនុ) had named him in a published list of 34 suspected "leftists".[1] With Pol Pot, Ieng Sary and others he took refuge at Office 100, a base on the border that the Vietnamese had first used.[3]

From 1970 he sat on the party's Military Committee, which handled military and security affairs.[1] From mid-1973 to January 1975 he supervised the M-13 security center, the official police office of the Special Zone.[1] In June 1974 he met other party leaders in Meak village, in Prek Kok commune, on plans for the final assault.[1]

Democratic Kampuchea

In early April 1975 he met other party leaders to settle the evacuation of the cities, and with another leader he chaired the body that ran the emptying of Phnom Penh.[1] From April 17, 1975, until January 6, 1979, his posts in Phnom Penh were Office K-3 and then the General Staff.[1] He was made Chairman of the General Staff on October 9, 1975, and on March 30, 1976, the Central Committee named him Deputy Prime Minister for National Defence.[1] A photo caption in the archive of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) names him as Deputy Prime Minister for Defense.[4]

The ECCC profile describes him as a full member of the Standing Committee. The court's Trial Chamber found more cautiously that he was likely a member, and that he was present at every party congress and at the other meetings that set the party line.[1]

He planned the setting up of S-21 with Kaing Guek Eav (Duch) and In Lorn (Nat), and named them its vice-chairman and chairman; in mid-1976 he made Duch chairman.[1] He stayed Duch's direct superior until August 15, 1977, when Nuon Chea took over that role after Son Sen left for the battlefield in the East Zone.[1][2]

He went to the East Zone in August 1977 to direct the conflict with Vietnam and to carry out purges, and in September he was put in direct command of the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea.[1] In 1977 and 1978 Pol Pot gave him command of a battlefield along National Road 1 in Svay Rieng province.[1]

Findings of the court

The court never treated Son Sen as a suspect, a charged person or an accused, and the court says its findings about him cannot be equated with findings of guilt. It also warns that part of what it holds may rest on confessions extracted under torture.[1]

With those limits, the Trial Chamber found that he was part of a joint criminal enterprise with the party's leaders. It found that he gave instructions and political guidance to the commanders of divisions and independent regiments, and that he ordered East Zone cadres purged and sent cadres from the Southwest Zone there to counter the Vietnamese.[1] It found that as Duch's supervisor he stepped up the hunt for "traitors" at S-21, consulted Nuon Chea on whether people named by others could be arrested, and intervened directly in the arrest and questioning of important prisoners.[1] It found that he was kept informed of interrogations at the Au Kanseng security center of Division 801 and had overall authority over it.[1] In the Case 002/02 judgment, the Chamber found that direct instructions to kill prisoners came from the upper echelon, Son Sen and Nuon Chea among them.[2]

1991 and the last years

In 1991 he attended the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements, and he was named with Khieu Samphan to what the court's profile calls Cambodia's Supreme Executive Council.[1]

In the movement's last years, Pol Pot, Son Sen, Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and Ta Mok quarrelled more and more and each feared betrayal by the others.[4] A compound in the Dangrek Mountains (ជួរភ្នំដងរែក) held houses of Nuon Chea, Son Sen and Ta Mok.[4]

Death

The sources differ on the date, the place and the number killed. The ECCC profile dates his killing to June 10, 1997, near Kbal Ansoang, and says Pol Pot ordered it and that 13 of his family died with him.[1] Its profile of his wife, Yun Yat, gives the same date and places it near Kbal Ansong, with members of her family, their children among them.[3] The DC-Cam guidebook says Pol Pot sent a commander on the evening of June 9, 1997. About twenty to thirty soldiers came to the house Ta Mok had built for the couple near eleven that night, and they shot Son Sen, his wife and his family.[4] It counts ten family members, messengers and drivers among them, cremated with his body at Ta Mok's house in O'Chik, in Srah Chhouk village, 8.9 kilometers from the roundabout of Anlong Veng District.[4] On June 13, 1997, Amnesty International cited news reports from the region that he, his wife and ten others had been executed before Pol Pot fled Anlong Veng, and said none of the reports could be confirmed independently.[5]

When news of his death reached Ta Mok, Ta Mok gathered his forces, and five days of fighting followed.[4] Ta Mok then sentenced Pol Pot to house arrest for life, above all for the killing of Son Sen and his family.[4] Ta Mok ordered the dead photographed, to make public how brutal the scene was.[4]

References 5
  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Son Sen (undated)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Summary of Judgement, Case 002/02 (November 16, 2018)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Yun Yat (undated)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 Documentation Center of Cambodia and Ministry of Tourism, A History of the Anlong Veng Community: The Final Stronghold of the Khmer Rouge Movement (2017)
  5. ↑ Amnesty International, Cambodia: Government should seize new opportunity to bring Khmer Rouge human rights abusers to justice (June 13, 1997)


Retrieved from "https://khmerconnection.com/w/index.php?title=Son_Sen&oldid=18116"

Know something we're missing? Send a tip

This page was last edited on 13 November 2026, at 20:26.