Historical figure
Ta Mok
Khmer Rouge commander, Secretary of the Southwest Zone and ruler of Anlong Veng from 1989 to 1998.
Ta Mok (died 2006) was a commander of the Khmer Rouge (ខ្មែរក្រហម) and its military chief in the movement's last years.[1] He ruled the Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng from 1989 to 1998.[2] The Cambodian military captured him in 1999, and he died in detention in 2006 while awaiting trial.[3]
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the court set up to try Khmer Rouge leaders, made findings about his role in its trials of others. It never charged him or named him as a suspect or an accused, and the court states that its findings cannot be treated as findings of his guilt. It also warns that some of its information comes from confessions obtained under torture.[3]
Names and rank
The sources differ on his birth name. The ECCC profile has him born Chhit Choeun and lists Ung Choeun, Ta Mok and Brother Number Four among his other names,[3] and the Anlong Veng guidebook of the Documentation Center of Cambodia also names him Chhit Choeun.[2] Al Jazeera's 2006 report gives his real name as Ung Choeun.[1]
They also differ on his rank. In the ECCC profile he was Second Deputy of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), deputy chair of its Military Committee, Secretary of the Southwest Zone and a member of the Party's Central and Standing Committees.[3] The guidebook places him as a "middle-tier" military commander.[2]
Party career
In 1963 the Second Party Congress named him to the Central Committee, and he later joined the Standing Committee. He became Secretary of the Southwest Zone in 1968. In October 1970 he discussed a plan to liberate Cambodia with other Central Committee members.[3]
On March 18, 1974, he and Son Sen took overall command of the CPK's forces. That June he met other Party leaders in Meak village, Prek Kok commune, to plan the final assault on Phnom Penh and its evacuation. In early April 1975 he met them again to settle the plan to empty the cities, and he said that everyone had to be moved to the countryside.[3]
After April 17, 1975, the Southwest Zone was split into a West Zone and a Southwest Zone, and he kept his post as Southwest Zone secretary. In 1978 he took on the West Zone as well, and in mid-1978 the Northwest Zone. When the Democratic Kampuchea regime collapsed, he stayed inside Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge in May 1979.[3]
Trial Chamber findings
The ECCC's Trial Chamber found that he took part in a joint criminal enterprise with CPK leaders and held a long and prominent role in the Party from 1975 to 1979. He often met members of the Standing Committee, went to every Party Congress and was at the meeting where the plan to evacuate the cities was discussed. When Phnom Penh was emptied, troops under his direct command took part.[3]
The Chamber also found that he told military commanders, at his Takeo (តាកែវ) home, that the Standing Committee had decided to purge the East Zone. He sent Southwest Zone forces to the East Zone to fight Vietnamese forces and to "cleanse" people who had worked with them. He took part in a meeting of top CPK leaders and military commanders where Sao Phim and others from the East Zone were named internal enemies to be purged. He ordered the arrests of Ta Keu, Deputy Secretary of the Northwest Zone, and of Vorn Vet.[3]
In the Chamber's findings, he also passed on instructions to marry disabled soldiers. He was involved in the large flow of execution reports through Sector 13, which ran Kraing Ta Chan Security Center, and he visited the cooperative himself.[3]
Anlong Veng
In late 1989 Khmer Rouge forces at Mountain 1003, under his command, began an offensive on Anlong Veng, and they took it in December 1989. He then organized a mass movement of people from the base camps into the area.[2] His compound in the Dangrek Mountains (ជួរភ្នំដងរែក) held houses for Nuon Chea, Son Sen and himself, and he built a house for Pol Pot, who moved in from Pailin (ប៉ៃលិន).[2]
He spent much time with local people and started many building projects in the community.[2] The first of three phases of a dam ran from 1990 to 1991, and after the dam and a bridge were built the lake behind them grew much larger. He built a sawmill in 1991 to supply wood to his soldiers and for trade with Thailand. A supply depot known as Ta Mok's Transportation Work Site opened in mid-1992. A school went up on April 1, 1993, on 4.830 hectares. A hospital for wounded soldiers and the sick followed in late 1993, and in 1998 it became the Anlong Veng District Referral Hospital.[2]
His house in Anlong Veng was built on October 17, 1993, on 1.614 hectares and added to over several phases; it is also known as the Ta Mok Museum. In August 1994 he set up a "model" rice field of more than 4 hectares in Trapeang Prey Commune. He often gave visitors rice, cattle and other local goods.[2] He ordered a bridge built to ease travel between Anlong Veng and Thailand, using Thai technology and machinery; it took two years. The guidebook dates the bridge to 1995 in one place and gives January 1, 1996, for the Ta Mok Bridge, or O'Chik Bridge, in another.[2]
When foreign diplomatic ties and aid were cut off, he turned Mountain 200 into a site for making recycled ammunition. Twelve people were reported to work there, turning out 5,000 to 6,000 rounds a day.[2]
Reputation
He had a reputation for brutality.[2] Al Jazeera's report named him "the butcher",[1] and the guidebook mentions that some people called him "Ta Mok: The Butcher".[2] The guidebook holds his forces responsible for a massacre of civilians and Khmer Rouge cadres in the Eastern Zone of Democratic Kampuchea. In its view he was also a revered patron of the Anlong Veng community.[2]
Break with Pol Pot
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.[2] The ECCC profile places Son Sen's murder, on Pol Pot's orders, in 1997 and has Ta Mok rebel against Pol Pot after it.[3] The guidebook dates the killing to the evening of June 9, 1997, when Pol Pot sent his commander Saroeun to kill Son Sen and his wife in a house Ta Mok had built, where the couple lived.[2]
When word of Son Sen's death reached him, Ta Mok gathered his forces. Five days of fighting followed, after which Pol Pot's forces gave up and Pol Pot was arrested.[2] Ta Mok and his men collected the bodies from Pol Pot's men, who had carried out the killings, and cremated them together; on his orders the dead were photographed to make the brutality of the scene public.[2]
The sources differ on the sentence Pol Pot received. The ECCC profile has Ta Mok order his forces to arrest Pol Pot and hold him under house arrest.[3] The guidebook has him sentence Pol Pot to house arrest for life, mainly for the killing of Son Sen and his family. Elsewhere the guidebook gives the sentence as life imprisonment.[2]
On April 15, 1998, during a tactical retreat, Pol Pot, who had been ill, died in his bed of a cardiac arrest.[2] Al Jazeera's report has Ta Mok lead the Khmer Rouge for a short time in its final days.[1]
Defections and capture
Talks between the government side and Yim Phanna, a top general under Ta Mok who later became Anlong Veng's district governor, ended in an agreement to break away from his rule. When the agreement leaked to Ta Mok, fighting broke out between the defectors and his loyal forces. More and more of his soldiers left, and his forces grew weak and lost heart.[2] He arrested some military leaders and held them in an iron cage, which is shown at his house in Anlong Veng.[2]
On December 4, 1998, the two sides agreed on the last Khmer Rouge defection, and a formal integration ceremony took place in Anlong Veng on February 9, 1999.[2] The sources tell his capture differently. The ECCC profile has him captured along the Thai-Cambodian border in March 1999 and held in a military prison to await trial.[3] The guidebook has him first put under house arrest and later arrested, then kept alone in a cell at a military prison in Phnom Penh for seven years.[2] Al Jazeera's report gives only the year of his capture, 1999.[1]
Death
In 2006 he was one of two former senior Khmer Rouge officials held awaiting trial for crimes against humanity; the other was Kaing Khek Iev, known as Duch, who had run the S-21 torture center in Phnom Penh.[1] He had tuberculosis, high blood pressure and breathing problems and was cared for at a military hospital, and he slipped in and out of a coma in his last week.[1] He died at the military hospital in Phnom Penh on July 21, 2006.[3]
His age at death differs by source: the ECCC profile gives his years as 1925 to 2006,[3] the guidebook puts him at 80,[2] and Al Jazeera's report at about 82.[1] His body was taken to Anlong Veng for a large funeral, and his stupa stands at Srah Chhouk pagoda, the former site of his sawmill.[2]
He died in the month that judges and prosecutors were sworn in for the United Nations-backed trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders. Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, said: "Some people may be happy with this but not the victims who have been waiting for justice for a long time."[1]
References 3
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Al Jazeera, Khmer Rouge chief dies (July 21, 2006)
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 2.24 Documentation Center of Cambodia and Ministry of Tourism, A History of the Anlong Veng Community: The Final Stronghold of the Khmer Rouge Movement (2017)
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Ta Mok (undated)
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