The Excavated Bones Went Back Into the Ground
Posted date : 06-04-2010
Source : Youth For Peace
Number of Visitors : 768 
Toul Trapeang Lvea Burial
The remains of the Khmer Rouge regime victims in Daun Dei village have all gone back into the ground after thirty years, during which they had been kept and stored in a stupa. In the early 1980s hundreds of Khmer Rouge victims’ remains had been taken out from dozens of small and big pits. The villagers and the local authority wanted to keep those remains as evidence of the Khmer Rouge regime. The remains were then stored in a two-square-meter brick stupa. A dirt road was also built to make it easy for people to go to the burial site to celebrate the Remembrance Day, which crowds of villagers attended.
Without taking sufficient care of the stupa and the bones and skulls stored inside, young local cattle tenders kept on climbing up the stupa until it finally fell down. Most of the remains were then covered under the ruins while the rest were eaten by cows and some were decayed due to exposure to the sun and rain. After collapse of the stupa, the place is much less frequented by visitors. What remains now are only the ruins of stupa and several small pits which are being washed out. The road is not maintained and is not in good condition.
In addition to the poor road conditions and the disappearing memorial, the location of the burial ground is another obstacle for the public or victims’ relatives. It is around a kilometer away from the village in the rice fields and behind the bushes. For the last two years, it has been quiet here. There is no praying or celebration of religious ceremonies because the State Remembrance Day on the 20th of May is now being conducted in a pagoda in the village.
“The villagers and I have no capacity to build a new stupa. I have talked to the district level staff about building a new stupa and repairing the road, but there is no response from them,” said Chean Hean, 51, Daun Dei village chief. “If the higher level can contribute the subsidy and the villagers only share what they can, that would be very good. We would have a memorial here,” he added.
Although there is no real plan for the future of the place, the local authority and the communities have agreed to keep the place and the road unoccupied. “I have put a flag there and we agreed to keep the old road and the burial as the land for the community. It does not belong to anyone,” added Hean.
Location: Daun Dei village, Chrey Vien commune of Kampong Cham’s Prey Chor district
Distance: Around 90 kilometers northeast of Phnom Penh
Victims: Between 300 and 500 (source: DC-Cam)
Extracted from:
-Diary 2010, Stories from the Ground “The Excavated Bones Went Back Into the Ground”.
