A Narration of Carvings
Posted date : 09-04-2010
Source : Youth For Peace
Number of Visitors : 763 
Wat Samroung Khnong Pagoda
The hunger, loss, hardship and atrocity in the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 until 1979 ended 30 years ago. However, the cruel activities and the sufferings resulting from this regime still exist in the minds of the survivors whenever they think of the Khmer Rouge regime. Similar to some other pagoda in Cambodia. Wat Samroung Khnong in Battambang province, about one kilometer north of the town, was used as a prison and killing place.
To keep the memories alive for other people and for the next generations, the survivors of the regime recalled and carved the images that they faced around the wall of the terrace of the stupa in the pagoda.
The images are described in English, Doung Phorn, 67, Samroung Khnong village chief said, “The English description is for the foreigners to understand the stories, Cambodian people have already learned and experienced the Khmer Rouge regime”.
Mr. Doeun Sovann, 27, a staff member of the Provincial Tourist Information Center said that the stupa was built by a group of Cambodians living abroad. However, they were not able to finish all of the work due to lack of funds. The rest of the work was completed by the local Buddhists. They followed the original plan by keeping the language that was prepared by the previous supports, without translation into Khmer language.
The monument was funded by Cambodian Communities in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and France, under the supervision of Mr. Ban Doeun alias Phok,,,,,. A 68-year-old Buddhist layman in the pagoda, Achar Chhorn Sovath said, “initially, the bones were unearthed by local villagers in 1982. In the mass graves we found bones, wooden sticks, a few handcuffs and clothes. The was no order from the authority to search and keep those bones, they just told us not to burn the existing remains.”
He added that all the materials were kept in the open space of his Kut (a house in the pagoda). The handcuffs were lost and the clothes were burned when he moved his Kut. Some bones were decomposed due to exposure to rain and sun because he did not have a proper place to keep them.
Achar Chhorn Sovath was a monk before the Pol Pot regime. He led a life as a monk with other monks until the Khmer Rouge decreed that all the monks had to disrobe in April 1976. Life as a monk during the Pol Pot regime was not different from that of the villagers. From that day, he had to go to fields, produce cropsd and carry soil in baskets to build a dike, in exchange for food. He said, “in the early years, there were about 300 monks. Khmer Rouge wanted the monks to disrobe, so that they forced them to work hard. As a result, the number of monks decreased by 30.”
People who think their relatives died in this pagoda are happy to have the stupa to dedicate to their relative, and to use for performing religious ceremonies. Although they could not identify their bones of their relatives, some families took a piece of soil from the burial place and kept it in their individual stupa.
Chhorn Sovath said that people, both survivors and victims’ relatives, wanted to keep the bones as long as possible to remind them and to honor the victims’ spirits who died during the Pol Pot regime. This would assist the spirits to reincarnate.
Location: Samround Khnong village, Samroung commune, Ek Phnom district, Ek Phnom, Battambang province
Distance: 290 kilometers northwest of Phnom Penh
Victims: 10.000 (source: DC-Cam)
Extracted from:
-Diary 2010, Stories from the Ground “A Narration of Carvings”.
