Chum Mey

Common card · No. 478741

Chum Mey (Khmer: ជុំ ម៉ី, romanized: Chŭm Mei [cum məj]; born c. 1930) is a Cambodian man and is one of only seven known adult survivors of the Khmer Rouge imprisonment in the S-21 Tuol Sleng camp, where 20,000 prisoners, mostly Cambodians, were sent for execution. Formerly a motor mechanic working in Phnom Penh, he was taken to the prison on 28 October 1978, accused of being a spy. His life was only spared because of his ability to repair sewing machines. Born in 1930 in Cambodia (which was at the time a part of French Indochina), it’s unclear whether he witnessed war crimes in Indochina committed in World War II and the First Indochina War committed by the Japanese troops and French troops in the 1940’s and 1950’s before the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975. In 2004, he described the killing of his wife and son who were killed by the Kampuchea Revolutionary Army and the Santebal:"First they shot my wife, who was marching in front with the other women," he said. "She screamed to...

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