Misplaced Pages

Santebal

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Special Branch of the Khmer Rouge

Santebal
សន្តិបាល
Agency overview
FormedEarly 1971
Dissolved7 January 1979
TypeSecret police
Jurisdiction Democratic Kampuchea
HeadquartersSecurity Prison 21, Phnom Penh
Minister responsible
Agency executive
Parent agencyKhmer Rouge

The Santebal (Khmer: សន្តិបាល, Sântĕbal [sɑnteɓaːl]; meaning "keeper of peace") was the secret police of the Khmer Rouge's Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime in Cambodia.

The Santebal was in charge of internal security and running prison camps like Tuol Sleng (S-21) where thousands of people were imprisoned, interrogated, tortured and executed. It was part of the Khmer Rouge organizational structure well before the Fall of Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. Its name is an amalgam of two words: sântĕsŏkh (សន្ដិសុខ [sɑntesok]) meaning "security" and nôkôrôbal (នគរ​បាល [nɔkɔːɓaːl]) meaning "police".

History

As early as 1971, the Khmer Rouge or the Communist Party of Kampuchea established the Special Zone outside of Phnom Penh under the direction of Vorn Vet and Son Sen. Sen, later the Deputy Minister for Defense of Democratic Kampuchea, was also in charge of the Santebal, and in that capacity he appointed Comrade Duch to run its security apparatus. Most of the Santebal's deputies, such as Comrade Chan and Comrade Pon (Chan's deputy), hailed from Kampong Thom, Duch's home province.

When the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, Duch moved his headquarters to Phnom Penh and reported directly to Sen. At that time, a small chapel in the capital was used to incarcerate the regime's prisoners, who totaled fewer than two hundred. In May 1976, Duch moved his headquarters to its final location, a former high school known as Tuol Sleng, which could hold up to 1,500 prisoners. It was at Tuol Sleng that the major purges of the Khmer Rouge cadres took place and thousands of prisoners were tortured and killed. Between 1976 and 1978, 20,000 Cambodians were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng. Of this number only seven adults are known to have survived. However, Tuol Sleng was only one of at least 150 execution centres in the country.

References

  1. Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979. Page 315
  2. Locard, Henri, State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) and Retribution (1979-2004) Archived 2013-10-30 at the Wayback Machine, European Review of History, Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2005, pp.121–143.
Categories: