Cambodian filmmaker says diplomat should oversee KRouge trials

Cambodian director Rithy Panh in Paris before a litterary TV broadcast, 29 March 2007. Cambodia's most famous filmmaker, whose documentaries take an unflinching look at the legacy of the Khmer Rouge, believes the genocide trials here need a top diplomat to jump start the process.(AFP/File/Bertrand Guay)

By Rene Slama

PHNOM PENH, April 9, 2007 (AFP) - Cambodia's most famous filmmaker Rithy Panh, whose documentaries take an unflinching look at the legacy of the Khmer Rouge, believes the genocide trials here need a top diplomat to jump start the process.

"The trials are fundamentally political," said the 43-year-old director, who is acclaimed on the international festival circuit.

"But there's no politician in this institution," he said of the UN-backed tribunal, which opened nine months ago but has become bogged down in disputes over the procedural details of the trials.

"A diplomat should oversee the tribunal," he said in an interview with AFP and the French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur.

That person would be able to take the high ground in what Rithy Panh called some "professional but very technical debates" that have delayed the start of the trials of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders.

The 29 international and Cambodian jurists are now feuding over whether foreign lawyers should have to pay fees in order to defend suspects at the trials, a dispute which threatens to derail the entire process.

The Cambodian Bar has demanded that foreign lawyers pay 4,900 dollars to participate in the tribunal. International judges believe this would discourage foreign lawyers from taking part, and thus deprive suspects of their right to defence.

The dispute has forced the delay of a key meeting that had been set for April 30, and by extension caused another delay in the start of the trials.

"All that is pathetic," Rithy Panh said. "The trials shouldn't be delayed over a couple of thousand dollars."

"The Cambodians shouldn't always be blamed. This is a Cambodian tribunal with an international component, so it's normal that the Cambodian Bar should have its say," he added.

"The priority is to bring justice to the victims," and to establish who was responsible for the atrocities, all in a way that could serve as an example for future generations, he said.

Rithy Panh is something of an expert in confronting the horrors of Cambodia's past.

His documentary "S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine" showed survivors of the notorious Tuol Sleng torture camp -- which was code-named S21 -- confronting their former captors.

His latest film, "Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers," looks at the plight of prostitutes in Cambodia and is playing in France and at festivals around the world.

Up to two million people died of overwork, starvation and execution under the Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979, when the regime abolished religion, property rights, currency and schools.

Millions more were driven from the cities onto vast collective farms as the ultra-Maoist regime sought to create an agrarian utopia.

The tribunal opened in July after a decade of protracted negotiations between Cambodia and the United Nations. Because of the impasse within the tribunal, trials are not expected to begin until the start of 2008 at the earliest.

Some activists and diplomats accuse the government -- which includes former Khmer Rouge cadres -- of pressuring the Cambodian judges and lawyers into deliberately slowing down the trials.

Several of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders are already in their 80s, and activists fear they could die before standing trial.

But Rithy Panh said he did not believe Cambodia's government was trying to slow down the trials, because they had staked their international credibility on the tribunal.

"This is a tribunal that no one wants. Nonetheless, it must begin its work. This is a national and an international responsibility," he said.

"Reconciliation will follow, and it's up to the Cambodian government to make it a national issue," he added.