"I will testify with my heart. I will give the money they offer me as a witness to beggars in need because offering money like this is to look at witnesses like dogs" - Nhem En angry response to ECCC stipend offer for witnessesPhnom Penh (dpa) - One of a handful of survivors from Pol Pot's secret prison is expected to stand shoulder to shoulder with his former guard and the photographer who documented it all to testify against their former master, the men and their families said Tuesday.
The long-awaited $56-million joint UN-Cambodian court to try top former Khmer Rouge leaders has begun calling witnesses, and although their feelings are mixed, all have agreed to be heard.
Relatives of a former senior guard at S-21, or Toul Sleng Torture Centre, Him Huy, said he had been called to the stand to testify against the prison's former commandant, Kang Keng Iev, alias Duch.
Duch has been charged with crimes against humanity for his alleged crimes at one of the most infamous prisons in history.
The photographer who took many of the infamous portraits of the accused both pre- and post-mortem, Nhem En, said he has also been called to give testimony from November 1.
Experts have estimated that around 14,000 people died at the prison, which was designed to torture suspected spies before the survivors were shipped to the Killing Fields to be murdered.
Witnesses will be given food and accommodation as well as a 5 dollar a day stipend - a courtesy Nhem En angrily rejected.
"I will testify with my heart. I will give the money they offer me as a witness to beggars in need because offering money like this is to look at witnesses like dogs," Nhem En said by telephone.
En, who was recruited from a remote village aged just 16 and trained to document the brutality of the regime, said he believed the museum of his work he is setting up near his home in Anlong Veng, 500 kilometres north of the capital, will do more to help people understand the Khmer Rouge regime than the trial.
"But I will go and tell my story. I will go without documents. I will carry the pictures in my mind," he said, adding that he felt violated and patronised by the price being put on his life story.
One of just a handful of survivors who is expected to also testify, Vann Nath, said he didn't care about stipends. "Money is not important. I just want justice," Nath said.
Up to 2 million Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge regime's 1975-79 Democratic Kampuchea regime in the ultra-Maoists failed attempt to turn the country into an agrarian utopia.
A spokesman for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Reach Sambath, said the court was simply grateful to witnesses who were happy to testify.
"We embrace principal and willingness. This tribunal is not about money," Sambath said.
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