By Miriama Kamo in Cambodia
TVNZ (New Zealand)
We didn't really know what we were doing when we decided to go to Cambodia. We had little idea of what to expect, and even how to conduct ourselves.
How do you behave at a war crimes trial?
Luckily our ignorance had a reasonable basis. Establishing the ECCC ( Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia ) has been a decade-long process of debate and negotiation between the UN and the Cambodian government.
It took all this time to establish the parameters of the power and authority of the courts, to try five of the most senior, surviving, Khmer Rouge leaders. If even the Cambodian government and the world's parliament took considerable time to figure this thing out, then perhaps it wasn't so unusual that two Kiwis might be feeling uncertain of what to expect.
We are here to see the initial hearing of Duch, the commandant of the notorious prison Tuol Sleng, and the court's first defendant, finally swing underway. It's been 30 years since his regime officially fell , and his day in court represents decades of pain (to grossly understate it) and the hope of resolution for millions of Cambodians.
We arrived in Phnom Penh early on Monday morning to a rush of warm air and the cries of taxi drivers competing for our custom.
I'd spent the plane flight reading, denying myself the plethora of movies on offer, which if you know of my slathering loyalty to the silver screen you'll understand was quite a feat. I spent the taxi ride into Phnom Penh similarly occupied with a book written by Nic Dunlop, the photo-journalist who tracked Duch down and revealed him to the world.
Duch is his comrade Khmer Rouge name; his real name is Kaing Guek Eav.
When Dunlop found him, by chance, in the jungles near the Thai border, he'd changed his name to Hang Pin. It had been 20 years since the fall of the regime. He had run away from his past, but plainly not far enough; having said that, it was a nearly 10 year marathon effort later which finally saw him in court.
After we arrived at our guesthouse, and in an effort to comprehend Duch and the experience of being his prisoner, we went to Tuol Sleng. Having been once before we knew the layout and the content, but this time we were looking to understand, not to gawk at, the evidence of atrocities carried out in the prison while under his command.
The charges against Duch are severe: Crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions; as well as breach of the Cambodian Penal Code's offences, which include premeditated murder and torture.
While under Duch's command, it is variously reported that between 14,000 and 20,000 inmates were killed. They were tortured to extract dubious confessions of betrayal. As a result, many 'confessions' make startling claims; peasants who claimed to be CIA, KGB, or Vietnamese spies; who admitted mild or serious disrespect to Angkar, the organisation; who supposedly sought to bring down the regime by singing inappropriate songs, or by mentioning taboo topics to friends or family.
To extract these confessions, Duch's interrogators allegedly beat, whipped, burned, electrocuted, nearly drowned and hung their captives from hooks. Their execution, if disease or starvation didn't kill them first, took place just south of the city at the now infamous Killing Fields.
The accounts are chilling; victims forced to kneel at the edge of a pit, to be fatally struck and their throats cut. Babies and children were reportedly killed by dropping them from balconies in the prison or having their heads smashed against tree trunks at the Killing Fields.
Of the thousands who passed through Tuol Sleng only seven are known to have survived.
When we exited the prison we were approached by the usual crowd of amputees, refugees and victims of Khmer Rouge brutality and of landmines. A man on crutches approached, his arm stump extended sullenly for money; a burns victim, catastrophically scarred stood alongside, the gaping hole which was once his mouth permanently stretched into a ragged 'O', his lidless eyes blank, emotionless.
What was plainer to us than ever, was that Cambodia's past stalks its people, wears itself on their skin and tears at their ability to simply survive each hard day.
As one man said to me, 'life was hard under the Khmer Rouge, but it was even harder after the Khmer Rouge. We had to learn to live with the terrible pain of what had happened, often without our parents to guide us.'
The next morning we would see the beginning of Cambodia's efforts to make peace with its horrific past, and it would come in the form of the trial of, potentially, one of the most accomplished torturers the modern world has known.
When Nic Dunlop found Hang Pin and identified him as Duch, he'd converted to Christianity, and was working, with perverse irony, as an aid worker for ARC (the American Refugee Committee). He was ready to face his past, saying, 'it is God's will that you are here.'
How do you behave at a war crimes trial?
Luckily our ignorance had a reasonable basis. Establishing the ECCC ( Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia ) has been a decade-long process of debate and negotiation between the UN and the Cambodian government.
It took all this time to establish the parameters of the power and authority of the courts, to try five of the most senior, surviving, Khmer Rouge leaders. If even the Cambodian government and the world's parliament took considerable time to figure this thing out, then perhaps it wasn't so unusual that two Kiwis might be feeling uncertain of what to expect.
We are here to see the initial hearing of Duch, the commandant of the notorious prison Tuol Sleng, and the court's first defendant, finally swing underway. It's been 30 years since his regime officially fell , and his day in court represents decades of pain (to grossly understate it) and the hope of resolution for millions of Cambodians.
We arrived in Phnom Penh early on Monday morning to a rush of warm air and the cries of taxi drivers competing for our custom.
I'd spent the plane flight reading, denying myself the plethora of movies on offer, which if you know of my slathering loyalty to the silver screen you'll understand was quite a feat. I spent the taxi ride into Phnom Penh similarly occupied with a book written by Nic Dunlop, the photo-journalist who tracked Duch down and revealed him to the world.
Duch is his comrade Khmer Rouge name; his real name is Kaing Guek Eav.
When Dunlop found him, by chance, in the jungles near the Thai border, he'd changed his name to Hang Pin. It had been 20 years since the fall of the regime. He had run away from his past, but plainly not far enough; having said that, it was a nearly 10 year marathon effort later which finally saw him in court.
After we arrived at our guesthouse, and in an effort to comprehend Duch and the experience of being his prisoner, we went to Tuol Sleng. Having been once before we knew the layout and the content, but this time we were looking to understand, not to gawk at, the evidence of atrocities carried out in the prison while under his command.
The charges against Duch are severe: Crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions; as well as breach of the Cambodian Penal Code's offences, which include premeditated murder and torture.
While under Duch's command, it is variously reported that between 14,000 and 20,000 inmates were killed. They were tortured to extract dubious confessions of betrayal. As a result, many 'confessions' make startling claims; peasants who claimed to be CIA, KGB, or Vietnamese spies; who admitted mild or serious disrespect to Angkar, the organisation; who supposedly sought to bring down the regime by singing inappropriate songs, or by mentioning taboo topics to friends or family.
To extract these confessions, Duch's interrogators allegedly beat, whipped, burned, electrocuted, nearly drowned and hung their captives from hooks. Their execution, if disease or starvation didn't kill them first, took place just south of the city at the now infamous Killing Fields.
The accounts are chilling; victims forced to kneel at the edge of a pit, to be fatally struck and their throats cut. Babies and children were reportedly killed by dropping them from balconies in the prison or having their heads smashed against tree trunks at the Killing Fields.
Of the thousands who passed through Tuol Sleng only seven are known to have survived.
When we exited the prison we were approached by the usual crowd of amputees, refugees and victims of Khmer Rouge brutality and of landmines. A man on crutches approached, his arm stump extended sullenly for money; a burns victim, catastrophically scarred stood alongside, the gaping hole which was once his mouth permanently stretched into a ragged 'O', his lidless eyes blank, emotionless.
What was plainer to us than ever, was that Cambodia's past stalks its people, wears itself on their skin and tears at their ability to simply survive each hard day.
As one man said to me, 'life was hard under the Khmer Rouge, but it was even harder after the Khmer Rouge. We had to learn to live with the terrible pain of what had happened, often without our parents to guide us.'
The next morning we would see the beginning of Cambodia's efforts to make peace with its horrific past, and it would come in the form of the trial of, potentially, one of the most accomplished torturers the modern world has known.
When Nic Dunlop found Hang Pin and identified him as Duch, he'd converted to Christianity, and was working, with perverse irony, as an aid worker for ARC (the American Refugee Committee). He was ready to face his past, saying, 'it is God's will that you are here.'
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