By Ek Madra
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The chief Khmer Rouge torturer faced trial for crimes against humanity Monday, the first involving a senior Pol Pot cadre 30 years after the end of a regime blamed for 1.7 million deaths.
After years of delays and procedural wrangling, prosecutors for the joint U.N.-Cambodian tribunal will lay out their case against Duch, the former chief of the S-21 prison, where 14,000 "enemies" of the 1975-79 revolution were tortured and killed.
"I never thought that this day would come," said 64-year-old Svay Simon, one of hundreds of Khmer Rouge victims gathered at the specially built court on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
Duch's trial, which formally began with procedural hearings last month, marks a turning-point for the strife-torn country, where nearly every family lost someone during the Khmer Rouge era, one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century.
"The Cambodian people will finally see one of the most notorious Khmer Rouge leaders face trial. But many more need to face the court to really deliver justice to the millions of victims of these horrific crimes," said Brittis Edman, a Cambodia researcher for rights group Amnesty International.
Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, faces charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and homicide.
The silver-haired former school teacher is the first of five aging senior cadres charged for their role in Pol Pot's "Year Zero" revolution to achieve an agrarian utopia.
He is expected to be a key witness in the future trials of "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, the regime's ex-president Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary, its foreign minister, and his wife.
The four others have denied knowledge of any atrocities by the Khmer Rouge during its rule, which began by driving everyone out of the cities with whatever they could carry.
There is no death penalty in Cambodia and the five could get life sentences if convicted by the panel of five Cambodian and international judges.
POLITICAL INTERFERENCE?
Advocates hope the tribunal -- formally known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) -- will serve as a model of professionalism for the country's erratic and politicized judiciary.
Critics say the tribunal's integrity is threatened by allegations of corruption and political interference, particularly on the issue of pursuing other Khmer Rouge suspects.
A bid to go after other suspects was brushed aside in January by the tribunal's Cambodian co-prosecutor, who said it would not help national reconciliation. The government has denied any meddling in the court, but rights groups are concerned.
"The Extraordinary Chambers must urgently expand its prosecution strategy to investigate and prosecute more cases before it is too late," Edman said.
Survivors, former guards and Khmer Rouge experts are expected to testify against Duch, a born-again Christian who has asked forgiveness for the S-21 victims, who included women and children.
Most of them were tortured and forced to confess to a variety of crimes -- mainly being CIA spies -- before being bludgeoned to death in a field on the outskirts of the city.
Duch's lawyers argue he was only following orders and should not be made a scapegoat for the Khmer Rouge era.
Pol Pot's death in 1998 was followed by a formal Khmer Rouge surrender which helped to usher in a decade of peace and stability, threatened now by the global economic downturn.
(Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Alan Raybould)
After years of delays and procedural wrangling, prosecutors for the joint U.N.-Cambodian tribunal will lay out their case against Duch, the former chief of the S-21 prison, where 14,000 "enemies" of the 1975-79 revolution were tortured and killed.
"I never thought that this day would come," said 64-year-old Svay Simon, one of hundreds of Khmer Rouge victims gathered at the specially built court on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
Duch's trial, which formally began with procedural hearings last month, marks a turning-point for the strife-torn country, where nearly every family lost someone during the Khmer Rouge era, one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century.
"The Cambodian people will finally see one of the most notorious Khmer Rouge leaders face trial. But many more need to face the court to really deliver justice to the millions of victims of these horrific crimes," said Brittis Edman, a Cambodia researcher for rights group Amnesty International.
Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, faces charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and homicide.
The silver-haired former school teacher is the first of five aging senior cadres charged for their role in Pol Pot's "Year Zero" revolution to achieve an agrarian utopia.
He is expected to be a key witness in the future trials of "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, the regime's ex-president Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary, its foreign minister, and his wife.
The four others have denied knowledge of any atrocities by the Khmer Rouge during its rule, which began by driving everyone out of the cities with whatever they could carry.
There is no death penalty in Cambodia and the five could get life sentences if convicted by the panel of five Cambodian and international judges.
POLITICAL INTERFERENCE?
Advocates hope the tribunal -- formally known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) -- will serve as a model of professionalism for the country's erratic and politicized judiciary.
Critics say the tribunal's integrity is threatened by allegations of corruption and political interference, particularly on the issue of pursuing other Khmer Rouge suspects.
A bid to go after other suspects was brushed aside in January by the tribunal's Cambodian co-prosecutor, who said it would not help national reconciliation. The government has denied any meddling in the court, but rights groups are concerned.
"The Extraordinary Chambers must urgently expand its prosecution strategy to investigate and prosecute more cases before it is too late," Edman said.
Survivors, former guards and Khmer Rouge experts are expected to testify against Duch, a born-again Christian who has asked forgiveness for the S-21 victims, who included women and children.
Most of them were tortured and forced to confess to a variety of crimes -- mainly being CIA spies -- before being bludgeoned to death in a field on the outskirts of the city.
Duch's lawyers argue he was only following orders and should not be made a scapegoat for the Khmer Rouge era.
Pol Pot's death in 1998 was followed by a formal Khmer Rouge surrender which helped to usher in a decade of peace and stability, threatened now by the global economic downturn.
(Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Alan Raybould)
5 comments:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/National-news/Tribunal-
Noam Chomsky is one of the world's most noted political thinkers and was called the most important intellectual alive by The New York Times. He rose to prominence during the Vietnam War, becoming a leading left-wing critic of US policy. He is a prolific author and critic of the media, and is a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Insitute of Technology. His expertise on Cambodia dates back to the 1970s, and he has written extensively on the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese occupation in the 1980s. In this interview with the Post, Chomsky discusses the Khmer Rouge tribunal, the American bombing of Cambodia and Cambodia's expanding ties with Israel.
Top Khmer Rouge leaders are now in detention at the war crimes tribunal. Is a UN-backed trial the best way forward, or should it be left to the Cambodian people?
I think it should be left to the Cambodian people. I can't imagine a UN international trial. But then, it shouldn't be limited to the Cambodians. After all, an international trial that doesn't take into account Henry Kissinger or the other authors of the American bombing and the support of the KR after they were kicked out of the country . That's just a farce - especially with what we now know about the bombing of Cambodia since the release of the Kissinger-Nixon tapes and the release of declassified documents during the Clinton years. There has been a very different picture of the scale and intensity of the bombing and its genocidal scale. For an international trial to omit this would be scandalous.
How far down the chain of command should prosecutions go?
I think that's a decision for Cambodians to make. The questions should be: Should [the prosecutions] be limited to KR criminals, or how about criminals from the Lon Nol regime, or later, but those are decisions the Cambodians need to make.
You can make a case for an internationally run trial, but as I said, it would be absolutely farcical if it was restricted to Cambodians.
The records say that the US wanted to "use anything that flies against anything that moves" [during the bombing of Cambodia], which led to five times the bombing that was reported before, greater than all bombing in all theatres of WWII, which helped create the Khmer Rouge.
So to try to excuse their crimes from the broader picture may be sensible for Cambodians who are trying to find some internal justice and reconciliation, but for the broader picture, it's simply farcical.
So you think US leaders should be tried in connection with the DK regime?
Not just in the context of the DK regime - that's afterwards. I think supporting the KR after the DK, after they were kicked out - or supporting the Chinese invasion to punish Vietnam for the crime of driving them out - that's a crime in itself. But the much worse crime was by Kissinger-Nixon, and it's pretty hard to disagree with analysts like Ben Kiernan ... who released the documentation during the Clinton years. Their conclusion was that this bombing, which really had genocidal intent - anything that flies against anything that moves - essentially changed the KR from a small group into a mass army of what they call enraged peasants bent on revenge. How could you omit that when you are discussing the Khmer Rouge atrocities?
Are you saying the KRT is a show trial?
These trials altogether have a very strange character - the most serious of all the tribunals since WWII was the Nuremburg trials, and that was a well-designed, carefully executed legal proceeding.
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An international trial that doesn't take into account Henry Kissinger ... thats just a farce.
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But if you look at it closely, it was a farce. That was implicitly conceded to allow the Nazi war criminals to be tried. They were some of the worst monsters in history - and there is no doubt they were guilty. They had to define a notion of war crime, and it was post-facto - they were being tried for crimes after they committed them.
The trial had a very clear definition of war crime - it was crimes that you committed and that [the Allies] didn't.
So, for example, the bombing of urban centres was not considered a crime and the reason is very explicit: The Allies did more of it than the Germans.
The bombing of Japan frankly levelled the country and was not considered a crime because [the Allies] did it - in fact, German war criminals were able to exonerate themselves if their defence was able to demonstrate that their counterparts in the West did the same thing.
For example, a German submarine admiral who did commit war crimes by normal standards was freed from those charges when he brought into evidence testimony from an admiral in the British and American navy saying, ‘Yeah, that's what we did, too'. This was recognised, and chief prosecutor Jackson, he made a very eloquent speech to the tribunal where he said we were handing the defendants here a poisoned chalice, and if we sip from it, we must suffer the same punishment or else the trial is meaningless.
Well, we have sipped from that chalice numerous times since. The chief crime was the crime of aggression - the supreme international crime - and count the times the US and Britain have been guilty of outright aggression. Have they been tried?
It's a farce - victor's justice - and if you run through the rest of the trials, they pretty much have the same properties. In fact, I can't think of one that has been honest in this respect - the only ones I can think of that have been honest are the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions like in South Africa, El Salvador or Guatemala, where they brought out what happened and identified the perpetrators. And in many cases, it was done very honestly, and by the victims - they're the ones that testified.
Why are the KR on trial and not other leaders? Some Israeli generals, for example, have been accused of crimes against humanity.
An Israeli general would never be tried because they are backed by the US. These things reflect power systems. Very often, the people that are tried deserve to be tried and sentenced, but the structure of the trials has exonerated the powerful.
The position is extreme. The US is the most powerful country in the world, and it's also the most extreme in rejecting any form of judicial control. It is the only country that rejected a world court decision.... And that's why an Israeli general can't be tried. If an Israeli was brought to The Hague, the US might invoke what Europeans call The Netherlands Invasion Act. The US has legislation authorising the president to use force to rescue any American brought to The Hague.
So you're saying that this trial is not about justice?
There is an element that is about justice. You take Nuremburg again. There is no doubt that the accused were guilty - but is it justice? You take [executed Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von] Ribbentrop - one of the crimes for which he was sentenced was that he supported a pre-emptive strike against Norway. Well, at a time, Norway was a threat to Nazi Germany, of course, and he ordered a pre-emptive strike. But what did Colin Powell do? Iraq was no threat.
Some have accused you of writing favourably about the Khmer Rouge. Were you unfairly criticised?
It's ridiculous. In fact, there has been a massive critique of some of the things that Edward Herman and I wrote, and my view is that they were some of the most accurate things that were written in history.
Nobody has been able to find a missed comma, which is not surprising. Before we published the chapter, we had it reviewed by most of the leading specialists on the topic, who made some suggestions, but basically nothing.
Our main conclusion was: You have to tell the truth - don't lie about our crimes by denying them, and don't lie about their crimes by exaggerating them. In fact, what we actually did ... the main thesis is a comparison between Cambodia and East Timor. And it's a natural comparison: massive atrocities going on in the same part of the world - the same years. East Timor went on for another 25 years afterwards, and relative to population, they were about at the same scale. And what we found was that there was massive lying, but in opposite directions.
In the case of East Timor, it was ignored and denied. In the case of Cambodia, it was wild accusations without a particle of evidence. So what was the fundamental difference? In Indonesia, we were responsible, and we could have done something. But in the other case, an enemy was responsible.
A major Israeli delegation visited Cambodia recently. Should Cambodia be embracing trade with Israel, or do you back a boycott?
It's the same moral issue that arises all the time - even with the trials. Yes, Israel is doing terrible things. Why? Because the US is supporting it. It's like Indonesia and East Timor. As soon as Clinton told the Indonesians that it's over-they didn't have to bomb or boycott - they just told them it's over. They withdrew instantly. If the US stopped providing military, economic, ideological support, Israel couldn't do what it's doing. Well, why doesn't anyone talk about boycotting the US? Because it's too powerful.
Idiot! America drop bombs only on the HO CHI MING trail and vietcong santuaries inside Cambodia .The trail was built well inside khmer territory from the province of Stung Treng all the way to KAMPOT to attack a sovereign nation of South Vietnam and American force there.Why are you so fucking blind and dumb about that?.Israel is the only democratic country in the middleeast and a true friend of the United States.And what wrong with helping Friend fool?.
America and her allied should be vigilant all the time against the jerk above .Whoever hate America is a terrorist.
Prof. Noam Chomsky was accused of "defending the Khmer Rouge" (see:http://jim.com/chomsdis.htm). For controversy over his attitude towards the Khmer Rouge, see http://jim.com/canon.htm#ch3.
Should he also be brought to justice?
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
I did assume that real victims were not only 1.7m people killed by the KR. In 1950-about 1965 Sankhom Reasnyum, the population census had been made with about total of 6 millions people in Cambodia.
Infact, after 1965-about 1970, the population census had never been made again with the new born whose ages were more 18years and less than 18 years. The Khmer people would be more than 6 millions people. I estimated that at least 9millions after 1956. So the increment would be 3 milliions after 1965.
Let's make the culculation of alive people and the victims killed by the KR. How did they estimate victims number killed by the KR?
a) 6 millions people (in the National statistic in Sangkhum Reasnyum) minus 4.3 millions of alive people after KR 1979 = 1.7millions killed by KR.
If I set:
Total population 9 millions - 4.3millions alive after KR 1979 = 4.7millions killed by KR.
The statistics had not been updated since the French colonial.
So 1.7 millions of victims had been killed the KR was wrong estimation.
I was 6 years old in KR, my brother 7, 12, 16, 18, 20 years old had never been registered. They died with no record at all, except me still alive.
Yes, Chesky should be brought in for trial, but how about Mr Lao Mon Hay. Where were you during the KR? Were you also joining the KPML which is an alliance to KR?
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