By Dan Rivers
CNN Bangkok-based correspondent
Cambodia is a country that throws up the most staggering barbed facts that catch the mind and should stick inconveniently in our conscience.
As I put together “Killing Fields: The Long Road to Justice” for CNN, I kept tripping across breathtaking statistics that seemed too incredible to believe. Like, for example, a Yale University history professor's analysis of declassified military data that showed during America's bombing campaign over Cambodia from 1965-1973, the United States dropped more tons of ordnance on this tiny nation than the Allies dropped during the whole of the Second World War. A total of 2,756,000 tons of explosives was dropped on Cambodia, compared with 2 million tons dropped during World War II, worldwide.
It goes some way to explain how and why the vicious, bloodthirsty and unstoppable phenomenon that was the Khmer Rouge came to power. Simply put, faced with utter destruction by the United States or the promised utopia offered by Pol Pot and his ultra-communist henchmen, many Cambodian peasants chose the latter.
But that was before the killing started. Another head-spinning fact: After the Khmer Rouge swept to power in 1975 they killed a greater proportion of their own compatriots than any other regime in the 20th century.
It's facile and pointless to make some sort of genocidal league table, but what happened in Cambodia in just three years, eight months and 20 days was certainly as awful and unfathomable as events in Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Darfur.
I decided to revisit this terrible period, because it's now 30 years since the Khmer Rouge regime fell and finally a handful of its leaders are being put on trial at a special U.N.-backed war crimes trial. It's garnered few headlines internationally. Perhaps Cambodia is just too remote, too forgotten, and too insignificant in many peoples' minds to warrant attention. But that is exactly why I felt it was vital to shine a spotlight on what happened.
Another remarkable fact: Pol Pot's men remained a potent force in Cambodia's power struggle that verged on civil war for almost 20 years after they were forced out of power by the invading Vietnamese — a sinister culture of impunity that has strangled Cambodia while countries around it grew and prospered.
Even more incredible, the Khmer Rouge was backed by the United States, Britain, and other Western powers during the 1980s, despite the nightmarish mass-murder perpetrated by so many of the Khmer Rouge's Cadres. The United States viewed the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge as a useful counterweight to Soviet/Vietnamese influence in Indochina. The U.S. doctrine seemed to follow the maxim “My enemy's enemy is my friend.”
The impunity enjoyed by the top Khmer Rouge leaders is something the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia is trying to address. But it's taking a very long time. And as I found out in making our program, the trial process itself is mired in corruption allegations which some think may mean the entire process may collapse.
The United Nations is in a terrible bind over the issue. It's been forced into accepting a hybrid court system with the Cambodian government, which means the U.N. is not free to alone root out corruption quickly and surgically. Instead, as one defense lawyer told me, the corruption has been allowed to fester like a “cancer” eating away at the credibility of the trial. The prosecution, clearly worried about the courts credibility, also is pushing for the corruption to be addressed.
Already the costs for the proceedings are spiraling out of control: The budget will have swollen to more than $100 million by the end of this year, about US$20,000,000 per defendant. Or to look at it another way: the trial is costing a mere US$59 per victim.
What's also worrying is that the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a junior figure in the Khmer Rouge, has said that the trial should be limited to the current five defendants - and no more. He's said that expanding the circle of prosecution risks the stability of the country. But that means in practice that many of those involved in the slaughter during the Khmer Rouge period would remain unpunished.
The most notorious camp in Phnom Penh, called S21 or Tuol Sleng, was set up in a former school. The camp was designed to extract confessions from internal enemies of the regime, using whatever means deemed necessary. The result, according to meticulous Khmer Rouge records and survivor accounts, was the most brutal and sadistic torture camp imaginable: More than 14,000 prisoners were killed after enduring horrendous torture.
The chief interrogator at S21 was a man called Ta Chan, who led a team of interrogators. He has never officially been charged with any crime.
After quite some effort, we found out where Ta Chan lives. When we arrived at his modest wooden house in the far west of Cambodia, I got a glimpse of him. But he was apparently too scared to face our cameras, leaving his son to do the talking. His son said Ta Chan was old and his health was bad and that none of the family wanted to talk about the past.
By a stroke of luck we obtained and salvaged an old, barely functioning tape, shot by a Thai cameraman 10 years ago, that had never been broadcast. It contained the grinning image of Ta Chan showing off another prison he ran for the Khmer Rouge after they'd been forced to abandon S21. Here he was — one of the most notorious figures of one of the most bloody regimes in the world — and after twenty years, he was still in the prison business.
Now, finally Ta Chan's face will be known to the world. The question is, will he ever face trial for the heinous crimes survivors say he committed?
Dan Rivers is CNN's Bangkok-based correspondent reporting for 'WORLD UNTOLD STORIES: KILLING FIELDS: LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE' airing on CNN International May 1 at 1100, May 2 at 1630, May 3 at 0100, 0630 & 2230 and May 4 at 1030 Taipei Time. For more info visit www.cnn.com/worldsuntoldstories.
As I put together “Killing Fields: The Long Road to Justice” for CNN, I kept tripping across breathtaking statistics that seemed too incredible to believe. Like, for example, a Yale University history professor's analysis of declassified military data that showed during America's bombing campaign over Cambodia from 1965-1973, the United States dropped more tons of ordnance on this tiny nation than the Allies dropped during the whole of the Second World War. A total of 2,756,000 tons of explosives was dropped on Cambodia, compared with 2 million tons dropped during World War II, worldwide.
It goes some way to explain how and why the vicious, bloodthirsty and unstoppable phenomenon that was the Khmer Rouge came to power. Simply put, faced with utter destruction by the United States or the promised utopia offered by Pol Pot and his ultra-communist henchmen, many Cambodian peasants chose the latter.
But that was before the killing started. Another head-spinning fact: After the Khmer Rouge swept to power in 1975 they killed a greater proportion of their own compatriots than any other regime in the 20th century.
It's facile and pointless to make some sort of genocidal league table, but what happened in Cambodia in just three years, eight months and 20 days was certainly as awful and unfathomable as events in Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Darfur.
I decided to revisit this terrible period, because it's now 30 years since the Khmer Rouge regime fell and finally a handful of its leaders are being put on trial at a special U.N.-backed war crimes trial. It's garnered few headlines internationally. Perhaps Cambodia is just too remote, too forgotten, and too insignificant in many peoples' minds to warrant attention. But that is exactly why I felt it was vital to shine a spotlight on what happened.
Another remarkable fact: Pol Pot's men remained a potent force in Cambodia's power struggle that verged on civil war for almost 20 years after they were forced out of power by the invading Vietnamese — a sinister culture of impunity that has strangled Cambodia while countries around it grew and prospered.
Even more incredible, the Khmer Rouge was backed by the United States, Britain, and other Western powers during the 1980s, despite the nightmarish mass-murder perpetrated by so many of the Khmer Rouge's Cadres. The United States viewed the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge as a useful counterweight to Soviet/Vietnamese influence in Indochina. The U.S. doctrine seemed to follow the maxim “My enemy's enemy is my friend.”
The impunity enjoyed by the top Khmer Rouge leaders is something the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia is trying to address. But it's taking a very long time. And as I found out in making our program, the trial process itself is mired in corruption allegations which some think may mean the entire process may collapse.
The United Nations is in a terrible bind over the issue. It's been forced into accepting a hybrid court system with the Cambodian government, which means the U.N. is not free to alone root out corruption quickly and surgically. Instead, as one defense lawyer told me, the corruption has been allowed to fester like a “cancer” eating away at the credibility of the trial. The prosecution, clearly worried about the courts credibility, also is pushing for the corruption to be addressed.
Already the costs for the proceedings are spiraling out of control: The budget will have swollen to more than $100 million by the end of this year, about US$20,000,000 per defendant. Or to look at it another way: the trial is costing a mere US$59 per victim.
What's also worrying is that the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a junior figure in the Khmer Rouge, has said that the trial should be limited to the current five defendants - and no more. He's said that expanding the circle of prosecution risks the stability of the country. But that means in practice that many of those involved in the slaughter during the Khmer Rouge period would remain unpunished.
The most notorious camp in Phnom Penh, called S21 or Tuol Sleng, was set up in a former school. The camp was designed to extract confessions from internal enemies of the regime, using whatever means deemed necessary. The result, according to meticulous Khmer Rouge records and survivor accounts, was the most brutal and sadistic torture camp imaginable: More than 14,000 prisoners were killed after enduring horrendous torture.
The chief interrogator at S21 was a man called Ta Chan, who led a team of interrogators. He has never officially been charged with any crime.
After quite some effort, we found out where Ta Chan lives. When we arrived at his modest wooden house in the far west of Cambodia, I got a glimpse of him. But he was apparently too scared to face our cameras, leaving his son to do the talking. His son said Ta Chan was old and his health was bad and that none of the family wanted to talk about the past.
By a stroke of luck we obtained and salvaged an old, barely functioning tape, shot by a Thai cameraman 10 years ago, that had never been broadcast. It contained the grinning image of Ta Chan showing off another prison he ran for the Khmer Rouge after they'd been forced to abandon S21. Here he was — one of the most notorious figures of one of the most bloody regimes in the world — and after twenty years, he was still in the prison business.
Now, finally Ta Chan's face will be known to the world. The question is, will he ever face trial for the heinous crimes survivors say he committed?
Dan Rivers is CNN's Bangkok-based correspondent reporting for 'WORLD UNTOLD STORIES: KILLING FIELDS: LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE' airing on CNN International May 1 at 1100, May 2 at 1630, May 3 at 0100, 0630 & 2230 and May 4 at 1030 Taipei Time. For more info visit www.cnn.com/worldsuntoldstories.
3 comments:
What Duch said at the hearings is interesting.
I also remember the remarks made by Khieu Samphan, "You can see the fish only when the water is clear."
I do not take side with the K. Rouge, but what they have tried to justify their acts of crimes must be listened and analyzed.
Actually, a number of other people and other countries had their involvements in the crime against humanity and war crimes.
They have funded and supported the ECCC ( KR Tribunal) with a tangible aim to bring justice to the KR victims; however, their intangible real aim is to cover up their acts of direct and indirect involvements in the massacre of the Khmer people.
In my early teens, I heard the elderly Khmers talking How Brutally the Khmer Issaraks and the Khmer Viet Minh (Those Khmers who allied with Viet Cong and Viet Minh Army) and the Khmer Krahams killed the Khmer government officials and soldiers, and tortured and slaughtered the innocent Khmer civilians.
I was also frightened to hear How Cruelly the Khmers government soldiers and authorities (during the regimes of Sihanouk and Lon Nol) took the retaliation.
I was also informed that The Viet Minh and the Viet Cong of Vietnam executed the Khmer people in the last century (in the early 1900’s) and the Te Ong killing style they used to kill Khmers.
I witnessed the US Bombardment in 1973 on Cambodian territory, killing not only the Khmer Rouge combatants, but also the innocent civilians. The amount of bombs dropped by the US Air Force on the Cambodian soil at that time is much more than those dropped by the US on Japan during the WWII. Most of the Khmers who experienced the US bombings still have traumatic effects (an extremely distressing experience that causes severe emotional shock and may have long-lasting psychological effects). Who will pay for this?
I underwent the K Rouge period, seeing with my own eyes the massacre the KRouge committed on the Khmers.
I always asked myself, “When has this become a culture of killing in retaliation.”
Duch said,” he had learned torture methods from the regimes that preceded the Khmer Rouge, as more details of his role emerged.
“I did not learn from anyone,” he told the court. “First of all, the Lon Nol regime taught me, and secondly, the French regime, which tortured members of the Vietnamese Labor Party.”
I t is regrettable that Pol Pot had died before the establishment of ECCC. He may be the only one who can tell the truth and the root cause of massacre.
Whether He died in a natural death or by a planned killing is still a question for some local and political observers. When he passed away, no forensic examination or autopsy was conducted to determine the cause of his death. He knew a great deal about the history of the movements and involvements by Vietnam, china, the USA, Russia, France in the tragedy of Cambodia.
S. Sambath
Sambath,
With his charismatic charming face, he always smiled when he talked. Pol Pot made his soldier cried when he spoke to them during revolution period. He was the master of LIE. Before he was burried into the ground, he accused the neighboring country and US CIA of performing this genocide. He never acknowledge and he never will. He is the same as Henry Kissinger/Nixon, Lon Nol, and Norodom Sihanouk. They always justified their killings....to hold on to their power as long as they can.
Pot Pol did not do much thing, bur Kheiu Sampham, Hou Yuon, and Hu Nim were do the revolutary job.
Post a Comment