AFP
PHNOM PENH - THE Khmer Rouge's former jailer said on Tuesday the regime practised a 'criminal' mix of the theories of Marx, Lenin and China's 'Gang of Four' as it killed thousands of people in the 1970s.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his nom de guerre Duch, is on trial for overseeing the torture and extermination of 15,000 people who passed through the hardline communist movement's notorious Tuol Sleng prison.
Duch told the UN-backed war crimes court that Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who died in 1998, applied a mix of communist ideas to orchestrate extreme social reforms.
But he said the regime had 'more seriously cruel policies than those of (the) Gang of Four of China' since it enslaved the population on collective farms and began to carry out mass killings immediately after seizing power.
'The policy of (the Khmer Rouge) was criminal,' Duch said. 'The killing was widespread.' He added that only the 'collective peasant class and collective worker class' remained throughout the country after the educated and elites were murdered.
The former maths teacher, 66, wearing a white long-sleeved shirt, told the court that the Khmer Rouge's policy was to root out all enemies who did not share its ideology.
Duch apologised at his trial late March, saying he accepted blame for the extermination of thousands of people at the prison, which served as the centre of the 1975-1979 regime's security apparatus.
On Monday Duch told the trial that his staff had murdered babies by smashing them against trees at a 'killing field'.
But he has denied prosecutors' claims that he played a central role in the Khmer Rouge's iron-fisted rule, and maintains he only tortured two people himself and never personally executed anyone.
Duch faces life in jail if convicted by the court. Many believe the tribunal is the last chance to find justice for victims of the regime, which killed up to two million people.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his nom de guerre Duch, is on trial for overseeing the torture and extermination of 15,000 people who passed through the hardline communist movement's notorious Tuol Sleng prison.
Duch told the UN-backed war crimes court that Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who died in 1998, applied a mix of communist ideas to orchestrate extreme social reforms.
But he said the regime had 'more seriously cruel policies than those of (the) Gang of Four of China' since it enslaved the population on collective farms and began to carry out mass killings immediately after seizing power.
'The policy of (the Khmer Rouge) was criminal,' Duch said. 'The killing was widespread.' He added that only the 'collective peasant class and collective worker class' remained throughout the country after the educated and elites were murdered.
The former maths teacher, 66, wearing a white long-sleeved shirt, told the court that the Khmer Rouge's policy was to root out all enemies who did not share its ideology.
Duch apologised at his trial late March, saying he accepted blame for the extermination of thousands of people at the prison, which served as the centre of the 1975-1979 regime's security apparatus.
On Monday Duch told the trial that his staff had murdered babies by smashing them against trees at a 'killing field'.
But he has denied prosecutors' claims that he played a central role in the Khmer Rouge's iron-fisted rule, and maintains he only tortured two people himself and never personally executed anyone.
Duch faces life in jail if convicted by the court. Many believe the tribunal is the last chance to find justice for victims of the regime, which killed up to two million people.
4 comments:
John Manard Keynes, one of the famous English economists, said:
"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else."
According to Duch, the ideas of Marx, Lenin and the "Gang of Four" (Mao?) are also responsible for the death and suffering of the Cambodian people. These idealogists are now being tried alongside their Cambodian followers, starting with Duch himself.
It is an irony that a western Leninist is (or is aloowed to be)in the midst of the tribunal.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
While I strictly adhere to truth of Pol Pot's regime, my only concern is, that I shall hardly be able to do debate to all the scholars' arguments and expressions, which must literally need suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by a translation into my barbarous English,
"Seeing an elephant shits,
wanting to shit as an elephant"
China revolution was losing, perhaps, about 40 millions people out of more than half billion people, and ironically speaking, Cambodia revolution was losing almost 2 million people out of 7 million people.
We Khmer boastfully congratulate ourselves that killing our innocent people has increasingly become our primary goal of sport.
Wherever you see ah PPU, Just say -
Screw ah PPU's mother formely known as "Ph.D from Hanoi"! It's that simple!
Like son of farmers has said 40 millions people died during the revolution. Was there any trial in China to find justic for Chinese people ??? No!!!! Did international community push for a trial ??? No !!!! What is happening to China now ??? They are busy making money !!!! Nobody not even US dare to say anything about that. The US now stop calling the Communist China any more. This name is replaced with China so as Communist Vietnam, the US called Vietnam only, do you see the tone and the language has changed ???
The longer the trial go on the longer the name of Cambodia is dragging through the mud. I have seen more often nowday in writing that "Cambodia is the poorest country in the world", "Cambodia is the most corrupted goverment in the world", "Cambodia is the toughest country to live in the world" Is it realy ?????
I do not think so but some how for some Cambodia who is living outside Cambodia are so happy to hear and read about it. It is base some comments that I read in this Web site.
Please, Don't put Cambodia down. If you want to help Cambodia, help Cambodia.
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