Khmer Rouge Trial to End in Cambodia for Regime’s Jailer Duch

(Photo: Reuters)

By Daniel Ten Kate

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The trial of the Khmer Rouge’s top prison warden ends this week after six months of testimony about the regime’s mass killings and brutality that brought Cambodians face to face with the man who tortured them three decades ago.

The court will probably wait until March next year to give its verdict against Kang Kek Ieu, also known as Duch, said Reach Sambath, a spokesman for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the United Nations-sponsored tribunal tasked with trying five senior Khmer Rouge leaders. Duch, 67, the first member of the administration to face trial, hears final arguments in the trial this week.

The former math teacher who converted to Christianity in 1996 cooperated with the trial and apologized to victims. He faces four charges involving pre-meditated murder, torture, rape and enslavement at Tuol Sleng prison in the capital, Phnom Penh, where only about a dozen of at least 12,000 inmates survived.

Duch’s trial shed light on a regime blamed for the deaths of at least 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979, stunting economic growth in Cambodia where the average income is $1.40 a day. Tuol Sleng was the most notorious prison in a network that targeted the country’s educated elite as the movement attempted to create an agrarian society starting at Year Zero.

“The court has provided a positive means for all of us to speak out and take back our own history,” said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has collected thousands of photographs and papers used as evidence in the trial. “Even though some people criticize the court, it’s a positive sign because people can speak without fear.”

Duch’s Apology

In Duch’s opening statement in March, he accepted responsibility for the prison deaths and apologized to survivors and victims’ families. Cooperating with the court was the “only remedy that can help me to relieve all of the sorrow of the crimes that I have committed,” he said.

“I tried to survive on a daily basis,” Duch said of his time at the prison, saying he believed he would be killed if he didn’t perform his duties. “Yes, you can say I am a coward.”

Fifty-five witnesses testified at the trial, including 22 victims who talked about how prison officials tortured them with electric shocks, suffocation and beatings. Guards smashed babies against tree trunks and forced prisoners to eat feces, according to testimony during the trial.

“I could never forget the suffering that I received until the day that I die,” survivor Chum Mey, who had his toenails ripped out at the prison, told the court. “Once justice can be done, then I would feel better.”

Former Soldier

Prisoners at Tuol Sleng, known as S-21, were tortured by interrogators who accused them of being Russian or American spies. Many, like Phaok Khan, a former Khmer Rouge soldier accused of turning on the regime, were transferred outside the city for execution at one of more than 20,000 mass graves discovered across the country.

“I tried to move, crawling on top of the corpses, and I was so weak and skinny and I could not even stand up or walk properly,” Phaok Khan told the court, recounting how he escaped from a grave outside Phnom Penh. “I could see the bloodstains all over my body and it smelled so bad.”

The Khmer Rouge took power after a U.S. bombing campaign during the Vietnam War stirred discontent in the countryside against General Lon Nol’s coup-installed government. Led by Pol Pot, the regime evacuated Phnom Penh to put people to work on farms and closed all schools, universities and monasteries. Money, markets and private property were abolished.

Former head of state Khieu Samphan, 78, ex-foreign minister Ieng Sary, 84, his wife Ieng Thirith, 77, and Nuon Chea, 83, who was second in command to Pol Pot, are also facing trial. Pol Pot and Ta Mok, the Khmer Rouge military chief, have died.

Impediment to Growth

Many Cambodians are too young to remember the Khmer Rouge, with a third of the country’s 14.2 million people under the age of 15. Human resources remain an impediment to growth after two decades of foreign aid, which finances a third of the budget.

Cambodia’s gross domestic product, the second-smallest of 10 Southeast Asian nations, has doubled in each of the past two decades after staying about the same size from 1968 to 1988. The country plans to open a stock market next year, aiming to list companies such as Sokimex Group, the biggest petroleum company, and Acleda Bank Plc, its largest bank.

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Phnom Penh at
dtenkate@bloomberg.net