Verdict sets the stage for closure on Khmer Rouge

EXPECTANT: Left, villagers from Kampong Chhnang province visit the UN-backed war crimes tribunal on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The verdict in the trial of Kang Guek Eav, aka Duch, is due tomorrow.
Bou Meng, 68, below, one of the few survivors of the Khmer Rouge’s Tuol Sleng prison, at a genocide museum in Phnom Penh.
GRIM REMINDERS: A Cambodian girl looks at photos of victims of the Khmer Rouge at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh.

Tomorrow, the infamous Kang Guek Eav will learn his fate when he hears the court's verdict

25/07/2010
By Luke Hunt
Bangkok Post

"Every Cambodian alive right now is directly affected by the crimes of the past. In this regards it has a very direct and significant importance for Cambodian society, here in country and among the diaspora around the world" - Theary Seng

When Kang Guek Eav fronts the United Nations-sanctioned court tomorrow much will be at stake. For the former death camp commander, more widely known as Duch, his fate will finally be told.

As chief torturer and executioner during the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge rule, he faces a life sentence for the deaths of about 16,000 people who were processed at S21, headquarters of the secret police constructed within an abandoned high school in suburban Tuol Sleng.

Prosecutors are demanding 40 years although time off for the 11 years already spent behind bars could see this whittled back substantially.

Any reduction will anger the handful of S21 survivors.

"My long-time goal is to see Duch sent to jail for life. He does not deserve a sentence reduction because he committed very serious crimes," said 69-year-old artist, Bou Meng, whose evidence of regular lashings and inhumane treatment at S21 shocked the court.

"Whoever reduces his sentence should go to jail instead of him," he said.

For ordinary Cambodians the widely expected guilty verdict, to be broadcast live on all domestic television networks, will signal the end of a significant chapter in Cambodian life and provide the framework for final closure on the Killing Fields and the Khmer Rouge.

Theary Seng, a US-trained lawyer and founder of the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, said the tribunal and Case 001 had become a catalyst that broke 30 years of silence on a regime that killed nearly a third of its own people.

"Every Cambodian alive right now is directly affected by the crimes of the past. In this regards it has a very direct and significant importance for Cambodian society, here in country and among the diaspora around the world," she said.

Cambodia's tragic past has been well documented. Perhaps two million people died under Pol Pot and his ultra-Maoists. They were murdered - many en-masse - or died of starvation and horrible diseases and illnesses.

Two decades of conflict accompanied Pol Pot's retreat into the countryside following the Vietnamese invasion. Another decade of peacetime bickering with the United Nations ensued before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) could be established.

Amid this the Khmer Rouge remained a cold war relic, escaping justice and denying their compatriots a chance to find closure on one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century.

Now, for the likes of Theary Seng and Youk Chhang, chief of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam), justice is coming full circle.

Importantly, Duch's trial is proving that the critics - who argued the tribunal would prove too costly, the crimes took place too long ago, that it was dangerous to open old wounds, or that Cambodians were too incompetent - wrong.

Networks that aired coverage from the trial have enjoyed a ratings bonanza while thousands of people were trucked in from the remote countryside every week to witness the tribunal and took home firsthand accounts of the proceedings against their former nemesis.

"The Khmer Rouge tribunal is extremely important," Theary Seng said.

"It breaks with the past in order that we can move forward into the 21st century and live in the international community.

"We need not be held back by our past, and be numbed and traumatised by our past.

"It has become a catalyst to break that."

That numbness and fear has overwhelmed this country's ordinary people for decades, from the cities and across the countryside.

In the peacetime, it helped feed corruption through a culture of impunity and bullying, particularly among the nouveau riche and politically connected.

Youk Chhang, whose DC-Cam has spent more than a decade collating evidence for the tribunal, echoed Theary Seng saying the time was approaching for Cambodians to lose their victim mentality - a state of mind he personally suffers from and wants to vanquish.

"I think that I have fulfilled a duty to the survivors and I think the Duch verdict will define me - who I am today rather than who I was as a victim of the Khmer Rouge. I'm no longer a victim after July 26.

"That's how it feels. I think we all have to get out of this victim mentality and move on."

However, Cambodia's horizon remains clouded by unresolved Khmer Rouge issues.

Duch threw a last minute spanner into the legal works when he changed his plea of no contest to not guilty and sacked his French lawyer Francois Roux. But his admissions to overseeing ghastly ritual tortures that included water boarding, and electrification and then the deaths of thousands still stand.

It remains incomprehensible that Duch will walk out of the court a free man tomorrow. His evidence should also prove instrumental in Case 002 and a successful prosecution of another four senior leaders of the regime.

However, former Brother Number Two Nuon Chea, one-time head of state Khieu Samphan, the former foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith have indicated they will plead not guilty and fight tooth and nail, charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

"This case surrounding Duch and Tuol Sleng is significant for the fact that it's the first step in the process of trying the regime in general," Theary Seng said.

"The Duch case is a test run for the core case of the senior Khmer Rouge leaders in Case 002 which we are anticipating to start at the end of this year or early next year."

These four are important because they are the surviving members of Khmer Rouge committees that wrote and deployed government policies which stripped Cambodia of its cultural heritage.

Money was abandoned and cities emptied as millions were marched into the countryside to work as slave labour. Hundreds of thousands were condemned to death because they did not fit Pol Pot's vision of a pure Angkorian society.

Muslim Chams, ethnic Vietnamese and intellectuals like high school teachers were among the high-profile victims while people with dark skin - reflecting time under the sun and a communist approved peasant background - were applauded.

Theary Seng admits Duch's trial was a cakewalk when compared with the legal shenanigans expected once Case 002 gets underway.

"It was a very easy case because he confessed, despite changing his plea, and there's a lot of documentation pointing to his guilt plus the human evidence from the victims. It was an easy case in this regard," she said. "It was good to go through this in anticipation of the second case."

She said while it was unlikely Duch's plea change will affect the outcome of his trial, it could be used to discredit him and his evidence if used against the defendants in Case 002.

"And in that regard it's very worrying."

Youk Chhang was more optimistic, arguing it would be difficult for lawyers to defend clients like Nuon Chea against the sheer volume of evidence already amassed.

Ieng Thirith, for example, has testified in pre-trial hearings that Nuon Chea oversaw Duch and S21.

The evidence gathered so far includes that from Case 001, fresh witnesses and files and documented testimonies that have been compiled over the last 15 years.

He said the courts had two objectives. One was to deliver the final judgement, the second was to recognise the crimes committed against the people of Cambodia.

"The verdict is all about the future," he said. "I think it's important for Cambodia and the globe to understand, it is never too late to seek justice."