Comrade Duch Must Not Be Made the Sole Scapegoat of the Khmer Rouge Crimes

17 August 2010
By Theary C. Seng

Late last month, the Extraordinary Chambers (informally, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal) convicted the former commandant of the notorious Tuol Sleng torture center, Comrade Duch, for crimes against humanity in the sadistic murders of at least 14,000 Cambodians (possibly including my father) and a handful of foreigners and sentenced him to 35 years of imprisonment. The conviction marked a milestone for Cambodians after having waited some 30 years for some form of credible justice.

However, many Cambodian survivors, including myself, viewed the sentence to be too lenient and incomprehensible in light of the enormity of his crimes. After the Extraordinary Chambers deducted 5 years to redress violations of his rights when he was held illegally in prior military detention and 11 years for the time he’s already served from the 35 years, the victims are left with Comrade Duch effectively receiving only 11 hours of imprisonment for each life he brutally murdered.

(It should be noted that the Trial Chamber correctly considered Duch’s impressive cooperation—confession and remorse which I believe are genuine—as mitigating factors into their sentence of 35 years.)

Moreover, we are appalled at the scant, laughable reparations offered to the victims of Tuol Sleng. We join the Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia in demanding that learning centers be established in all the 24 provinces to be furnished with the assets and equipment of the Tribunal once it has closed operations.

Upon hearing the verdict, Hong Savath, a woman sitting next to me who had been raped and orphaned by the Khmer Rouge and lost a relative at Tuol Sleng, went into shock and almost collapsed in my arms, as captured by the images flashed around the world.

Yesterday, 16 August 2010, the Prosecutors filed an appeal against the lenient sentence. We welcome this appeal even if it has the potential of delaying the trial of the “senior” Khmer Rouge leaders in Case 002 because Comrade Duch’s defense lawyer Kar Savuth had already stated his intention of appealing the verdict anyway. Here, the Prosecutors beat him to it.

Up until this puzzling verdict, we Cambodian survivors have been viewing the Extraordinary Chambers as a very powerful catalyst in breaking the 30 years of “communicative silence” and transitioning us into a culture of dialogue and honorable memorializing.

For many years since Vietnam invaded and ended the Khmer Rouge regime in January 1979, these killer wandered the country with impunity thanks to Cold War politics. Despite their shared Communist ideology, the Soviet Union and Vietnam were sworn Cold War enemies of China: China continued its financial and military support of its satellite, the Khmer Rouge, now straddling the Thai jungle border to the west of the country; the Soviet Union supported the occupation of Vietnam in Cambodia. Still smarting from the Vietnam War and viewing China as an indispensible ally, the US backed a coalition government of Khmer Rouge and non-Communist Cambodian forces with Prince Norodom Sihanouk as its nominal head. This government dominated by the Khmer Rouge was given a seat at the United Nations with support from the US, Europe and pro-West ASEAN nations (e.g. Thailand, Singapore).

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991 which involved all the four Cambodian factions, including the Khmer Rouge. However, the Khmer Rouge boycotted the 1993 general elections envisioned by this Peace Agreement. The elections produced a 2-headed government of First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Second Prime Minister Hun Sen and dwindled the power of the Khmer Rouge.

In June 1997, one month before Prince Ranariddh was to be overthrown in a violent coup d’etat by Hun Sen, the Co-Prime Ministers wrote the Secretary General of the United Nations requesting assistance in trying the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. It would take until June 2003 for the UN and the Hun Sen-government to conclude the Agreement to establish the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (its full official name) and until mid-2006 for this Extraordinary Chambers to come into operation.

Hence, the Extraordinary Chambers is the lowest common denominator resulting from a long entangled political compromise, a broken legal construct from the very beginning, but nonetheless the most serious, credible attempt to try the mass crimes of 1975-79.

Since the Tribunal’s operation, civil society has been engaging the Cambodian population to discuss long overdue topics of history, accountability, trauma, peace and reconciliation using the Extraordinary Chambers to jumpstart these conversations. This “court of law” as an object lesson has helped to multiply the benefits in the “court of public opinion”. However, this lenient verdict has taken the air out of us and broken the momentum in our stride toward a more comprehensive justice of both legal accountability and just peace. We will need to regain our composure and faith very quickly (to fight against the strong tide of cynicism from setting in) from this setback in order to concentrate on the larger picture, which is the demand for the quick start of the "senior Khmer Rouge leaders" in Case 002, the core of the Extraordinary Chambers.

Despite our deep disappointment at the light sentence for the grave crimes committed, Case 001 regarding Comrade Duch is significant in familiarizing us Cambodians with the legal process at the Extraordinary Chambers and raising the comfort level of our participation; in this regards, this simple case was a test-run for the heart of the matter—the more complicated trial of the senior Khmer Rouge leaders, Brother No. Two Nuon Chea, KR former Head of State Khieu Samphan, KR Minister of Foreign Affairs Ieng Sary and his wife, KR Minister of Social Affairs Ieng Thirith.

We must bear in mind that Comrade Duch was the commandant of only one Khmer Rouge detention center (Tuol Sleng) and only one “killing field” (Choeung Ek) among at least 200 detention centers and thousands of killing fields spread across the whole country. Phnom Penh was not the only crime scene, but almost every rice field, pagoda and school in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge rounded up their victims – mainly fellow Cambodians evacuated from the capital Phnom Penh and the major towns, believed to be tainted by western imperialism, thus “new” to hardship and suffering – at night for mass execution into graves dug by the victims the day before. They saved the bullets for the war against Vietnam; with their own people, the Khmer Rouge butchered and whacked them from behind at the stem of the neck by more crude farm instruments like hoes. Many died later from asphyxiation from the 20-30 bodies on top of them in the mass graves and the oppressive tropical heat.

Other detention centers resulted in more deaths than the 14,000 at Tuol Sleng. For example, in the Boeung Rai detention center in the heart of the “Eastern Zone” where I was detained as a 7 year old child, the Khmer Rouge killed 30,000 prisoners including my mother. In this prison, every night the Khmer Rouge guards chained the ankles of all the prisoners; they tried to chain my ankles but they were too bony and could slip in and out of these shackles; my job at night was to bring the toilet bucket to other immobile prisoner. One night, a crazy woman in our cabin screamed “I’m thirsty! I’m thirsty!” and drank from the toilet bucket; later the Khmer Rouge prison guards squeezed her head to death with a coconut cruncher for amusement to pass the languid day.

Comrade Duch is “most responsible”, according to the Tribunal, for these grave crimes against humanity of 14,000 lives at Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek, but he was not a "senior" Khmer Rouge leader and should not be made the sole scapegoat of this murderous, genocidal regime where 1.7 million lives were lost.

His conviction on 26 July 2010 is a very good start, even if disappointing in terms of the light sentencing; but it is only a start in the legal process as well as the journey of healing. The heart of the Extraordinary Chambers is the anticipated trial of the senior Khmer Rouge leaders in Case 002, which we must advocate for it to happen quickly before they die of old age, ill health and/or from more invidious political interests.

Should this Cambodian government make Comrade Duch who was not a “senior” Khmer Rouge leader the sole scapegoat of the regime by obstructing the start and completion of Case 002, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal will be considered a failure for the millions of dollars wasted and the irreversible cynicism it has embedded in a society already fractured by distrust and fear. If that is the case, let the record show, we have registered our deep disappointment.
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Theary C. SENG, a lawyer and first recognized Civil Party to testify at the Extraordinary Chambers, is the author of Daughter of the Killing Fields (first published with Fusion Press London, 2005; to be published in North America for the first time with Seven Stories Press, NYC, forthcoming).