A last stand

Local patriarch: Meas Mut during an interview at his home in Samlot, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold close to the Thai border

"I am not interested with the Khmer Rouge court, because everything is already over" - Khieu Moeun, former Khmer Rouge soldier

As Cambodia's war crimes tribunal battles accusations of political interference in its inner workings, a suspect in a politically sensitive future case pleads his innocence

Monday, July 04, 2011
by Sebastian Strangio
Southeast Asia Globe (Cambodia)

At the height of the monsoon season, Ta Sanh Cheung village, like thousands across Cambodia, blazes with emerald green. Its main road – really more of a rutted track – coils through walls of lush foliage framing a line of square wooden homes and the occasional field of maize, scraped away to reveal patches of pitch-black earth.

The village lies in Samlot district in Cambodia's west, a former stronghold of the communist Khmer Rouge and flashpoint of the country's decades-long civil war. Today, it remains one of the most heavily mined regions on the planet: an estimated 3% of its residents are amputees.

At a quiet end of Ta Sanh Cheung village stands a three-storey wooden home, topped with satellite dishes and blue ceramic tiles – a lavish residence by local standards. The home's owner is Meas Mut, the former commander of the Khmer Rouge navy.

The 72-year-old, with thinning, ash-grey hair and a permanently furrowed brow, was one of the last Khmer Rouge commanders to defect to the government in 1999 in return for amnesty and a symbolic post in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces – the evident source of his current wealth.

Hundreds of kilometres away in the capital Phnom Penh, Meas Mut's name has appeared on documents leaked from the country’s war crimes tribunal, set up to try surviving members of the Khmer Rouge regime. Along with Sou Met, the ex-commander of the Khmer Rouge air force, Meas Mut is accused of the torture, killing and forced labour of tens of thousands of people during the regime's 1975-79 rule.

Historians say the two men played a direct role in the arrest and transfer of purged local Khmer Rouge cadres to Phnom Penh's notorious S-21 prison, where many were subsequently tortured and killed. A 2001 paper by Stephen Heder and Brian Tittemore said the pair attended regular meetings of the General Staff of the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea, indicating their "close involvement and knowledge of the Party's arrest, interrogation and execution policies".

When I first came across him, Meas Mut was asleep in a hammock strung up over a wooden platform outside his home, one leg dangling listlessly. A book of Buddhist parables lay on a nearby chair, a slip of paper marking the page. The wooden planks below were littered with discarded rambutan skins. As he stirred and propped himself up, an assistant brought him a pair of dark green trousers, draping them over the back of a chair.

If looks are any indication, there is little about Meas Mut to indicate complicity in mass atrocities. The one echo of his time as a Khmer Rouge military commander is his voice. In response to questions about the allegations being made against him, Meas Mut answered in a slow, measured tone, almost inaudible: the manner of one unused to being interrupted.

Like many former Khmer Rouge, Meas Mut said ultimate responsibility for the upheavals of the day should be borne by the United States for its bombing of the country in the late 1960s, and by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who threw his support behind the Khmer Rouge insurgents after his overthrow by General Lon Nol in 1970.

"I did not create the war. I was a victim that was forced to join in with the war," he said, fashioning home-grown tobacco into a stubby facsimile of a cigarette. "If the court does not sentence those from the beginning and only starts to sentence at the end and in the middle, how can it be fair?"

As head of the navy, Meas Mut said he was tasked with protecting the country's coast and islands from invasion, but flatly denied any suggestion he was involved in mass atrocities. "I was a lower officer who was willing to protect Cambodia's independence and neutrality, and prevent Cambodia from being controlled by foreigners. I was not a Khmer Rouge leader," he said, drawing on his cigarette. "If I did bad, I couldn't sleep here in a hammock. Somebody might throw a stone at me or sometime might take a knife and kill me, but I am living in safety."

Meas Mut was born in Kampot, in the south of Cambodia, in 1939. During the civil war of the 1970s, he rose through the military ranks in the Khmer Rouge's Southwest Zone, then under the control of his father-in-law Ta Mok – nicknamed 'the butcher' for his brutal purges of the area. 

Since his defection to the government in 1999, Meas Mut has reinvented himself as something of a local Buddhist patriarch, bankrolling the construction of a new pagoda in the village and showering the local villagers with sagely aphorisms ("If we have happiness, we should not affect others' happiness," he told me. "If you give someone happiness, other people will give you happiness back"). It is a strange turn for a senior member of a regime that banned religion and press-ganged tens of thousands of Buddhist monks into forced labour camps.

Indeed, many villagers described Meas Mut as a 'good Buddhist' and a patriot, who offered them advice about everything from farming and business to spiritual matters. "Since we have lived here, we have never seen him do a bad deed," said Suo Chok, a 54-year-old former Khmer Rouge soldier wearing a tattered t-shirt printed with the words 'Let's Build A Clean Society'. "If he sees us do something bad, he calls us to his home and gives us advice."

Suo Chok said the talk of indicting Meas Mut at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, known officially as the Extraordinary Courts in the Chambers of Cambodia (ECCC), had prompted alarm in the village. "I was so angry when I heard the news on the radio that his name is listed in Case 003 and they want to send him to prison. As a soldier he never killed people – they just sent him to the frontline to protect the border. It is the ECCC's fault. They just accused him without evidence."

Court disorder

Whatever his culpability, Meas Mut will probably never see the inside of a courtroom. In recent months, the tribunal has been plagued by suspicions, internal rifts and a flurry of resignations over the issue of whether to pursue Meas Mut and Sou Met, the subjects of the court's potential third case, known as Case 003.

On June 27, the ECCC lifted the curtain on its second trial, in which four senior Khmer Rouge leaders – 'Brother No 2' Nuon Chea, foreign minister Ieng Sary, head of state Khieu Samphan and minister of social affairs Ieng Thirith – face charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the regime. The first trial – that of former S-21 jailer Kaing Guek Iev, also known by his nom de guerre Duch – ended in a conviction in July of last year.

But the start of the second trial and, with it, the promise of justice long delayed has been overshadowed by apparent moves to quash the case against Meas Mut and Sou Met, which has long been opposed by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Last year, Hun Sen told visiting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that any indictments beyond Case 002 were "not allowed". Cambodian judges on the hybrid court have parroted the premier's line and critics have taken aim at the UN's apparent inaction over the issue.

The controversy came to a head in late April when the ECCC's two co-investigating judges, You Bunleng of Cambodia and Siegfried Blunk of Germany, announced the completion of their investigation into Case 003. The problem, according to critics, is that the judges had failed to interview the suspects or any witnesses in the sensitive case; they also conducted few investigations at mass grave sites linked to the alleged crimes. The swiftness of the investigation was seen as evidence that the court was gearing up to bury the case, with the alleged collusion of international staff.

"It was transparently deceitful," Theary Seng, a human rights activist and victims advocate, said of the closure of the Case 003 investigation. "The judges have a duty – it's not an option – to investigate. They have failed in their duty to investigate and they have failed to inform the public." The co-investigating judges have also remained silent about Case 004, involving three mid-ranking Khmer Rouge officials.

The turmoil has since deepened. At least four Western legal staff from the investigating judges' office have reportedly resigned over the handing of Case 003. One of the four, Khmer Rouge expert Stephen Heder, wrote to Blunk complaining of the "toxic atmosphere of mutual mistrust generated by your management of what is now a professionally dysfunctional office".

Recent events have pushed the Open Society Justice Initiative, an organisation funded by the US billionaire George Soros, to call for a UN investigation at the court, focusing on 'questions of judicial independence, misconduct, and competency'. A spokesman for Ban Ki-Moon has rejected the call.

The longstanding conflict between the Cambodian and international sides of the tribunal reflects the political compromise that gave birth to the hybrid court, which awkwardly pairs foreign and Cambodian judges. But court observers say the fate of Cases 003 and 004 will be a test of the tribunal's credibility and its ultimate legacy.

"It could be incredibly significant," Anne Heindel, a legal adviser for the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which researches Khmer Rouge history, said of the current controversy. "If the court is seen as not fulfilling its procedure, as not adhering to the rules, then it will taint the entire process, including Case 001 and Case 002. There's no way you can separate Case 003 out from what's come before."

Elusive justice

In addition to eating into the ECCC's credibility, the controversy over Case 003 also raises questions about the meaning of justice for rural Cambodians, and how many people need to be indicted to account for the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. Theary Seng said there was no "magic number" of how many should be prosecuted and indicted, but that Meas Mut, who she claims was responsible for the death of her own parents under the regime, should be among them.

"It's not surprising he should deny his role, but he can't deny the weight of evidence. He can't deny the testimonies that run into the tens of thousands," she said, adding the five current indictees were clearly not enough. "The current five are not sufficient for the crimes that took the lives of 1.7 million Cambodians."

Where to draw the line, however, is a complicated question. Back in Samlot, residents said the ECCC has gone far enough with its second case and warned of local unrest should Meas Mut be detained. Another former cadre in Ta Sanh Cheung, 65-year-old Soeun Bich said locals were on the alert for any attempt to put Meas Mut on trial. "I will not allow the ECCC to arrest him and bring him to Phnom Penh. We will protest because he is too old. Please let him to live here and respect the Buddha," she said.

Khieu Moeun, 61, a haggard former soldier wearing a cast-off police uniform, echoed the views of many when he said he was willing to bury the past: "I am not interested with the Khmer Rouge court, because everything is already over. I don't want to be reminded."