Closing Order of Case 002 against Senior KR Leaders Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith

In light of the HISTORIC (!) start of MOST COMPLEX (sic!) trial hearings beginning on 27 June 2011 and again ANOTHER HISTORIC (!) START of this same MOST COMPLEX (sic!) on 21 Nov. 2011 of Case 002 against the surviving Khmer Rouge senior leaders Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, KI Media is posting installations of the public document of the Closing Order of Case 002.  The Closing Order of the Co-Investigating Judges forms the basic document from which all the parties (Co-Prosecutors, Co-Lead Lawyers for all civil parties, Defense Lawyers) will be making their arguments before the Trial Chamber judges (one Cambodian President, 2 Cambodian Judges, 2 UN judges).  Up until now, the hearings involving these four surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders have been in the Pre-Trial Chamber over issues of pre-trial detention and jurisdictional issues.  Beginning in June 2011, the Trial Chamber will hear the substantive (sic!) arguments over the criminal charges (e.g. genocide, crimes against humanity, penal code of 1956 - sic!).  Available in Khmer and French. Contact the ECCC for a free copy. 

 

CLOSING ORDER

of Co-Investigating Judges You Bunleng and Marcel Lemonde

15 September 2010

D. TREATMENT OF SPECIFIC GROUPS 

 Treatment of the Cham

 

Trea Village Security Centre, Kroch Chhmar District, East Zone

784. Trea Village Security Centre was situated in Trea Village, Trea Subdistrict, Kroch Chhmar District, Kampong Cham Province, applying the CPK's system of identifying administrative boundaries, the security centre was located in Sector 21 of the East Zone. A converted residential wooden house used to detain prisoners, and the execution and burial site consisted of a field to the west of the security centre, adjacent to the Mekong River.³³⁵⁷

785. In mid-1978, many Cham were taken in groups from around Kroch Chhmar and the mobile labour units to the Trea Village Security Centre.³³⁵⁸ Once at the security centre each person in the group was asked to identify if they were Cham, Khmer or "mixed race".³³⁵⁹ One Cham witness, who was arrested in July 197 8,³³⁶⁰ describes the situation as follows: "Then a cadre shouted the order, 'Cham to one side, Khmer to the other, and mixed race to another.' I had already lied and said I was Khmer, so I had to go to the Khmer side. Fifteen others who had given the same answer were standing with me. Besides us there were twenty girls separated into two other groups, those self-declared "Cham" and all others, who were [supposedly] of 'mixed race.' My first cousin Teicheu was with the mixed race group. In fact all thirty-six girls were good friends of mine and we were all pure Cham. The lying was done for the sake of survival. Four or five minutes later, the 'mixed race ' girls were taken from the house one at a time. The cadres said they were being taken to be given food to eat. I looked out through the cracks in the wall boards to see where they were going. The sun was already down, but I could still see in the light of the moon. I saw a cadre walking one girl to a pit only 8 metres from the house. A plank stretched across the pit. The cadre laid the girl face down on the board and cut her throat from behind with a shiny blade and dropped the body into the pit. The pit was not very deep. I could see the girl's hands and feet twitching up and down. Then another girl was killed the same way. One after another they died".³³⁶¹ This witness also states that some girls might have been raped before they were killed because she heard some girls scream out "do not rape me".³³⁶²

786.            This account is corroborated by other witnesses who were taken to the same security centre in 1978. Speaking with reference to the Kroch Chhmar District Secretary mentioned above, one witness stated: "then [REDACTED] asked each one of us, 'What is your race?' The first to answer admitted the truth that she was Cham, and others followed her response. Then my turn came, toward the end. I lied and said I was Khmer. [REDACTED] pulled me off to one wall. Seeing that, the next ten girls after me also claimed 'Khmer' and were put alongside me". The witness states that all those who had answered that they were Cham were taken away by CPK militias, each of them carrying AK-47 rifle and a hooked knife.³³⁶³

787.           Another witness, who had been sent to Trea Village with his family states that CPK cadres demanded to know who was Khmer and who was Cham. "Some claimed they were Khmer, and they were beaten with gun stocks. When they could not stand the beating any more, they admitted they were Cham. The cadres were only testing us; they had known we were Cham all along". ³³⁶⁴ This witness watched CPK cadres drowning groups of Cham men in the river adjacent to the security centre.³³⁶⁵ He states that they were drowned in groups of 30 by being tied to a boat and pulled into the river and that the boat "kept repeating this over and over throughout the entire day" ³³⁶⁶

788.            One witness, who was a native of Trea Village, states that when he returned to Trea Village about one month after the fall of the CPK regime, he found several grave pits at a location near the river bank. He states that he and other villagers dug up the graves to look for valuable objects and that he saw "more than 20 pits. The biggest pit was about three metres in square, in which it contained from 20 to 30 corpses; the smaller pit contained less than 20 corpses".³³⁶⁷ Another witness states that there were "hundreds" of bodies found in the pits in

197 9 ³³⁶⁸

789.            Two witnesses give evidence that the arrests and killings at Trea Village were conducted on

the orders of the Kroch Chhmar District Secretary, [REDACTED].³³⁶⁹

***

790.            Forty six (46) civil parties were declared admissible in the context of the "treatment of Chams"³³⁷⁰ since the alleged crimes described in the application were considered as being more likely than not to be true, pursuant to Internal Rule 23 bis (4). These civil parties have provided sufficient elements tending to establish prima facie personal harm as a direct consequence of the crimes in the context of the "treatment of Chams".