JUDGING GENOCIDE -- the ABC News / CNN film (with interview at Preah Vihear)

 Seen and heard on Ms. Theary C. Seng's Facebook accounts:

www.facebook.com/theary.c.seng 

www.facebook.com/theary.seng.7 

[This film I did for ABC News Foreign Correspondent (replayed several times on CNN) in 2007 was filmed at Preah Vihear; also includes my interview/visit with Pol Pot's brother at his Kampong Thom home.]

JUDGING GENOCIDE

Real broadband (click to watch video)

Synopsis

Seng Theary was just four years old when her family was forced out of Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge, and imprisoned.

By six she was an orphan – and a broken traumatised child.

“I was just an empty frame. I felt like my whole inside was gutted” she recalls.

Today she's the epitome of a modern Cambodian woman – a US trained lawyer, successful author and manager of a large aid agency. But like all Cambodians over 30 there is a sadness behind her smile that tempers her success.

For this report Eric Campbell travelled to a remote town on the border of Cambodia and Thailand for a meeting with the former Head of State for the Khmer Rouge, Khieu Samphan; the accused mass murderer had agreed to a rare filmed interview.

Thirty years after he and other Khmer Rouge leaders allegedly presided over one of the most brutal regimes in history, Khieu Samphan may finally be about to be charged with crimes against humanity.

After years of legal arguments, allegations of corruption, political interference and unexplained delays, a joint Cambodian-International war crimes tribunal has opened for business in Phnom Penh.

Only a handful of ageing old men are expected to appear before it. Many of those believed responsible, including Pol Pot, are already dead. And none of the many thousands of Khmer Rouge cadres who actually carried out the killings are expected to be charged - most still living freely amongst the victims of Cambodia’s killing fields. Victims like Seng Theary.

Seng blames Khieu Samphan for her pain and the pain of her country – but expects little from him even if he goes to trial.

“I mean he’s not going to tell the truth because mass murderers don’t normally tell truths.“

Undeterred Eric Campbell puts the question to Cambodia's "Year Zero" Head of State, that most Cambodians want answered –“Why?“

The answers are extraordinary.