Cambodia Genocide Tribunal Reveals More Horrors

Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Digital Journal

A leading official in the former communist Khmer Rouge regime, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as ’Duch’ has testified to the murder of children. The children were killed to stop them seeking revenge for their parents’ deaths.

Media reports told how Eav, 66, in testimony before Cambodia’s genocide tribunal, explained how the executioners held the children’s legs or feet and swung them against tree trunks to smash their skulls.

When shown photos of the crimes, Eav at first failed to recall them, but on recognising the trees in questions, admitted to the crimes. He said:

I am criminally responsible for killing babies, young children and teenagers. My subordinates did it. I do not blame them because this was under my responsibility.

Eav was the head of Tuol Sleng prison, known as S21, in which up to 14,000 prisoners, most of them Khmer Rouge members accused of sedition were sent for torture and then execution. Many thousands were taken to an orchard near Choeung Ek on the southern edge of Phnom Penh, were they were forced to kneel in front of pre-dug graves before being struck on the back of the head by a steel bar or shaft.

A sign in Choeung Ek marks the place where the children were killed.

In previous interviews with journalists, Eav admitted to killing people himself, but has since claimed only his subordinates did the killing. He has confessed only to torture at the trial.

The joint U.N.-Cambodian tribunal is expected to try five senior members of the Khmer Rouge regime, of which Eav is the first.

Khmer Rouge prison chief: babies were 'smashed'

Monday, June 08, 2009

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — The former jail chief of the Khmer Rouge regime told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes trial Monday that his staff had murdered babies by smashing them against trees at a "killing field".

Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his nom de guerre Duch, is on trial for overseeing the torture and extermination of 15,000 people who passed through the hardline communist movement's notorious Tuol Sleng prison.

"The horrendous images of those (babies) smashed against trees, yes, that was done my subordinates," Duch said, referring to paintings depicting the atrocities committed by members of the 1975 to 1979 Khmer Rouge regime.

"I myself do not blame my subordinates, because they worked under me. I am criminally responsible," the 66-year-old added.

The former maths teacher, wearing a grey short-sleeved shirt, was responding to prosecution questions about the regime's policies at Tuol Sleng, where prisoners were often accompanied by their children.

Duch apologised at his trial late March, saying he accepted blame for the extermination of thousands of people at the prison, which served as the centre of the 1975-1979 regime's security apparatus.

But he has denied prosecutors' claims that he played a central role in the Khmer Rouge's iron-fisted rule, and maintains he only tortured two people himself and never personally executed anyone.

Duch faces life in jail if convicted by the court, which does not have the power to impose the death penalty.

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998 and many believe the UN-sponsored tribunal is the last chance to find justice for victims of the regime, which killed up to two million people.

The tribunal was formed in 2006 after nearly a decade of wrangling between the United Nations and the Cambodian government, and is expected to next year to begin the trial of four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders also in detention.