Survivors Sell Books at Prison That Once Held Them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCHF5-9lHis

Khmer Rouge survivor Chum Mey, 81, right, talks to reporters as another survivor Bou Meng, 70, left, listens at Choeung Ek stupa, former Khmer Rouge killing field in the outskirt of Phnom Penh (AP file photo)

Thursday, 26 January 2012
Say Mony, VOA Khmer | Phnom Penh

“I saw a lot of depth in his face and his eyes, and from there I wanted to read more about his story.”

Bou Meng and Chhum Mey spend less time at the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders these days, and more time at the torture center they both survived.

The two men sit at the Tuol Sleng musuem, the former prison known the Khmer Rouge as S-21, selling the stories of their lives to tourists.

The men say they are not happy to do so, but they have no choice if they want to earn a living.

Bou Meng, who sells copies of his biography, “A Survivor From Khmer Rouge Prison S-21,” by Huy Vannak, said he earns a few dozen dollars a day. On good days, he might earn a few hundred.

Khmer Rouge jailer verdict due

Bou Meng (Photo: AFP)
Theary Seng

July 22, 2010
ABC Radio Australia

The international war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, will hand down its verdict on its first defendant. Former khmer rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Euv, better known as Comrade Duch suprised court observors by changing his plea, then sacking his international legal counsel.

Presenter: Robert Carmichael
Speakers: Theary Seng, president of the Center for Justice and Reconciliation; Anne Heindel, legal adviser for the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam); Bou Meng, s21 prisoner

Click here to listen to the audio program (Windows Media)

CARMICHAEL: The man whose voice you can hear is called Bou Meng. He is an artist who last year gave testimony against his former jailer, Comrade Duch. In this clip Bou Meng is telling the international war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh about appalling conditions at a Khmer Rouge prison called S-21. Bou Meng was lucky - he is one of perhaps a dozen survivors of S-21. At least 20,000 others who passed through the prison were executed.

It was the signature of Comrade Duch that appeared on many of those execution orders. Comrade Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, was one of the regime's most valuable implementers of its policy towards suspected traitors. As the head of S-21, his role was to oversee the torture of all who were brought there, extract confessions, and then sign off on their execution. The confessions - made under terrible torture - would see yet more people arrested, brought in, tortured and executed as the revolution began to consume the country. Duch was tried as one of those who are considered 'most responsible' for the crimes committed under the Khmer Rouge regime, which ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 and left 1.7 million people dead from execution, starvation, overwork and disease. When the verdict is pronounced on Monday, Duch will be the only Khmer Rouge member to have been judged by an international war crimes tribunal.

Cambodian-American Theary Seng was the first person to file as a civil party at the tribunal. She spent much of last year observing Duch's 77-day trial. What were her impressions.

SENG: The Duch trial was a test run, and it went overall very well. It went very well in creating and generating the interest among the larger population and giving out information to the public about the Khmer Rouge era. It was interesting in hearing and seeing Duch himself speak in person. So overall it was a good test run for the core trial - and that's of the senior Khmer Rouge leaders in case.

CARMICHAEL: In the face of overwhelming evidence, Duch's defence strategy was one of mitigation: He would accept responsibility, express remorse, cooperate with the court, and hope for a reduced sentence.

The strategy was laid out over nine months of hearings by Duch's international defence lawyer Francois Roux. It is worth pointing out that the tribunal has a hybrid structure, which means Cambodians and international staff work in tandem in key roles. For that reason Duch has one international lawyer and one Cambodian lawyer, both with equal standing. In the final days of the trial, the defence team self-destructed. With Duch's blessing - and without Roux's knowledge - his Cambodian lawyer told the court that international law did not apply, that Duch had merely been following orders, and that the tribunal should release him.

It was a remarkable turnaround. The reasons behind that dramatic change remain unclear, not least since international law clearly does apply. Earlier this month Duch's capacity to surprise surfaced again when he fired Francois Roux as his international defence lawyer. Anne Heindel is a legal adviser at the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an archive of papers on the Khmer Rouge period. She thinks firing Roux - who was widely seen as having done a good job - could be a way for Duch to prepare for an appeal.

HEINDEL: It could either be a strategy for claiming ineffective assistance of counsel on appeal, or it could be something totally different and personal. It's just really hard to say.

CARMICHAEL: As a seasoned observer of the court, what stood out for her during the trial?

HEINDEL: The interesting thing I think was at the end when Duch decided to have his last statement be a history of the Communist Party since the 1950s. It didn't seem like a statement of remorse - one would have thought he would have used the opportunity to again apologise to the victims. But instead he ran through a very academic piece that only experts in the topic would have found of interest. But that seemed to be what he wanted people to understand - that was his truth of why things happened.

CARMICHAEL: Monday will reveal what the judges think of Duch's version of the truth. He is now 68, so if he is found guilty - as most people expect - any sentence longer than 25 years will probably amount to life.

RIGHTS-CAMBODIA: Decades Later, S-21 Survivors Recall Ordeal

Written by Robert Carmichael

PHNOM PENH, Jul 9 (IPS) - ”They cuffed me and told me to lie on the floor with my face facing down,” the old man told the judges.

”They had a bunch of sticks and dropped it on the floor and it made a noise. I was asked to choose the stick I preferred. I said: ‘Whichever one I choose you will still beat me with it, so it is up to you, Brother, which one to use.'”

Those words comprise less than a minute of a full day of harrowing testimony delivered in Phnom Penh last week by Khmer Rouge survivor Bou Meng at the ongoing U.N.-backed tribunal, known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

Bou Meng was describing his experiences of torture at the security prison called S-21. Perceived enemies of the Khmer Rouge state known as Democratic Kampuchea were imprisoned, tortured and murdered at S-21 between 1975 and 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown.

More than 15,000 people were sent to the prison. Just a handful survived.

A famous photograph taken in the early 1980s shows the seven known survivors standing outside S-21, their arms around each other. Four of the seven men have since died.

The men survived solely because they had skills that the prison commandant, Comrade Duch, found useful.

Last week represented the chance for the three survivors in that photograph to tell the court of their experiences at the trial of Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, for crimes against humanity. Duch faces life in jail if convicted.

Their testimony brought to life the horrors of the period between 1975 and 1979, during which two million Cambodians died.

The three men were just ordinary people, caught up in a terrifying time: Cambodia in the 1970s as the Khmer Rouge regime began to consume itself. At the time of his arrest, Bou Meng was making agricultural tools at a cooperative, and his wife worked in the rice fields.

He told the court that the couple were arrested in mid-1977 and transported to S-21. They were separated on entering the prison, and he never saw his wife again. Bou Meng was photographed, stripped, and shackled with other prisoners to a metal bar in what had been a classroom at the former school.

”In that room there were about 30 to 40 of us. In one corner I saw a tall, white foreigner who was detained there as well near me. He received the same thin gruel ration as the rest of us. We had very little rice. I was so skinny. I had no strength,” he said.

All three men spoke of an unbearable lack of food and water, and of being treated worse than animals. Prisoners at S-21 were tortured as a matter of course û they suffered beatings, whippings and electric shocks.

The point of the torture was purely to get them to confess to their supposed crimes. The three survivors, who arrested separately between mid-1977 and late 1978, were accused of having joined the CIA and the KGB in a supposed bid to bring down the government.

In Orwellian style, to be at S-21 was to be guilty. So there was no chance of proving your innocence. The only option was to confess, after which you would be killed û or ‘smashed' in the language of the time.

And as Bou Meng told the court, querying why you had been arrested was pointless. The state û known as Angkar û was regarded as unerring, all-seeing and all-knowing.

”I said (to the guards): ‘My wife and I are orphans. What mistakes have we made?'” Bou Meng told the court. ”They replied: ‘You, you contemptible. You don't have to ask. You know that Angkar has many eyes like a pineapple. If you hadn't made a mistake, Angkar would not have arrested you.'”

Bou Meng, who survived an extraordinary 18 months at S-21, was falsely accused, as were many of S-21's inmates including the other two witnesses who spoke last week.

Vann Nath, who is today one of Cambodia's most famous artists, told the court that the Democratic Kampuchea regime had robbed him of his dignity.

He explained how 60 prisoners were shackled in a large room at S-21. Inmates died regularly, and would remain shackled to the living until late evening when their corpses were removed. After a month of surviving eating just three teaspoons of rice gruel a day, a guard came for him. Vann Nath gave up hope, knowing he would be killed.

But he wasn't û Duch had heard of Vann Nath's skills as a painter. Angkar needed people to paint portraits of its leaders, and so Vann Nath was put to work alongside Bou Meng, painting giant canvases. Vann Nath survived for a year.

The third witness, a mechanic called Chum Mey who is now 79, told the court how he was arrested and taken to S-21. He eventually broke under torture and confessed to being part of a non-existent KGB/CIA plot.

But instead of being killed, he was allowed to live because his skill û fixing sewing machines û was useful to Duch, who needed someone who could mend machinery. Chum Mey was put to work fixing sewing machines, a water pump and even typewriters.

The three men eventually got their freedom after the Vietnamese-backed liberation army invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh on Jan. 7, 1979.

The losses suffered by the three survivors represent a microcosm of the larger catastrophe wrought upon Cambodia: Bou Meng's wife was almost certainly murdered on Duch's command at S-21. Chum Mey's wife and four children died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Vann Nath's wife survived the Khmer Rouge years, but their two children died.

And although none of them will forget their experiences, testifying did bring some relief. Bou Meng told the court: ”Now finally I am before the ECCC, and the ECCC can find justice for me. I feel so happy, even if 100 percent justice cannot be provided. Fifty or 60 percent justice is fine.”

Vann Nath too spoke of his hopes.

”I never imagined that I would be able to sit in this courtroom today to describe my plight and experience to the younger generation,” Vann Nath said. ”This is my privilege and my honour. I don't want more than that. I want something intangible justice for those who died. That is my only hope of what can be achieved by this chamber.”

Still, many survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime will never receive a satisfactory answer to perhaps the most important question û why did these terrible things happen to me?

As the former painter Bou Meng said: ”In our cooperative, my wife and I worked hard every day. Even today I cannot think what mistake I made.”

Survivors Shed Light on Dark Days of Khmer Rouge

Chum Mey, a mechanic, was spared because he was needed to make repairs. The two men are to testify against their torturer. (Photo: Mariko Takayasu)
Bou Meng was singled out during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in Cambodia to produce portraits of the group’s leader. (Photo: Seth Mydans/International Herald Tribune)

May 17, 2009
By SETH MYDANS
New York Times

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Looking across the courtroom where he is on trial for crimes against humanity, the chief Khmer Rouge torturer cannot avoid seeing an artist and a mechanic who sit watching him but mostly avoid his gaze.

One short and forceful, his feet dangling just above the floor, the other melancholy and drooping a bit, they are rare survivors of Tuol Sleng prison, where at least 14,000 people were sent to their deaths three decades ago.

In the weeks ahead, the two survivors will take the stand to testify against their torturer, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, who commanded the prison, and both have stories to tell about a place of horror from which almost no one emerged alive.

Bou Meng, 68, the short one, survived because he was a painter and was singled out from a row of shackled prisoners to produce portraits of the Khmer Rouge chief, Pol Pot.

The other, Chum Mey, 78, was a mechanic and was spared because the torturers needed him to repair machines, including the typewriters used to record the confessions — very often false — that they extracted from prisoners like himself.

Duch (pronounced DOIK), 66, is the first of five arrested Khmer Rouge figures to go on trial in the United Nations-backed tribunal here. His case began in February and is expected to last several more months.

Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey are living exhibits — like a third survivor, Vann Nath — from the darkest core of the Khmer Rouge atrocities. They are tangible evidence, like the skulls that have been preserved at some killing fields, or like hundreds of portraits of their fellow prisoners that are displayed on the walls of Tuol Sleng.

The photographs were taken as detainees were delivered to the prison, before they were stripped and fettered and tortured and sent to a killing field.

Those ordered killed at Tuol Sleng are among 1.7 million people who died during the Communist Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979 from starvation, disease and overwork, as well as from torture and execution.

Duch is accused of ordering the kinds of beatings, whippings, electric shocks and removal of toenails that Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey describe; indeed, he admitted in the courtroom to ordering the beating of Mr. Chum Mey.

Both men endured torture that continued for days, and Mr. Chum Mey said, “At that time I wished I could die rather than survive.”

But both men did survive, and in interviews they now describe scenes that almost none of their fellow prisoners lived to recount. “Every night I looked out at the moon,” Mr. Bou Meng recalled. “I heard people crying and sighing around the building. I heard people calling out, ‘Mother, help me! Mother, help me!’ ”

It was at night that prisoners were trucked out to a killing field, and every night, he said, he feared that his moment had come. “But by midnight or 1 a.m. I realized that I would live another day.”

Though many Cambodians have tried to bury their traumatic memories, Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey have continued to return to the scene of their imprisonment and torture as if their souls remained trapped there together with the souls of the dead.

During the first few years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Mr. Bou Meng returned to work in an office at Tuol Sleng, which was converted into a museum of genocide. Now he uses it as a rest stop, spending the night there on a cot when he visits the capital, Phnom Penh, from the countryside, where he paints Buddhist murals in temples.

Mr. Chum Mey, retired now from his work as a mechanic, spends much of his time wandering among the portraits, telling and retelling his story to tourists, as if one of the victims on the walls had come to life.

An eager and passionate storyteller, he will show a visitor how he was shoved, blindfolded, into his cell during 12 days of torture, and he will drop to the floor inside a small brick cubicle where he was held in chains.

“As you can see, this was my condition,” he said recently as he sat on the hard concrete floor, holding up a metal ammunition box that was used as a toilet. “It upsets me to see Duch sitting in the courtroom talking with his lawyers as if he were a guest of the court.”

Like many other Khmer Rouge victims, both men say they have no idea why they were selected for arrest or why they were tortured to admit to unknown crimes. Both men lost their wives and children in the Khmer Rouge years, and although both have rebuilt their families, the past still holds them in its grip.

Mr. Bou Meng does not wander like his friend among the Tuol Sleng pictures, but he does keep one in his wallet: a snapshot-size reproduction of the prison portrait of his wife, Ma Yoeun, who was arrested with him but did not survive.

“Sometimes when I sit at home I look at the picture and everything seems fresh,” he said. “I think of the suffering she endured, and I wonder how long she stayed alive.”

Mr. Bou Meng has since remarried twice, but he remains shackled to his memories. “I know I should forget her,” he said, “but I can’t.”

She visits him, he said, in visions that are something more than dreams, looking just as she did when he last saw her — still 28 years old, leaving Mr. Bou Meng to live on and grow old without her.

Sometimes she appears with the spirits of others who were killed, he said. They stand together, a crowd of ghosts in black, and she tells him, “Only you, Bou Meng, can find justice for us.”

Mr. Bou Meng said he hoped that testifying against Duch and seeing him convicted would free him from the restless ghosts and let him live what is left of his life in peace.

“I don’t want to be a victim,” he said. “I want to be like everybody else, a normal person.”

But he said he knew that this might be asking too much of life.

“Maybe not completely normal,” Mr. Bou Meng said. “But at least 50 percent.”

Torture Survivors in Cambodia to Testify at Khmer Rouge Trial

May 14, 2009
By SETH MYDANS
New York Times (USA)

PHNOM PENH — Looking across the courtroom where he is on trial for crimes against humanity, the chief Khmer Rouge torturer cannot avoid seeing an artist and mechanic who sit together wide by side, watching him but mostly avoiding his gaze.

One short and forceful, his feet dangling just above the floor, the other melancholy and drooping a bit, the two men are rare survivors of the torture house he commanded, Tuol Sleng, where at least 14,000 people were sent to their deaths three decades ago.

In the weeks ahead, the two survivors will take the stand to testify against their torturer, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, and both have terrible stories to tell about a place of horror from which almost no one emerged alive.

Bou Meng, 68, the short one, survived because he was a painter and was singled out from a row of shackled prisoners to produce portraits of the Khmer Rouge chief, Pol Pot.

The other, Chum Mey, 78, was a mechanic and was spared because the torturers needed him to repair machines including the typewriters used to record the confessions — very often false — that they extracted from prisoners like himself.

Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey are living exhibits from the Khmer Rouge years — tangible evidence like the skulls that have been preserved at some former killing fields, or like hundreds of portraits of their fellow prisoners that are displayed on the walls of Tuol Sleng.

The photographs were taken at the moment detainees were delivered to the prison, before they were stripped and fettered and tortured and sent to a killing field.

Those killed at Tuol Sleng are among 1.7 million people who died during the Communist Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979 from starvation, disease and overwork as well as from torture and execution.

Duch, now 66, is the first of five arrested Khmer Rouge figures to go on trial in the U.N.-backed tribunal.

He is accused of ordering the beatings, whippings, electric shocks and removal of toenails that Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey describe — indeed he has admitted in the courtroom to ordering the beating of Mr. Chum Mey.

Both men endured torture that continued for days, and Mr. Chum Mey said, “At that time I wished I could die rather than survive.”

But both men did survive, and today they are describing scenes that none of their fellow prisoners lived to recount.

“Every night I looked out at the moon,” Mr. Bou Meng recalled. “I heard people crying and sighing around the building. I heard people calling out, ‘Mother help me, mother help me!”’

It was at night that prisoners were trucked out to a killing field, and every night, he said, he feared that his moment had come. “But by midnight or 1 a.m. I realized that I would live another day.”

Though many Cambodians have tried to bury their traumatic memories, Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey have continued to return to the scene of their imprisonment and torture, as if their souls remain trapped there together with the souls of the dead.

During the first few years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Mr. Bou Meng returned to work in an office at Tuol Sleng, which was converted into a museum of genocide. Now he uses it as a convenient rest stop, spending the night there on a cot when he visits the capital, Phnom Penh, from the countryside, where he paints Buddhist murals in temples.

Mr. Chum Mey, retired now from his work as a mechanic, spends much of his time wandering among the portraits, telling and retelling his story to tourists and their guides, as if one of the victims on the walls had come to life.

An eager and passionate storyteller, he will show a visitor how he was shoved, blindfolded, up the stairs during 12 days of torture, and he will drop to the floor inside a small brick cubicle where he was held in chains.

“As you can see, this was my condition,” he said recently as he sat on the hard concrete floor holding up a metal ammunition box that was used as a toilet. “It upsets me to see Duch sitting in the courtroom talking with his lawyers as if he were a guest of the court.”

Apart from their survival, both men’s stories are similar to those of many Tuol Sleng prisoners — country people who joined the Communist revolution during the Indochina war to liberate their nation from what they saw as foreign domination.

They were swept up in Khmer Rouge purges, like many others in Tuol Sleng, and they were tortured until they admitted being members of the C.I.A. or K.G.B., organizations they had barely heard of.

Both men lost their wives and children in the Khmer Rouge years, and although both have rebuilt their families, the past still holds them in its grip.

Mr. Bou Meng does not wander like his friend among the Tuol Sleng pictures, but he does keep one in his wallet — a snapshot-sized reproduction of the portrait of his wife, Ma Yoeun, who was arrested together with him but did not survive.

The picture shows a small woman, dressed in black like the others, looking forlorn and lost, her hair tousled — a record of the last time her husband saw her alive.

“Sometimes when I sit at home I look at the picture and everything seems fresh,” he said. “I think of the suffering she endured, and I wonder how long she stayed alive.”

The photograph reminds him of those most terrible moments of his life, but also of the happiest.

“We were still young, a boy and a girl together,” he said. “It’s my best memory. It was the day of our honeymoon. We slept together. It was a perfect day.”

Mr. Bou Meng has since remarried twice, but he remains shackled to his memories.

“I know I should forget her,” he said, “but I can’t.”

She visits him, he said, in visions that are something more than dreams, looking just as she did at that final moment — still 28 years old, leaving Mr. Bou Meng to live on and grow old without her.

Sometimes she appears together with the spirits of others who were killed, he said. They stand together, a crowd of ghosts in black, and she tells him, “Only you, Bou Meng, can find justice for us.”

Mr. Bou Meng said he hoped that the trial would cauterize his wounds, that testifying against Duch and seeing him convicted would free him from the restless ghosts and let him live what is left of his life in peace.

“I don’t want to be a victim,” Mr. Bou Meng said. “I want to be like everybody else, a normal person.”

But he said he knows that this may be asking too much of life.

“Maybe not completely normal,” he said. “But at least 50 percent.”

Photos from Duch's trial - 31 March 2009

A Cambodian man walks into the court room for a trial of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, at a U.N.-backed tribunal Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Prosecutors vowed Tuesday to get justice for the 1.7 million victims of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, as they opened their case against the man accused of running the communist radicals' torture machine. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian Chhim Sarom, 57, tears while she describes her biography during the Khmer Rouge regimes before attending a trial of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, at a U.N.-backed tribunal Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Prosecutors vowed Tuesday to get justice for the 1.7 million victims of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, as they opened their case against the man accused of running the communist radicals' torture machine. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodians wait in line to enter the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia on the second day of a UN-backed tribunal against former Toul Sleng commander Kaing Guek Eav, also know as 'Duch' Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On the first day of the trial prosecutors alleged that the former Khmer Rouge commander oversaw grisly atrocities at the Phnom Penh prison and that all who were imprisoned there were marked for death. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
British photojournalist Nic Dunlop speaks to the media as he arrives to attend the second day of the trial of former chief Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, in the outskirts of Phnom Penh March 31, 2009. Dunlop found Duch in April 1999. Duch faces trial for crimes against humanity, the first involving a senior Pol Pot cadre 30 years after the end of a regime blamed for 1.7 million deaths. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Bour Meng, a Khmer Rouge survivor, walks out of the court room during lunch break, during the second day of the trial of chief Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh March 31, 2009. Duch faces trial for crimes against humanity, the first involving a senior Pol Pot cadre 30 years after the end of a regime blamed for 1.7 million deaths. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Cambodian Muslim students walk into the court room for a trial of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, at a U.N.-backed tribunal Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodians wait in line to enter the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia on the second day of a UN-backed tribunal against former Toul Sleng commander Kaing Guek Eav, also know as 'Duch' Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On the first day of the trial prosecutors alleged that the former Khmer Rouge commander oversaw grisly atrocities at the Phnom Penh prison and that all who were imprisoned there were marked for death. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
A Cambodian Buddhist monk looks on as he and others wait in line outside the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia on the second day of a UN-backed tribunal against former Toul Sleng commander Kaing Guek Eav, also know as 'Duch' Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On the first day of the trial prosecutors alleged that the former Khmer Rouge commander oversaw grisly atrocities at the Phnom Penh prison and that all who were imprisoned there were marked for death. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
A man watches the live feed of the trial of chief Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh March 31, 2009. Duch faces trial for crimes against humanity, the first involving a senior Pol Pot cadre 30 years after the end of a regime blamed for 1.7 million deaths. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

Main Trial for Prison Chief Gets Underway

Kaing Kek Iev, standing behind his lawyers on Monday.

By Reporters, VOA Khmer
Original reports from Cambodia
30 March 2009

A former math teacher who came to be the head of a murderous Khmer Rouge prison system sat before a panel of trial judges on Monday, more than three decades after his regime fell and after years of worry none of its leaders would ever see a day in court.

The prison chief, Duch, 66, sat in the dock with a still face, listening closely before five judges of the Khmer Rouge tribunal’s Trial Chamber. The indictment included war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder and torture. During a three-hour opening day, Duch wore glasses and read along as the charges were read. He answered questions with a strong, clear voice.

Duch, whose real name is Kaing Kek Iev, was in charge of the now infamous Tuol Sleng prison, known to the Khmer Rouge as S-21, where traitors to the revolution and others were sent for torture and confession.

Once inside the walls of Tuol Sleng, prisoners were shackled to beds, kept in tiny cells, beaten, electrocuted, and made to confess crimes against the Angkar, the Organization.

“My feeling is very angry and very happy, mixed,” prison survivor Bu Meng, who was present at the court Monday, told reporters. “I am angry that Duch killed my wife. And I am very happy because the court is trying the Khmer Rouge leaders. Duch’s trial is very valuable for humanity around the world, and for Cambodians, and for me.”

An estimated 16,000 prisoners went through Tuol Sleng, a former Phnom Penh high school, before they were executed at a site on the outskirts of the capital, Choeung Ek, which was also administered by Duch, along with a second prison in Phnom Penh, Prey Sar.

Bu Meng, who was arrested in 1976 as an “enemy of the revolution” for his participation in the Lon Nol government, was released from the prison only when Vietnamese and Cambodian forces ousted the Khmer Rouge.

“I hope there will be justice in coming days,” he said.

Monday marked the most significant trial date so far for the tribunal, officially known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, or ECCC, which has been dogged by accusations of corruption and mismanagement.

Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said the trial marked “the end of impunity in Cambodia.”

The tribunal is currently holding four other former leaders of the regime: chief ideologue Nuon Chea, head of state Khieu Samphan, foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife, former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith.

Each is facing charges for either for war crimes, crimes against humanity, or both. None is facing charges of genocide. Nearly 2 million Cambodians perished under the Khmer Rouge, officially called Democratic Kampuchea, from April 1975 to January 1979.

Kek Galabru, president of the rights group Licadho, said Duch’s trial “gives once again hope for justice to victims, who have been waiting 30 years.” She said she expected more former leaders to face indictments.

US Ambassador Carol Rodley, who attended the opening session, was “gratified that it’s proceeding, and in the following weeks and months we’ll monitor the ECCC closely,” embassy spokesman John Johnson said.

The US played a key role in forging a tribunal agreement between the Cambodian government and the UN. Initial negotiations began and faltered as early as 1997, started up again in 2003, and concluded in 2005. The court stood up in 2006, but was delayed by disagreements between international and Cambodian judges and prosecutors on internal regulations and other matters. Its first arrests came in 2007.

More than 500 people, ranging from international diplomats to young Cambodian students, as well as 200 journalists from around the world, attended Monday’s proceedings, the most significant session of Duch’s trial to date.

Phy Sophoan, a student from the Royal University of Law and Economy, said she expected the trial to “provide justice for the Cambodian people.”

Some observers expressed shock on seeing Duch, wearing a collared shirt tucked neatly into his pants, healthy, answering questions posed by judges.

“Duch is apparently brave, [but] he is not enthusiastic,” said Om Cheantha, a farmer from Kampong Cham who lost her husband and brother under the Khmer Rouge, in 1976. “But he killed several million people. We wish the courts will condemn him fairly, for the deaths of millions of Cambodians.”

To hear more reaction from people in Phnom Penh, click here.

To hear from family and neighbors around Duch’s hometownin Stung district,Kampong Thom province, click here.

To hear what people in the former Khmer Rouge zone of Samlot district, Battambang province, are saying, click here.

Observers, victims wary as Khmer Rouge trial resumes

Bou Meng

Sun, 03/29/2009
DPA

"I am extremely envious of Duch and the treatment he receives," he said. "I don't understand why the court treats him so well. He gets to sit in air conditioning in the court's prison and is fed every day" - Bou Meng, S-21 survivor

Phnom Penh - As the trial of the Khmer Rouge's former chief torturer enters its most crucial stage Monday, court observers and victims of the genocidal regime have raised questions about the troubled UN-backed tribunal's role in Cambodia's search for justice and reconciliation.

More than three decades after the Khmer Rouge was toppled from power, former Tuol Sleng torture prison warden Kaign Guek Eav, known by his revolutionary name Duch, is to appear for the first substantial hearing of his trial on charges of war crimes, torture and breeches of the Geneva Conventions.

The hearing is to run for at least 40 days and would be the first time witnesses, victims and Duch himself would be called on to testify.

Bou Meng, one of only three surviving Tuol Sleng prisoners, said he trusted the court to deliver justice but was disappointed by delays in beginning the trial - the tribunal's first. He also said internal disputes and allegations of corruption at the court had jeopardized its credibility but added that he believes the international community would ensure Duch's trial is conducted successfully.

"I know the court has its troubles, but there are big countries, big democracies, behind this court, so I think the court will survive and its verdict will be true and accurate," he said.

"This trial isn't just about what happened in the past. It's also about the future and making sure that genocide never happens again," he said.

Duch, 66, is one of five former Khmer Rouge leaders facing trial for their roles in the deaths of up to 2 million people - including an estimated 17,000 at Tuol Sleng - through execution, starvation and overwork during the ultra-Maoist group's 1975-1979 reign.

That brutal era led to decades of instability and civil war in the South-East Asian country - the scars of which are still visible in Cambodia's virtual one-party state, its dilapidated infrastructure, deep social divisions, and its impoverished and predominantly rural population.

Duch, a former mathematics teacher and born-again Christian, is the only detainee to have admitted guilt for his crimes and has been detained since 1999.

The comfortable conditions he enjoys at the court's detention facility have angered Bou Meng.

"I am extremely envious of Duch and the treatment he receives," he said. "I don't understand why the court treats him so well. He gets to sit in air conditioning in the court's prison and is fed every day."

"I am older than him, and I suffered because of him, but he is treated much better than me," Bou Meng said. "This makes me very angry."

The start of Duch's trial in February was celebrated as a success for the tribunal, which has been riddled by controversy since it was established in 2006 after a decade of negotiations between the Cambodian government and the United Nations.

UN funding for the Cambodian side of the hybrid court was suspended in July after allegations that staff members had been forced to pay kickbacks to their superiors.

The United Nations said funding would remain frozen until the government satisfactorily investigated the allegations, forcing the Cambodian side to rely on tentative funding from individual donor nations, including Japan, Australia, France and the United States.

That funding dried up in February, and until Japan donated 200,000 US dollars this month, the court's domestic staff was forced to work without salaries.

The US business magazine Forbes included Cambodia in a list of the world's top 10 most-corrupt countries, citing the yet-uninvestigated allegations.

"Funding for a 13-year effort to prosecute acts of genocide in a special United Nations court has run out before trials could begin," the report said.

According to Youk Channg, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a genocide research and archival organization, the court's credibility has also been damaged by its "failure to reach out to Cambodians."

People do not need to understand the complex legal procedures of the court - that's the lawyers' job," Youk Chhang said. "But they do need to understand the basics, like who is on trial and what is happening at the tribunal."

"The court has a public affairs department, and so far, it has been successful in telling the world about what is happening at the tribunal, but it has not been successful in making the Cambodian people aware," he said. "It needs a new strategy to ensure this occurs."

Youk Chhang last week wrote a letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen requesting that March 30 be made an annual public holiday.

"It is important that the people understand what is happening at the court and its historical significance, and I think the best way to do this is to dedicate a national holiday to memory and justice," he said.

First trial of Khmer Rouge leader underway

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
ABC Radio Australia

The first trial of a Khmer Rouge leader has opened in Cambodia.

The special United Nations and Cambodia tribunal will try ex-prison commander Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Comrade Duch.

The 66-year-old is accused of torturing and ordering the killing of 15,000 people in Tuol Sleng prison, which served as the Khmer Rouge's main interrogation centre from 1975 to 1979.

A survivor of the prison, Bou Meng, says he will tell the court what he went through and witnessed when he appears at the trial.

"They beat me in many different ways, with sticks, with whips," he said.

"I was given electric shocks, I still have the scars today."

The tribunal was established in 2006 to try the leaders of the Kmer Rouge regime, which is responsible for the deaths of two million people.

Opening arguments and witness testimony are expected next month.

Four other senior Khmer Rouge cadres are set to face trial later this year and another six are being investigated.

'They beat me, they broke my finger, they pulled out my toenails, they electrocuted me. And then I fell unconscious ...'

One of the many piles of human remains that dot Cambodia. Top, Chum Mei is on the left of the survivors; middle, prisoners await inspection; above left, Duch and an unknown soldier at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, above (Photos: REUTERS/ AFP/GETTY)

Of the 14,000 Cambodians held in the brutal Khmer Rouge prison of Tuol Sleng, barely a dozen survive. Chum Mei is one of them, and this week he will finally see his torturers put on trial. Andrew Buncombe reports from Phnom Penh

Monday, 16 February 2009
Toby Green
The Independent (UK)

Beneath the shade of spreading branches in the courtyard of Tuol Sleng prison, Chum Mei slipped off his sandals and demonstrated how Khmer Rouge torturers had pulled out his toenails. "They beat me seriously," he said quietly, sitting on the floor as tourists wandered past, unaware of his story. "I tried to protect my face and they broke my finger. They kept repeating the same question: was I working for the CIA? They pulled out my toenails. Then they used electricity to shock me through my ear. And then I went unconscious."

Forty years ago, the black-clad cadres of the Khmer Rouge swept to power in Cambodia and set in motion a genocidal programme that left up to 1.7 million of its people dead. Tomorrow, after what seems like an eternity of struggle, the trial will finally begin of some of those senior figures who headed one of the 20th century's most brutal regimes.

First in the dock for committing crimes against humanity is Kaing Khek Lew, also known as Comrade Duch, the spindly former school teacher and head of Tuol Sleng prison where Chum Mei and so many others were brought to be questioned, tortured and dispatched for execution. Of an estimated 14,000 people sent to Duch's jail, established in a secondary school in Phnom Penh, barely a dozen survived. Today, just six are alive. Chum Mei is among them, and he is expected to give evidence at the trial, operated jointly by the Cambodian government and the UN.

Tuol Sleng was central both to the Khmer Rouge's killing machine and the legacy of the Maoist-inspired regime that has reverberated down the years. There were other prisons equally brutal, some larger. But Tuol Sleng, now a museum of the macabre, has come to represent the regime's horrors. Every day, tourists from around the world step quietly through the prison blocks that are haunted by history.

On a recent afternoon, Mr Mei led the way through the classrooms full of bones and skulls, past photographs of more than 5,000 former prisoners, who would end up being executed, usually at "killing fields" on the city's outskirts at an orchard called Choeung Ek. The 78-year-old, once a car mechanic, stopped next to a photograph of half-a-dozen emaciated men standing at the gate of the jail and pointed to the pencil-thin figure in baggy-fitting fatigues. That was him. The shot was taken 30 years ago when the jail was emptied in the face of an invasion by Vietnamese forces that ousted the Khmer Rouge from power.

We move on to the tiny brick cell where he was shackled. "For me, the trial is very important," he says, "I need justice for Cambodia. I want the international community to find justice for Cambodia."

Bou Meng is also a survivor. He, like many other ordinary citizens, joined the Khmer Rouge revolution after a coup that ousted Cambodia's prime minister, Prince Norodom Sihanouk. But he ended up in Tuol Sleng after being denounced by a colleague as a traitor. To this day, the 68-year-old has no idea who denounced him or why.

"They beat me with all sorts of instruments, sticks and electric shocks," he said, "I still have the scars across my back." Sitting next to him in the restaurant garden as he talks is his second wife; his first was killed after she was sent to Tuol Sleng with him.

Mr Meng survived the prison, known as S-21, because, six months after he was taken there, Duch learnt that he was a painter. Handed paper and pencil, he was ordered to sketch. He was then handed a photograph of the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and told to make a copy. Mr Meng did so, wisely deciding to ignore an unsightly mark on the regime leader's throat. Duch told him they wanted him to paint four large pictures. He said each painting would take three months. "That is the only reason I am still alive," he said. "They left me alone to do the job. It was one year, and then the Vietnamese invaded and it was that which saved my life."

Mr Meng will also give evidence against Duch. "The most important thing about the trial is finding justice for the prisoners," he added. "More than 14,000 prisoners were killed, including my wife. I will feel relieved if Duch is convicted. The soul of my wife will be peaceful."

The process to bring to trial Duch and his co-accused – the Khmer Rouge second-in-command, Nuon Chea; the former foreign minister Ieng Sary; the former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith; and the former head of state Khieu Samphan – has been difficult. Duch was arrested in 1999 when he was discovered by a journalist, working for a Western aid group in the north of Cambodia and having converted to Christianity.

Quite what Duch's position will be when the case begins is unclear. His defence team declined to answer whether their client will plead guilty or not guilty. In several interviews, Duch has admitted ordering the deaths of countless prisoners but claimed he had no option. "Whoever was arrested must die. This was the rule of our party," he told Nic Dunlop, the journalist who found Duch, and wrote The Lost Executioner. Yet the court has made clear that for a defendant to claim they were just following orders will constitute a defence.

Helen Jarvis, a spokeswoman for the so-called Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) blamed the long process on "geopolitics", meaning some countries in the world have been pushing for the $150m trial more than others. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, many countries, including Britain and the US, continued to support them in a guerrilla war against the Vietnamese-backed administration in Phnom Penh. Ms Jarvis, in her office at the specially-constructed court complex beyond Phnom Penh's airport, said: "[The trial] is important. It is the international community saying that something serious happened here."

Yet the trial process has already been controversial. Many Cambodians are disappointed that only five Khmer Rouge leaders have been charged, and one of the two joint prosecutors has argued there should be more defendants. His co-prosecutor, who is Cambodian, believes it is better to concentrate on just these five, repeating an often-heard comment that extending the scope of the trial too far could be counter-productive.

Indeed, there have long been whispers that the Cambodian government had dragged its feet over the trial process to protect former Khmer Rouge officials now in senior positions within the administration. Just two weeks ago, the present Foreign Minister, Hor Namhong, won a defamation case in a French court over a book that claimed he was once a senior Khmer Rouge commander.

Yet the reluctance to extend the remit of the court may have more practical reasons. In Cambodia, where the grip of the Khmer Rouge was so complete, anyone over the age of 45 is, in effect, either a survivor of the regime, or else an accomplice. As a result, there are limits to how many cases can be dealt with. Some also argue it is better to proceed against these senior leaders before they die awaiting trial, because some have already died.

Many believe the process is essential if Cambodia is to move on. Youk Chhang is the director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, a remarkable project that has collected testimony from thousands of victims and former regime members. "This is a process that can be utilised ... to put this behind us, to help restore our identity and move on," he said. "You cannot try everybody. That is why it is important to try the senior leaders."

Yet it is possible the trial will provide more questions that answers. For many years, Cambodia has lived with its dark history, become intertwined with it. In some respects the country's history has become akin to an industry, for NGOs, for tourists, academics, writers, films such as The Killing Fields. The fancy Foreign Correspondents Club restaurant in Phnom Penh may never have been a genuine press club but today it lures tourists with the frisson of the past and a chance to enjoy the sunset and buy prints by the war photographer, Al Rockoff.

Yet less focus has centred on the question "why". Historians can plot the rise of the Khmer Rouge, detailing the role of the massive US bombing campaign in turning people against the Western-backed government and in building support for the Maoists, but less has been written to explain how the regime's brutal behaviour could have been enacted so casually. Some Cambodians have the courage to say they do not condemn those involved and question how they themselves might have acted if a gun was held to their head and they were ordered to torture and kill. When Duch takes the stand, will he be judged as the face of pure evil or else as someone caught up in the dark forces of history?

Two hours south of Phnom Penh, on a road that heads to the Vietnamese border and Ho Chi Minh city, lies Preykun village. In a simple raised house fashioned from teak and split bamboo lives Him Huy. Today, the 53-year-old is a farmer but between 1976 and 1978 he was a senior guard at Tuol Sleng. He admits to killing five people, though some witnesses suggest he was involved in many more deaths.

Him Huy recalled taking trucks of blindfolded prisoners to Choeung Ek, ordering them to kneel down and then killing them with a blow of a steel axle-shaft to the back of the head. The prisoners' throats were then cut. "Duch ordered us to kill," said Mr Huy, pouring fragrant black tea into small glasses as though we were discussing the weather. "If they were wearing good clothes we had to strip them off, if they were not covered in blood ... It was not easy. I feel mixed up. I thought I would be executed if I did not show strong feelings to kill the enemy."

Asked how, 30 years on, he reconciled himself to what he did, Mr Huy did not hesitate. "I don't feel I'm a killer. If the Vietnamese had not invaded I would have been killed as well. People living in the outside have no idea what it was like in that prison."

Reign of terror: Pol Pot's rise and fall

After the end of the Second World War, Cambodia remained a colony of France. However, a number of groups in the country united against French rule, including the burgeoning communist and nationalist forces.

Yet neither of those groups were represented at the Geneva conference in 1954 which gave Cambodia independence and handed control of the country to King Sihanouk, above, the country's monarch since he was appointed by the French in 1941.

In 1960, the Khmer Workers' Party was created by Cambodian communists – including Pol Pot, who had been studying in Paris on a Government scholarship. It was there that he had become involved in communism, and by 1963 he was the head of what was now the Workers' Party of Kampuchea. The rebels were named Khmer Rouge by Sihanouk (the Khmers being the principal ethnic group in Cambodia) and a peasant uprising against the government in 1967 prompted them to begin an armed rebellion.

In 1970, Sihanouk was ousted in a coup whilst abroad, resulting in a new anti-communist and pro-US government. Sihanouk decided that the only way to regain Cambodia's independence was to team up with the communists, and the subsequent civil war lasted five years.

In 1975 Pol Pot emerged victorious and the Khmer Rouge were free to unleash their reign of terror. The borders of Cambodia were sealed and everyone deported to the countryside. Private property, religion and money were abolished, and vast numbers imprisoned and killed. It was not until January 1979, when Vietnamese forces took the capital Phnom Penh, that the Khmer Rouge's grip on the country ended.

Lawyer helps genocide victims

Thursday, January 8, 2009
ESTHER NG
estherng@mediacorp.com.sg
Today Online (Singapore)

WHEN Singaporean lawyer Mahdev Mohan went to Cambodia to interview victims of the genocidal Khmer Rouge, he wanted to get away from two places with terrible memories for them — Tuol Sleng, the infamous torture site-turned-museum, and the Phnom Penh Court. So, he suggested the Bodhi Restaurant.

But soon after they walked in, Chum Mey, 72, and Bou Meng, 78, appeared “visibly shaken”. To Mr Mahdev’s dismay, it turned out to be the place where the two survivors had been first tortured.

“It was then I realised you can’t run away from the gruesome past, it’s everywhere,” said the 30-year-old Singaporean lawyer, who is the first non-Cambodian legal eagle in Asia appointed as legal counsel to victims of the brutal regime.

Evidence given by the survivors will be used in the long-overdue war crime trials of five senior Khmer Rouge leaders, which are expected to begin in July.

Chum Mey and Bou Meng are two of the seven survivors of Tuol Sleng. From 1975 to 1979, an estimated 17,000 people were imprisoned there; they were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates.

It struck Mr Mahdev “how fresh the wounds were, and how clearly these victims remembered how the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed their family members”. It was his desire to “give a voice to these people” that spurred him to quit his job as a criminal and litigation lawyer at Drew and Napier, where he had worked for three years.

He joined the Singapore Management University as a law lecturer and, with his ex-journalist wife, set up a non-government organisation, Access to Justice Asia (AJA), last October to represent Cambodian minorities — mainly the Khmer Krom — in the tribunal hearings. Atrocities committed against the Khmer Krom had included the internment of 10,000 in Kraing Ta Chan prison. “There were no known survivors,” he said.

One challenge Mr Mahdev faced was getting the survivors to trust him and open up.

“You can’t approach them as a lawyer, you’ve got to talk to them like you’re talking to your relative (so that they are) comfortable enough to tell you their story, and trust you to tell it in court.”

And then, there is the hard task of explaining the long road ahead — why the five hated leaders accused of such terrible war crimes must have defence lawyers, what a fair trial means, and how, at the end of the day, the survivors will not get any monetary reparations.

Even as the Mohans fly off to the United States today — where Mr Mahdev will complete his Masters of Laws at Stanford Law School on a Fulbright Scholarship — they will continue their preparations for the hearings, which include interviewing close to 100 Khmer Krom victims. “We’ll be in touch with some of our AJA members on the ground.”

Mr Mahdev’s interest was stoked during a holiday in Cambodia in 2006. The next year, he stayed there for six months doing volunteer work and later quit his job and set up AJA. “It’s just amazing that two hours away, there’s this amazing process going on where people need qualified lawyers — this is what attracted me to be part of it.”

But it was his father, criminal lawyer and law professor S Chandra Mohan, who inspired his interest in criminal and human rights law in the first place.

“In Singapore, there is the impression that the scope of criminal law is limited. It’s not true, there is a lot of scope to make a difference in Singapore and internationally,” he said, citing two ongoing war crimes tribunals, the other being in Timor Leste.