Not All Tribunal Complaints Valid: Official

Keat Bophal, head of the Khmer Rouge tribunal's Victims Unit, and spokesman Reach Sambath.

By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Washington
15 August 2008

Click here to listen to Khmer audio program

The Victims Unit of the Khmer Rouge tribunal has received around 1,800 complaints from purported victims of the regime, but not all of them are within the jurisdiction of the special courts, tribunal officials said Thursday.

"Those who want to file a complaint must make a charge for the period between April 1975 and January 1979," said Keat Bophal, chief of the Victims Unit, as a guest on "Hello VOA." "That is the jurisdiction of the court."

Tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath, who was also a guest, said some of the complaints were not valid, such as a complaint that France had cut Cambodian land from neighboring countries.

Keat Bophal said those with complaints about the regime, within the jurisdiction of the courts, could call the unit, at 023 214 290.

The tribunal was designed to help facilitate reconciliation, in part by providing a means by which victims of the regime could file against defendants, five of whom are so far in jail.

Filed complaints bolster Cambodian trials

Tuesday, April 08, 2008
ABC Radio Australia

More than 1,000 survivors of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime have filed complaints with the country's genocide tribunal.

The United Nations-backed court says it marks greater public participation in the prosecution of those who organised the killing fields.

It says as well as giving victims an active role in the proceedings, the complaints provide key evidence for investigators trying to unravel the inner workings of one of the world's most secretive regimes.

Five former Khmer Rouge leaders have been detained by the tribunal.

Up to two million people - or a third of Cambodia's population - were killed by the regime between 1975 and 1979.

200 Cham Muslims File Complaints With Tribunal

Mean Veasna, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
26 October 2007

Two hundred Cham Muslims from 22 cities and provinces officially filed complaints against the Khmer Rouge with the special tribunal courts, officials said Friday.

The 200 were part of a larger group of 280 Muslim leaders whose representatives met with the Documentation Center of Cambodia this week.

The other 80 did not have enough documentation to warrant a tribunal complaint, center director Youk Chhang said Friday.

As many as 300,000 Chams died under the regime. However, some were also Khmer Rouge cadre.

"The suit from a minority group is important in helping the court to find if the Khmer Rouge regime [killing] was really a genocide or not," Youk Chhang said.

Tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath confirmed the co-prosecutor's office had received the suits.