Y Chhean, Ieng Vuth Evaded the Forum

Y Chhean (Photo: Rasmei Kampuchea)

16-01-2008
By Den Sorin
Moneaksekar Khmer
Unofficial Translation from Khmer by KRtrial.info

The Co-Investigating Judges representing the Khmer Rouge tribunal have traveled to Pailin in order to explain the former officials and people of the Khmer Rouge in this former Khmer Rouge stronghold to understand the former Khmer Rouge trial and to calm their fears.

The Khmer Rouge tribunal's representatives, visiting the former Khmer Rouge soldiers and people, included co-Investigating Judges You Bunleng and Marcel Lemonde.

Yesterday (on Tuesday) in Pailin's Municipal Hall, there was a meeting with more than 100 former Khmer Rouge officials. However, Y Chhean, Pailin governor, and his deputy Ieng Vuth shirked from attending the forum. Ieng Vuth is an important "character" in the forum since his parents are being detained at the Khmer Rouge tribunal. But, he did not appear in meeting in which he could ask the tribunal's representatives whatever he wanted to.

According to legal observers, before and after the arrest of Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, who are Ieng Vuth's parents, Ieng Vuth dared to talk to foreign and local journalists. In contrast, now as the representatives of the Khmer Rouge tribunal visited Pailin to hold the public forum, Ieng Vuth evaded it.

Another Pailin's deputy governor Koeut Sothea, who is also a former Khmer Rouge official, was seen in the forum yesterday, which was attended only by former Khmer Rouge officials, whilst Y Chhean and Ieng Vuth disappeared. In the forum held in Pailin's Municipal Hall, journalists were only allowed to take pictures, but could not listen to the question and answer session. However, the journalists and observers will be permitted to listen freely in the forum on Wednesday.

According to Khmer Rouge tribunal officials, the today’s forum (on Wednesday) which will be held in Koang Kang Pagoda, is expected approximately 200 participants, including former Khmer Rouge officials soldiers and people to attend.

According to the former Khmer Rouge officials who attended the yesterday’s forum in Pailin's Municipal Hall, although it was an open forum, Cambodian and international co-Investigating Judges who are the representatives from the Khmer Rouge tribunal could not answer their questions.

"They come to Pailin to hold the public forum on the Khmer Rouge trial, but when former Khmer Rouge officials asked them, they could not answer," said the former Khmer Rouge officials, adding that they asked questions relating to the rumour of the further arrest of the former Khmer Rouge officials. "It is said that only former top Khmer Rouge leaders will be tried, but we want to know which is the highest or the lowest level of the Khmer Rouge officials that will be tried," they said.

At present, top leaders such as Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith have been arrested. Duch was not a top leader of the Khmer Rouge, but was the former chief of Tuol Sleng prison, involving deeply with the regime.

Former Khmer Rouge officials said that at the present time some former Khmer Rouge leaders in the Central Committee of the Communist party were still at large and that there was a rumour circulating around that about 10 more Khmer Rouge leaders would be arrested. That is why some former Khmer Rouge officials wanted to know how high rank a Khmer Rouge official is considered a “top leader” and how low rank they are, in order to avoid confusion.

However, You Bunleng and Marcel Lemonde told the former Khmer Rouge officials that the decision [to consider someone as a top Khmer Rouge leader] did not depend on them but on the investigation and voices of the Trial Chamber’s co-Judges with at least 4 out of 5 as well as voices of Supreme Court Chamber’s co-Judges with at least 6 out of 9. Therefore, if the investigation could place burdens on any former Khmer Rouge leader, the Co-Judges are the ones who decide whether the arrest of that former Khmer Rouge leader is possible. If they could find the [supporting] voices as mentioned above, the arrest would be made immediately.

According to a source close to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, some former Khmer Rouge military commanders might also be arrested. And this is the reason why the rumour of the arrest of around 10 more former Khmer Rouge commanders and officials caused unrest. The representatives of the Khmer Rouge tribunal, visiting the former Khmer Rouge base, are going to hold another public forum on Wednesday in which journalists and observers will be allowed to listen until the end.

In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge court goes to the Khmer Rouge

Tue, 15 Jan 2008
DPA

Phnom Penh - About 150 former Khmer Rouge attended meetings with the prosecuting judges of the impending Khmer Rouge tribunal Tuesday, although many of their leaders did not, officials said. The visit by the prosecuting judges and officials of the joint UN-Cambodia 56-million-dollar tribunal followed concerns the rank and file members of the movement from former stronghold Pailin would not cooperate with the tribunal.

Court media officer Reach Sambath said the ice was broken and the two-day visit, which ends Wednesday, was a success. Some local officials in the remote municipality on the north-western border with Thailand, around 500 kilometres from the capital, expressed doubt.

"We feel it was a success. Many people asked questions, and we answered," Sambath said from Pailin by telephone.

However local officials said many of the majority former Khmer Rouge residents remained unconvinced that trying their aging former leaders, five of whom are currently in custody and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, was necessary and remained scared they may yet be targeted.

Officials said Pailin governor and former Khmer Rouge commander Y Chhien was not there. The area's parliamentary representative Ieng Vuth, whose mother Khieu Thirith and father Ieng Sary are both in jail awaiting trial at the hearings, was also not present.

"Many people asked why jail them when they are so old and why only focus on the 1975-79 period," local deputy director of religion, Sam Savouen, said.

Other officials, most of whom are former Khmer Rouge and many of whom still credit former deputy prime minister of the regime, Ieng Sary, with brokering a deal with the government in 1996 which ended the fighting while leaving the Khmer Rouge in charge of the resource-rich area, declined comment and did not attend.

Sambath said the court would visit a pagoda and speak with more people Wednesday before ending the visit, hopefully winning more hearts and minds along the way with honesty and detailed answers.

"We want their trust and we need their participation," he said.

Up to 2 million people died during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 ultra-Maoist Democratic Kampuchea regime which sought to abolish social classes, markets, religion and even money in a drive to create an agrarian utopia.

Pailin: the capitalist casinos Mecca of the ... communist Khmer Rouge

Cambodian workers walk in front of the Diamond Crown Casino

Map locating the town of Pailin in western Cambodia. More than a dozen casinos dot the borders with Vietnam and Thailand, raking in an estimated tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars each year and fueling the economies of several hard-scrabble Cambodian cities along the way.

A truck is seen driving in the former Khmer Rouge's stronghold Pailin

Ex-Khmer Rouge stronghold bets the pot on casino boom

PAILIN, Cambodia (AFP) — From the road one is immediately aware of the "Danger Mine" signs -- tiny red squares with the distinctive white skull and cross bones flashing warnings from the surrounding bushland.

Landmines -- thousands of them -- lie unseen, in some places only metres (yards) from the road.

But the hidden killers are one of the few reminders left of the war that raged a decade ago across this remote hill country in Cambodia's western-most reaches.

The tanks that were commonplace have since given way to truck convoys rumbling across from Thailand, past casinos and highrise hotels that residents hope signal a rebirth for this former Khmer Rouge stronghold.

These ex-guerrillas, whose misguided dream of a classless agrarian utopia had violently rejected the fruits of capitalism, are now in the business of making money.

On the roads leading to the border, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) away from Pailin town, garish billboards emblazoned with playing cards and roulette wheels suggest riches are waiting for gamblers -- mostly Thais flocking to Cambodia for one-day high stakes excursions -- at the Diamond Crown and Caesar casinos.

More than a dozen casinos dot the borders with Vietnam and Thailand, raking in an estimated tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars each year and fueling the economies of several hard-scrabble Cambodian cities along the way.

The largest, Poipet in Cambodia's northwestern corner, has emerged as a key gaming centre and trading hub with Thailand.

Considered by many as a magnet for vice, Poipet is still viewed with envy in this stripped down frontier town of tidy but stunted buildings whose illicit gem and timber trade financed the Khmer Rouge during the communist movement's last years.

"Poipet is much bigger than Pailin, we cannot compare," said the town's deputy governor Ieng Vuth.

Until recently, Pailin was Cambodia's "wild west," cut off from the rest of the country, the final refuge of a murderous regime that at the height of its power in the late 1970s had killed nearly a quarter of the country's people.

The town today is still a rambling low-slung place that chokes in dust during the dry season and is a hard two-hour drive from the nearest city Battambang.

Roads into town are lined with single-storey stalls -- cutters and dealers wringing the last few dollars out of a gem trade that dried up years ago. The surrounding hills are bare, logged out in the 1980s and 1990s.

The gaming industry seems the quickest route to stardom for a tiny municipality with little else to offer other than its proximity to Cambodia's biggest source of punters: Thailand.

"The big money for the border area is in casinos -- our market is for Thais," said Ieng Vuth, whose father Ieng Sary served as the Khmer Rouge's foreign minister during the regime's 1975-79 rule.

Thais, who are banned from gambling in their own country, come across by the hundreds each day and are thought to play as much as 100 million dollars a year in Cambodian casinos.

Besides the Caesar and Diamond Crown, a third casino, the Krom, is staffed and running in Phrum village, an otherwise desolate outpost between Pailin and Thailand that has become a cluster of gambling dens and at least four hotels.

A fourth casino is also in the works, Ieng Vuth said.

Young women, neatly dressed in skirts, vests and bow ties, shuttle back and forth between the casinos and the adjacent hotels. At the Diamond Crown, a huge annex is being built to handle the overflow of visitors.

"When I saw Pailin for the first time it was a jungle area, but now it is developed and has many buildings," said Chhim Sovann, a 37-year-old fruit dealer who moved to the area 10 years ago after the Khmer Rouge defected en masse to the government and effectively crippled the movement.

"Now, Pailin is becoming a money making town," he told AFP, standing in front of the Caesar, a colonnaded gambling den bejeweled with lights across its white facade.

Hopes are that the money from Pailin's casino boom will pave the way for other development. The area is most seriously lacking roads, and Ieng Vuth said this is discouraging both investors and visitors.

Elsewhere in Cambodia, record numbers of tourists have dumped billions of dollars into the economy over the past two years, and Pailin -- behind the curve by several years -- wants to take advantage of this unprecedented boom.

"Pailin has many hills and waterfalls, and we want to develop those areas as tourist destinations," Ieng Vuth said.

"If we talk about natural assets, Pailin is so beautiful. When we have good roads many people will go back and forth."

Foreign investment in the sector, though, remains disappointing, he said.

"Many investors have studied about tourism development, but they have not signed contracts yet," he added.

Still, signs that Pailin is slowly emerging as a tourist destination are already appearing.

Tidy brick and tile homes or freshly painted guesthouses have sprung up among the tin-roofed shacks, giving Pailin the quaint, prosperous appearance of a small Thai town.

The Hang Meas hotel, originally a spartan way-station for traveling government and NGO officials, has had a karaoke and discotheque installed, while foreign tourists, non-existent here only a few short years ago, can be seen wandering past lively fruit vendors and smiling children.

"Pailin has huge potential for economic development. We have many nice resorts," said Khlok Nguoy, cabinet chief of Pailin Municipality, adding that hundreds of South Korean tourists have already begun visiting the area.

Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith’s fates are in the hand of the [Cambodian] government?

Meeting of the like-minded: Ieng Sary (2nd from Left) and Khieu Samphan (3rd from Left) were warmly greeted by Hun Sen (Right).

23 July 2007
By Huy Vannak Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

The son of Ieng Sary, the former vice-prime minister and minister of foreign affairs of the Democratic Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge DK), said that he has guarded optimism that the Cambodian government will provide justice for his parents.

Ieng Vuth, the deputy governor of Pailin city and son of Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith – who was the former DK minister of social welfare and education – said that the Cambodian government has already made clear plan on this search for justice.

Ieng Vuth said: “How they think is the government’s decision, they (government) have common sense on this issue.”

On Wednesday of this week, the (KR Tribunal) co-prosecutors will issue a warrant for initial questioning on the crimes perpetrated in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

Ieng Sary is one of the candidates suspected of being investigated by the co-prosecutors.

Ieng Sary was sentenced by the people’s revolutionary tribunal (installed by the occupying Vietnamese army) once already in August 1979, along with Pol Pot, for being the architects of the Khmer Rouge killing fields. Later on Ieng Sary’s sentence was pardoned by former King Norodom Sihanouk in 1996.

Following the agreement with the UN to set up a Khmer Rouge tribunal, vice-prime minister Sok An confirmed, on numerous occasions, that the government of Cambodia will not ask the king to pardon those who will be sentenced for their involvements with the Khmer Rouge cases.

Furthermore, Article 40 of the agreement on the judgment of Khmer Rouge (officials) stipulates that: “the extent and the amnesty or pardon which was provided before the approval of this law, must be decided the Extraordinary Chambers.”

The same article also stipulates that: “The Royal Government of Cambodia shall not request an amnesty or pardon for any persons who may be investigated for or convicted of crimes referred to in Articles 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 of this law.”

Until now, it is not known whether Ieng Sary is prepared to face the KR Tribunal or not.

On the other hand, Nuon Chea, the former president of the DK Assembly, said that he is ready to face the court hearings, and that he wants and trusts Cambodia lawyers to defend him.

Khieu Samphan, the former DK president, has retained the service of French lawyer Jacques Vergès to defend his case.

Gas Prices Skyrocketed in Pailin

Veasna Mean
VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh
07/02/2007

Gasoline price in Pailin is at a record high, a liter of gasoline costs 8,000 riel (approximately $2 dollars), a local official said Wednesday.

A villager, who speaks on condition of anonymity, says that a number of gas stations in the region is experiencing oil shortage, leaving some car owners to limit their driving to long distant places.

Local authorities say that the high petroleum price is due to the closing of illegal gasoline smuggling along the borders of Cambodia and Thailand.

Recently, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that he will allow private companies to import gasoline from Thailand, Laos and Vietnam in order to cut down its prices and contain smuggling.

Mayor of Pailin Ieng Vuth tells VOA Khmer that Cambodian authorities are currently holding talks with prospective oil merchants and vendors.