Comrade Duch and the Killing Fields

"Should this Cambodian government make Comrade Duch the sole scapegoat by obstructing the start and completion of Case 002, the tribunal will be considered a failure for the millions of dollars wasted and the irreversible cynicism it has embedded in a society already fractured by fear. If that is the case, let the record show that we survivors have registered our deep disappointment."

When will justice come to more senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge?

AUGUST 17, 2010
By THEARY SENG
OPINION
The Wall Street Journal (USA)

Late last month in Cambodia, Kaing Guek Eav—the killer known to all Cambodians as Comrade Duch—was finally convicted. The former commandant was found guilty by a U.N.-backed tribunal of crimes against humanity in the sadistic murders of at least 14,000 of his countrymen. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Though his conviction was a milestone for Cambodians who have waited years for some form of credible justice, many genocide survivors, including me, felt the punishment was far too soft given the severity of his crimes. After the Extraordinary Chambers—as the tribunal is formally known—deducted five years to redress violations of his rights when he was held illegally in prior military detention, and 11 years for the time he's already served, Comrade Duch would only serve 19 years behind bars: 11 hours of imprisonment for each person he slaughtered.

Yesterday came the welcome news that the prosecutors are appealing his sentence on the grounds that it's too lenient. Cambodians are heartened by the appeal but hope that it will not cause undue delays to the more pressing matter: the case against the "senior" Khmer Rouge leaders, the core of the Extraordinary Chambers's mission.

Since Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ended the Khmer Rouge regime in January 1979, these killers wandered the country with impunity thanks to Cold War rivalries among various communist regimes. Beijing supported the Khmer Rouge, its satellite, financially and militarily. But the Soviet Union, sworn enemy of China, supported Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia. Meanwhile, still smarting from the Vietnam War and viewing China as an indispensable ally, the U.S. backed a coalition government of Khmer Rouge and non-Communist Cambodian forces with Prince Norodom Sihanouk as its nominal head.

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about a peace agreement in 1991 with the participation of all Cambodian factions—including the Khmer Rouge. It would take until June 2003 for the U.N. and the government to establish the Extraordinary Chambers. It was just four years ago that it began to try the mass murderers of 1975-1979.

Comrade Duch was the commandant of only one Khmer Rouge detention center (Tuol Sleng) and only one killing field (Choeung Ek). There were at least 200 detention centers and thousands of killing fields spread across the country. Phnom Penh was not the only crime scene: Almost every rice field, pagoda and school in the country became a site for slaughter.

The Khmer Rouge rounded up their victims—mainly fellow Cambodians evacuated from the capital and major towns—on the grounds that they were tainted by Western imperialism. They gathered them in the middle of the night for mass execution into graves usually dug by the victims the day before.

Bullets were saved for the war against Vietnam. Instead the Khmer Rouge butchered and whacked their own people from behind at the stem of the neck with crude farm instruments like hoes. Those who didn't die immediately were asphyxiated under the bodies piled on top of them in mass graves.

Other detention centers resulted in more deaths than the 14,000 carried out by Comrade Duch at Tuol Sleng. For example, in the Boeung Rai detention center in the heart of the "Eastern Zone" where I was detained as a 7-year-old child, the Khmer Rouge killed 30,000 people including my mother. Every night the guards chained the ankles of all the prisoners. They tried to chain my ankles, but they were too bony and I could slip in and out of the shackles. My job at night was to bring the toilet bucket to other immobile prisoners. One night, a crazy woman in our cell screamed "I'm thirsty! I'm thirsty!" and drank from the bucket. Later, the guards murdered her by squeezing her head with a coconut cruncher to pass the time.

Comrade Duch is "most responsible," according to the Tribunal, for the 14,000 lives stamped out at Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek. But he was not a "senior" Khmer Rouge leader and should not be made the sole scapegoat of this genocidal regime that murdered 1.7 million people.

The heart of the Extraordinary Chambers is the highly anticipated Case 002, the trial of senior Khmer Rouge leaders. (Comrade Duch's was Case 001.) We must press forward to ensure that Case 002 goes to trial as soon as possible.

Should this Cambodian government make Comrade Duch the sole scapegoat by obstructing the start and completion of Case 002, the tribunal will be considered a failure for the millions of dollars wasted and the irreversible cynicism it has embedded in a society already fractured by fear. If that is the case, let the record show that we survivors have registered our deep disappointment.

Ms. Seng, a lawyer, is the author of "Daughter of the Killing Fields" forthcoming from Seven Stories Press.

Decades after genocide, is justice even possible?

Markus Zimmer, former clerk of the state court of Utah now spends much of his time overseas consulting with nations that are trying to build and improve their courts systems. He recently returned from a stint in Cambodia where he was helping with United Nations war crimes tribunals.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Sath Prum was just a boy when the Khmer Rouge came to take away his father. But he was old enough to know that he would never see his dad again.

“I knew that they would execute him,” Prum said. “They tied him up and put a blindfold on him. I didn’t know where they were going to take him. I didn’t know how it would be done. I just knew that he would be killed.”

Prum’s sister, two brothers and a brother-in-law were also killed during Pol Pot’s four-year reign of terror in Cambodia, when about 1.7 million people died of hunger, disease and execution.

On July 26, Cambodians scattered across the world will gather around computers, television sets and radios to hear the verdict in the case of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as “Comrade Duch,” who oversaw a Khmer Rouge prison system in which thousands of Cambodians were tortured and executed between 1975 and 1979.

Three decades have passed, but Duch is the only Khmer Rouge leader who has been tried for crimes against humanity. Pol Pot died in 1998. The trials of four additional defendants are expected to begin later this year. But it is uncertain if the U.N.-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia will indict many others — if anyone at all.

And that has left many Cambodians, like Prum, feeling as though the tribunal has failed to achieve anything resembling justice.

“It’s too late to save anyone,” said Prum, a 49-year-old assembly line worker who lives in West Valley City. “They cannot give me my father back.”

The handful of indicted leaders “are very old now,” Prum said. “They’re going to die soon anyway. So what is the point?”

Donor countries have poured more than $100 million into the tribunal, but on the eve of the Duch verdict, Japan sent an emergency payment of $2.26 million to keep the cash-strapped court solvent.

Prum doesn’t think that’s a good investment — particularly not given the small number of people the court has managed to indict. He believes the money could have been better spent in a nation that continues to suffer from the economic legacy of decades of war and political strife.

Markus Zimmer, who recently returned home to Utah after an assignment as a judicial systems consultant to the Cambodian court, understands the criticism. Zimmer noted that Duch was a cooperative and contrite defendant. The next trial will likely be more complicated, with the defendants mounting “vigorous defenses with international defense teams.”

Those cases could take years to complete.

“There’s kind of a race going on,” he said. “They’re trying to get these cases processed before people die or before they become mentally incompetent.”

But Zimmer, who has served as an advisor in 27 nations, also sees promise in tribunals like the one in Cambodia, which have the potential to leave the legacy of a better functioning justice system. After all, he said, a nation that can handle the complexities of decades-old war crimes cases should be better situated, in the future, for simpler criminal prosecutions.

What the courts can’t do is promise even justice for every offender and every victim. They also set a standard that some believe is unsustainable for nations with few legal resources and little experience.

The justice provided in U.N.-backed tribunals “is a standard of justice that would be justice in a really good world,” said University of Utah philosophy professor Leslie Francis, who lectures on the intersection of international law and ethics. “But that’s not the world we live in.”

“That’s not to say you should abandon due process and other types of guarantees,” Francis said, “but one of the things that needs to be thought about is how to institution build. If you don’t ever punish anybody, how do you build institutions of justice that work?”

She questioned whether building courts capable of handling “big fish” is the best way of creating institutions of justice that work for everyone else.

Among other failings, war crimes courts don’t generally address the individual perpetrators of war crimes — the soldiers who actually arrested and executed Phum’s father, for instance.

Utah lawyer David Schwendiman, the former head of the Special Department of War Crimes for the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, lamented the impossibility of achieving a standard of justice that satisfies everyone touched by crimes of war.

“Ask someone what justice is and you will get as many definitions as there are people,” he said.

During his time in Bosnia, Schwendiman helped develop an elaborate system to prioritize crimes for prosecution. “Our goal was to do as much as possible with the amount of time we were given and the amount of resources we had available,” he said.

The system rated the level of the atrocity, the number of victims, status of the perpetrator, geography of the event and time span in which the crime occurred.

Even still, he said, it was a largely subjective exercise and not everyone agreed with the results.

“We heard complaints every day,” Schwendiman said. “We heard it publicly. We heard it privately.”

Schwendiman agrees that war crimes courts do not provide an efficient foundation upon which to build a more comprehensive criminal justice system. But he said it’s vital to demonstrate that institutional justice is possible.

“For those that have been so affected by tragedy, it so important that they can have some confidence in the system in the future,” lest they decide to take matters into their own hands, he said.

There is one thing that war crimes courts appear to do quite well: Helping piece together, out of the chaos of war, an historical record that can be passed down to future generations.

“Education is one of the most important means for healing,” said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which works with the court to collect evidence about the Khmer Rouge era for the purpose of teaching Cambodian students about the past. “Healing begins at home and it also begins with your own children.”

Chhang said education might appear to be an “unconfrontational and indirect way” to face the problems of the past, but in lieu of “justice as defined by a court of law, the victims have come to understand justice in many different ways.”

Out of the chaos of Pot Pot’s regime, Chhang said, few Cambodians believe that anything resembling pure justice could be possible.

“Even God cannot fulfill our wish for a complete justice,” he said.

And so, he said, everyone just does the best he can.

mlaplante@sltrib.com

Cambodians testify for war crimes tribunal

In this photo taken Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, Leakhena Nou, left, a Cambodian-American sociology professor at Cal State Long Beach, comforts Roth Prom, 63, during a workshop at the United Cambodian Community Center in Long Beach, Calif. Prom, is one of dozens of Cambodian refugees across the U.S. who are sharing their memories of Khmer Rouge atrocities with a legal team so they can be used as evidence in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
In this photo taken Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, Cambodian-American Sam Oeun York ,71, whose husband was killed by the Khmer Rouge, tells participants at a Long Beach, Calif., workshop how she survived the atrocities in Cambodia. York is one of dozens of Cambodian refugees speaking publicly _ many for the first time _ about Khmer Rouge atrocities so a legal team can use their testimony in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
In this photo taken Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, Cambodian-American Nhen Chheng, 70, who survived the rath of the Khmer Rouge, wipes tears away as she recalls her experiences to other survivors during a workshop in Long Beach, Calif. Prom is one of dozens of Cambodian refugees across the U.S. who are sharing their memories of Khmer Rouge atrocities with a legal team so they can be used as evidence in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
In this photo taken Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, Cambodian-American Chorn Van wipes away tears as she listens to Khmer Rouge survivors document their stories of war crimes to others during a workshop in Long Beach, Calif. Van is one of the many Cambodian refugees across the U.S. who are sharing their memories of Khmer Rouge atrocities with a legal team so they can be used as evidence in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
In this photo taken Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, Cambodian-Americans Rany Ork, left, and Chanthan Pich, foreground, who survived the wrath of the Khmer Rouge, wipe tears from their eyes during a workshop in Long Beach, Calif. The two survivors are some of the many Cambodian refugees across the U.S. who are sharing their memories of Khmer Rouge atrocities with a legal team so they can be used as evidence in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Saturday, September 26, 2009
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
AP

LONG BEACH, Calif. — The tiny Cambodian woman trembled slightly and stared blankly ahead as she told the story that has haunted her for half a lifetime: her parents and brother died in Khmer Rouge labor camps. Her baby perished in a refugee camp.

Roth Prom has wanted to die every day since and had never spoken those words so publicly until last week, when five minutes became the chance for justice she has longed for silently for so many years.

"I'm depressed in my head, I'm depressed in my stomach and in my heart. I have no hope in my body, I have nothing to live for," she said quietly. "All I have is just my bare hands."

As the tiny woman in the polka dot blouse slipped back to her seat, many of the nearly two dozen other Cambodian refugees in the room began to weep. They know Prom's pain. They were all there to tell stories just like hers.

Prom, 63, is one of dozens of Cambodian refugees speaking publicly — many for the first time — about Khmer Rouge atrocities so a legal team can use their testimony in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

From Virginia to California, refugees have spent the past few months pouring out long-suppressed memories to volunteers who fill notebooks with reports of gang rapes, execution, starvation, forced labor and brutal beatings. They attach names of dead relatives, sometimes a half-dozen per person, and scrawl out names of labor camps and far-flung villages where they lived for years on the edge of starvation.

The Khmer Rouge is implicated in wiping out an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians, nearly a quarter of the population, during their rule from 1975-79 under Pol Pot. People died from disease, overwork, starvation and execution in the notorious "killing fields."

Cambodians who fled their homeland decades ago relish the chance to participate in the war crimes trials unfolding thousands of miles away. The tribunal, a joint court created by the Cambodian government and the United Nations, allows Khmer Rouge victims to participate as witnesses, complainants and civil parties.

Depending on the stories, the accuracy of their memories and their own willingness to participate, survivors could be called to testify for the prosecution or defense and those filing as civil parties could be entitled to reparations. At a minimum, all filings will be archived and reviewed by those collecting testimony from survivors.

Leakhena Nou, the Cambodian-American sociology professor at Cal State Long Beach organizing the U.S. workshops, said submitting evidence forms is cathartic for victims who have often kept their trauma secret from spouses and American-born children. Many suffer from post-traumatic stress and have symptoms of severe depression, including memory loss, flashbacks and suicidal thoughts.

"They have a sense of powerlessness, but they have a lot more power than they realize," said Nou, founder of the Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia. "Most of them have not even talked about it for 30 years. They've been silent for so long."

Last week, testimony in Phnom Penh concluded in the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, who commanded the S-21 prison where up to 16,000 people were tortured and killed. Eav, also known as Duch, was the first to go before the tribunal and is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture. More than 23,000 visitors attended his trial, which continues in November with closing arguments.

Four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders are in custody awaiting trial set for January. Any testimony submitted by the end of the year can be used by prosecutors to bolster those cases.

The U.N. and Cambodian branches of the tribunal did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment.

Grassroots organizers with backing from the Asian Pacific American Institute at New York University have been building trust within the Cambodian-American communities for nearly two years but still expected many to shun the process out of fear and suspicion. Some victims believe the tribunal is run by the Khmer Rouge, while others fear if they speak out they could endanger relatives still living in Cambodia.

But Nou said turnout has been high, with some people even traveling from Arizona to share stories at the Southern California workshops held at a Cambodian community center.

"Before, they assumed that no one wanted to listen to them," she said. "They'll say, 'We thought that no one cared, that no one wanted to listen. But now that I know people want to listen, I have nothing else to lose. I've lost everything else already.'"

So far, the team has collected more than 100 statements from Cambodian expatriates at workshops in Virginia, Maryland, Orange County and Long Beach — home to the largest Cambodian ex-pat population. Future sessions are planned this fall in Oregon, Northern California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

They've uncovered chilling stories along the way.

One woman in Long Beach told of being gang-raped from dawn to dusk by Khmer Rouge cadres while 6 1/2 months pregnant. She never told her husband and only came forward last week because he had passed away.

Another recalled being held at gunpoint with her brother and being forced to watch as her father was executed and then disemboweled, his heart, liver and stomach ripped out by soldiers. The woman, now in her 50s, told the story to a volunteer in three distinct "spirit voices," as if to detach herself from the painful memories.

For Prom, the recent workshop in Little Cambodia was a chance to honor the memory of her loved ones — and to get justice for the brutal crimes that ruined her life and so many others. The Khmer Rouge split up her family, she was forced to pull a plow through rice paddies like an ox and her child died later in a refugee camp.

Prom harbors thoughts of killing herself and suffers from memory loss. She's terrified of the night — the time when Khmer Rouge soldiers would take neighbors away without explanation, never to be seen again.

"I try to forget, but it's hard to forget," Prom told a translator who dictated it to a volunteer law student. Prom had already penciled her story on paper in the rolling script of her native Khmer.

"I want to find justice for myself and for the Cambodian people," she said. "I'm here to teach history to the next generation, so this horrific crime will never happen again."

On the Net:
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english
Asian Pacific American Institute at New York University: http://nyu-apastudies.org/new/index.php

The 1979 show trial will take precendence over the current KR trial

Demand to turn 30 March into a national holiday rejected by Hun Sen’s gov’t

Monday, March 30, 2009
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

Hun Sen’s government rejected the call made by various NGOs for the government to turn 30 March – the date of the start of Duch’s trial – into a national holiday. In a communiqué issued by the office of the government spokesman dated 27 March, the government rejected to turn 30 March, the starting date of the KR Tribunal trials, into a national holiday. The government indicated that 30 March can never be considered as the first day for providing justice to the victims of the genocidal KR regime, because it already sentenced these top KR leaders once already in 1979. Therefore, the hearing of Duch’s trial is not the first trial as the majority of people would consider now.

Son of Dith Pran says father would have relished seeing Khmer Rouge brought to justice at trials

Dith Pran and his family (Photo: AP)

Titony Dith and his father, Dith Pran (Photo courtesy of Titony Dith)

Sunday, February 15, 2009
By Karen Lee Ziner
The Providence Journal Staff Writer (Rhode Island, USA)

In April of 1975, as the Khmer Rouge advanced on Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, Titony Dith saw the rocket attacks and dead and wounded people lying on the streets. He was just a boy.

That was shortly before the Khmer Rouge captured his famous father, Dith Pran, whose story was immortalized in the film The Killing Fields. Dith Pran died of cancer last year, before Khmer Rouge leaders could be brought to trial.

“He would love to have seen the Khmer Rouge brought to justice,” said Titony Dith, 44, in a phone interview from his home in Virginia. “Before he became sick, he told me he’d like to see the trial go on, and for the Khmer Rouge to be brought to justice for all the people who died under the brutal regime of Pol Pot.”

Dith Pran had ties in Rhode Island’s Cambodian community — one of the largest in the country –– and made numerous visits here, including to speak about the Khmer Rouge holocaust. After his death, Cambodians here said that if not for Dith Pran, the world might not have recognized their suffering.

“He tried to volunteer his time to educate the American public about some of the things he’d seen,” said Titony Dith. His father tried to relate his own experience and the agony suffered by fellow Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge, “being tortured and having their lives turned upside down in misery.”

“He would have just liked to see justice being done, so this thing will never, never happen again, not just to Cambodia but to other places around the world,” he said.

Dith Pran was a Cambodian photojournalist and assistant to New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg when the Khmer Rouge seized the capital. He put his family on one of the last rescue helicopters to leave the country, and was soon captured by the Khmer Rouge. He disappeared for the next four years, until he made his way to a refugee camp at the Thai-Cambodian border.

After he was reunited with his family and Schanberg, The Times hired Dith Pran as a photographer.

Titony Dith, who works in information technology at the Pentagon, remembers the evacuation.

“I was on one of the last Chinook helicopters to leave the [U.S.] Embassy compound. He was there to say goodbye, and Sydney was there, too. And just like the movie, we ran to the helicopter and after that, we never saw my father again for a long time.”

He added, “I remember we went to pick him up at the San Francisco International Airport. He’d lost some teeth and he was just crying and happy to see all of us. He said everything’s all gone in Cambodia during that time, because the Khmer Rouge had turned Cambodia upside down. I didn’t understand what he was talking about. I didn’t know there were mass killings or mass graves, and that people were being tortured to death.”

Titony Dith said he will “watch and see what happens” as the first trial gets under way. “I hope that justice will be served for the people who committed these atrocities. I’d like to see them put behind bars, forever.”

kziner@projo.com