Ex-envoy slams Khmer Rouge kidnap finding

David Wilson

September 19, 2012
By Belinda Merhab, AAP

A coronial finding clearing the Australian government's actions over the kidnapping and murder of backpacker David Wilson by the Khmer Rouge is a "travesty of justice", a former Australian diplomat says.

A 14-year inquest has found Australian government officials in Cambodia made the release of Mr Wilson their highest priority and they cannot be criticised for their handling of negotiations.

Alastair Gaisford, who was stationed in Cambodia at the time of Mr Wilson's kidnapping by the Khmer Rouge in July 1994, said the finding was riddled with factual errors and labelled it a "travesty of justice".

"If inquests are about getting to the truth, that's not the case in the Victorian jurisdiction," Mr Gaisford told reporters outside the Victorian Coroners Court on Wednesday.

ARUN VA: Narrow escape from becoming a killer

Arun Va (Jeff Gritchen / Staff Photographer)

April 22, 2012
Long Beach Press Telegram

He can still see their scared eyes in the flicker of a lantern during an ink black Cambodian night more than 35 years later. The eyes belonged to four women who wouldn't live through the night. By the next day their throats would be slit, their bodies weighted with rocks and submerged in the Tonle Sap lake.

Arun Va was a young man at the time and recruited by a Khmer Rouge cadre leader to accompany him and four women to travel to the lake.

Today he almost shudders when he realized how narrowly he escaped becoming a killer.

After Va had been ordered to gather rocks - for what purpose he didn't know, and knew better than to ask - he remembers being stunned when "Captain asked me, `Can you kill people?"' Va recalls.

"You were expected to do it for Angka (the Cambodian state rulership)," Va said.

Va couldn't answer, and the captain did not press the subject.

Commemoration for victims of the KR regime organized by the SRP at Choeung Ek Memorial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vniZMHt5oTE

Three US Survivors To Attend Opening of Khmer Rouge Case

Neou Sarem says goodbye to her husband, Nuon Sari, and her 3-year old daugther, Nuon Sari Sakhura, at Pochentong Airport, 1974. (Photo: Courtesy of Neou Sarem)

Thursday, 17 November 2011
Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer | Washington, DC

“I applaud our survivors not only for their courage, but their resiliency, to be role models for Cambodians to not give up.”

A small group of Khmer Rouge survivors from the US plan to attend an opening hearing next week at the UN-backed tribunal, as it puts three senior leaders of the regime on trial in a landmark case.

Three Khmer Rouge survivors will stay in Cambodia for one week to witness the first substantial hearing of the trial to date, which begins Nov. 21. All three filed as civil party complainants through the US-based Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia.

“We will seek justice for those who have died and all other survivors,” said Neou Sarem, one of the complainants and a former VOA Khmer staff.

Bopha, a disabled beggar in Phnom Penh (Interview by Theary Seng)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydtg4SzfBtA

History keeps shitting on you - Poem by Peauladd Huy

History keeps shitting on you

Dear Father, please protect my mother.

Did she come in harms way before she was killed?

From here: how do I go on saying,

expressing my despair, without you turning

your attention elsewhere? I am quite aware

it is solely my problem. Not yours, nor the next

reader’s. It is expected;

it is human in us to desire something pleasant yet new,

pleasant yet very different

from the same sob-stories – they’re herded to be killed.

It’s just another killing. Another genocide

of a faraway land. I imagine

even today we’d react the same way; stunned,

this can’t happen, then confirmed

and reconfirmed by some news – yes, it did. Yes, it still goes on.

I am like you all. Eventually, I have enough and

I am tired of them

sneaking in

new words to keep me awake night after night,

especially my mother and that lady who survived to tell how

young Khmer Rouge cadets handled the women before

bludgeoning them to death. My mother, my aunts, my friends,

and their sisters and mothers. How can I not care,

not believe my mother

may have been gang-raped before she was killed?

From here: where do I go? What distance

and how many more feet should I add onto

my existing wall, between me and what was said,

between me and that world I once knew

everything cruel was possible.

How do I say she was killed? How do I

tell her grandchildren?

"I am here" - A Poem by Peauladd Huy

For additional poems by Peauladd, click here

I am here

-for my momma, my hero.

1

There is a reason I am here

in the world. I can no longer wait

to be acknowledged by someone believing

that this is only for matters concerning the earth

and what’s already done. I am somebody –

once speaking face to face,

man to man, but you dismissed me,

kicking me in my chest and head, again and again, when I appealed to you

speaking the same language

in the routine of torture. You said, shut up,

if you cry, you’ll get more. What was I to do

but stand up for myself. Your threats no longer affect me.

Do you hear me? I am beyond reproach.

What more can you do?

Piss on my bones again?

2

Don’t be alarmed, Reader.

I am here to speak

because they are too afraid

to remember, still too stunned to speak out

what are making them cry out at night. (Children, mothers

and fathers now, are still shaking

awake between damp sheets

in the a.m. hours. Refusing sleep

to deny a life of nightmares.)

I am not like them. Did you think that I would shut down that easily?

That I would crumble again and yield

(to bury the hatchet) because now you said

impunity for the Khmer Rouge defectors. That their slates are wiped clean,

each killing dismissed, each life meaningless.

3

Reader discretion is advised.

What do you make me of? An animal

again before my frightened children: a ewe

to be gutted-up for your experimental

eating pleasure. You, you, and you over there

in council chair, do you think I don’t know

how many gall bladders it took to dye

your eyes a permanent yellow?

You, you, you, you, you. Whoever is left,

you know who you are. Shame on you,

even now, still having the gall to deny

us our part in our own history book?

We’re a saga, an era of mass slain.

What are you afraid of –

that your own children will see you as monsters?

Former KR prisoner finds her photo in Tuol Sleng

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1x8e-JgXaE&feature=channel_video_title

Press Release: President of Victims Associatio​n Urges Civil Party Lawyers, Victims Support Section, NGOs to Assist Applicants in Cases 003/004

Founder, President of the Cambodia-based First-registered Victims Association Theary Seng Urges Civil Party Lawyers, the NGOs, the Victims Support Section to Assist Interested Victims to File in Cases 003 and 004

_________________________

PRESS RELEASE

_________________________

PHNOM PENH, 10 May 2011:  The president and founder of the Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia (AKRVC), Ms. Theary C. SENG, calls on the 40-plus civil party lawyers, the co-lead lawyers, the Victims Support Section of the Extraordinary Chambers (ECCC), and the NGOs which facilitated the civil party applicants for Cases 001 and 002, to assist interested victims in applying to Cases 003 and 004.  Time is of the essence.

In light of the information released by Ms. Seng and most recently and concretely by the UN co-prosecutor which is greatly welcome, it should make it easier for interested victims to apply for civil party status, most urgently to Case 003 because of the looming deadline of 18 May 2011 but also to Case 004.  But they need legal assistance.

States Ms. Seng, a Cases 003/004 applicant: “Since the public lodging of my civil party application against Meas Muth and Sou Met and my intention to lodge another application against Im Chaem, Ta Tith and Ta An, I have been receiving many inquiries from many victims in Kandal, Battambang, Canada etc. who are interested in applying to become civil parties in Cases 003 and 004.  However, many expressed concerned for their security and request assistance in completing the application.  I recommended that they approach the local branch of the well-established human rights organizations in their respective provinces.  One person told me that one NGO turned him away because it has closed the facilitation of application process, a reflection of how political interference seeps deeply into the consciousness of human rights workers as well.”

More information is desirable, especially material facts from the co-investigating judges to Case 004, but there are enough for the civil party lawyers to engage their clients from Case 001 and 002 regarding Cases 003 and 004.  The Victims Support Section should assist with translation, as the information released by Ms. Seng has been in English, and many of the civil party lawyers are non-Khmer speaking/writing.

The applicant Ms. Seng continues: “I am deeply engaged in putting together my appeal to the Pre-Trial Chamber and my new application against Im Chaem, Ta An and Ta Tith.  However, I plan simultaneously to put together a sheet of basic relevant facts for interested victims to guide them in their application. I anticipate this will be publicly available within the next few days.”

The silence of the civil party lawyers, especially of the co-lead lawyers, the Victims Support Section, the UN, the donors, and the NGOs working on legacy and victims outreach has been deafening.  Ms. Seng commends the exceptions to all this being civil party lawyers Mr. Sam Sokong and Ms. Lyma Nguyen in their representation of Rob Hamill, and within recent hours in breaking the prolonged silence, civil party lawyers Hong Kimsuon and Silke Studzinsky and UN co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley.  It is better late than never.

Ms. Seng: “We desire justice.  Truth is a pre-condition of justice.  The deceit surrounding Cases 003 and 004 is unacceptable.”

For more information, please contact Ms. Seng at 012.222.552 or theary.seng@gmail.com.

___________________________________________________
The Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia—the first association based in Cambodia to be registered with the Ministry of Interior and the first to be recognized by the ECCC Victims Support Section and independent of any political or religious affiliation—is a network of survivors of the 1975-79 killing fields who are joined in the fellowship of suffering, in the demand for justice, and in the work for a just peace. The members of the Victims Association are from overseas and spread across the provinces and capital of Cambodia, coming together as a result of the public forums conducted by its Founder, and now its president Ms. Theary C. SENG and Victims Outreach Manager Mr. SOK Leang since 2007. They include widows and orphans; former child soldiers and former prisoners; hard-working farmers and middle-class city-dwellers; well-known actresses playwrights, authors and journalists; as well as teachers, translators, security guards, taxi drivers, inter alia. Among the other members of the Victims Association is the Civil Parties of Orphans Class, a special grouping pre-dating the AKRVC founding when introduced officially in the Pre-Trial Chamber hearing of Nuon Chea in Feb. 2008, and since officially recognized by the ECCC Victims Support Section and a party to the Extraordinary Chambers Case File No. 002 against the senior Khmer Rouge leaders.

www.akrvictims.org

Cambodian attorney fighting for justice got start in Grand Rapids

Theary Seng speaking at The January Series at Calvin College (Michigan, 7 Jan. 2011) to a packed auditorium seating 1,100, an overflow in the College's Chapel with another 400, an overflow in the Students Commons, in addition to 30 simulcasts across the States, Canada and as far flung as Lithuania.

January 12, 2011
by Cynthia Price
Legal News (Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA)

In the 1970s, the name Pol Pot was synonymous with “violent dictatorship.” The global community looked on and deplored the Cambodian leader’s tactics, but attorney Theary Seng has a different perspective: she lived through it.

Her parents, unfortunately, did not. Her father was murdered early on, and the Khmer Rouge soldiers whisked her mother away almost literally out from under her and killed her in a prison camp when Seng was eight years old.

The following morning, guards allowed Seng and her four brothers to leave the camp. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979, ending the regime, Seng was among thousands who escaped through the jungle, entering Thailand, eventually traveling to the United States. Her destination: Grand Rapids.

Seng told her story as part of the well-known annual January Series of lectures at Calvin College.

Finding peace in her heart

August 01, 2010
By Sean Gonsalves
sgonsalves@capecodonline.com
Cape Cod Times (USA)

"I find peace in my heart because I found forgiveness and mercy in Christ. I don't carry hate in me anymore... I learned to free myself from revenge and hate. I forgive but never forget" - Bopha Samms

I pushed a picture of Comrade Duch across the table as if it were a rook in a game of chess, then leaned back in my chair to gauge the reaction of Bopha Samms.

I'm not sure what I expected. An expression of anguish, perhaps. Or maybe she would crumple up the photo accompanying the BBC news article and throw it at me, spurred by vivid memories of being too weak to crawl to the communal cafeteria, just up the road from the agrarian nightmare she called home.

Either of those reactions would certainly be understandable. Duch was one of Pol Pot's murderous minions — chief of Cambodia's infamous Tuol Sleng prison, also ominously known as S-21, where men, women and even children were tortured and massacred.

Those lucky enough to avoid detention were forced to work in rice fields or farms, while many others were left to die of starvation — like Bopha's mother, father, and several of her 11 siblings; treated as if they were mere pawns in a cruel game of Maoist chess.

When the Khmer Rouge was finally driven from power by Vietnamese forces in January 1979 after four years of genocide, an estimated 2.5 million Cambodians were dead.

"If I were sitting face-to-face with him, right now, I wouldn't feel anger," Bopha says, holding Duch's picture closer to her face now to get a better look in the glaring sunlight beaming through the window of her Bourne restaurant, Stir Crazy.

"I find peace in my heart because I found forgiveness and mercy in Christ. I don't carry hate in me anymore."

She is looking at me now and appears to me as a picture of sun-bathed serenity. She reads the astonishment on my face.

"I learned to free myself from revenge and hate. I forgive but never forget," she says, explaining that, though she considers herself a Christian now, she has also drawn deeply from the Buddhism learned in her youth.

Earlier this week, Duch was sentenced to 19 years in prison by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia in conjunction with a panel of international judges working on behalf of the United Nations. And while the 55-year-old restaurateur has come a long way — both geographically and spiritually — since she first came to Bourne in 1981, don't misunderstand. Forgiveness, in this case, emphatically does not mean to turn the other cheek and forsake this-world justice.

"He got a slap on the wrist. They do this to please international opinion. I don't see the real leaders being brought to justice."

Not only that, she says, unlike the tribunals that prosecuted high-level Nazi war criminals, the Cambodian people will never have the satisfaction of seeing Duch's puppet-masters in the dock. Pol Pot is dead, as are many of the Chinese communists he mimicked and whom Bopha ultimately blames, along with the former Soviet Union.

"There's no way these people (like Pol Pot and Duch) had the mind to do this on their own. They were brainwashed."

Bopha is convinced of foreign meddling — the only way she can make even a sliver of sense out of Cambodian military leaders killing so many of their own people.

But Bopha survived as an embodiment of America's promise, having come from "the killing fields" to a kitchen of her own choosing. She adores her adopted home, though she thinks Americans sometimes complain too much — about taxes, the government and each other. Still, like many of us, she is concerned about the future of this country for her children — the deficit, our relationship with China, even immigration.

"America has changed so much," she says, which leads to a discussion about a painting that now hangs in the S-21 prison-turned-memorial-museum. It's a painting that depicts detainees being waterboarded. I ask her what she thinks about the Bush administration authorizing such practices and that there are still many U.S. politicians and citizens who don't think of waterboarding as torture.

"I lived through it. It is torture. I ran from that to come here. ... This country gave me opportunity to be successful, to try to move on. ... Now I see all of this happening. I do not understand why these things still happen. All over the world."

It's like the whole planet has gone stir crazy.

"I don't know what the answers are." Bopha shrugs. She pauses, as if to take in the complexity of it all, before sharing with me a simple belief her mother expressed before she died: "It won't always be like this. Don't give up. I promise you, one day it will change."

In chess, if a pawn makes it all the way to the other side of the board, it is promoted to be a queen — the most powerful piece on the board. On the chessboard of life, Bopha is a queen. No doubt about it.

Sean Gonsalves' column runs on Sundays and Wednesdays. Comment on this column or read past columns at www.capecodonline.com/gonsalves. Sean can be reached at
sgonsalves@capecodonline.com

A victim of no importance: Mrs. Hong Sovath, a victim of the Khmer Rouge and of the Khmer riche

Hong Sa Vath (C), 47, cries in shock after the verdict was heard in the case of former Khmer Rouge cadre Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) on the outskirts of Phnom Penh July 26, 2010. The U.N.-backed tribunal sentenced Duch to 35 years in prison on Monday for his role in the deaths of at least 14,000 people as the Cambodian regime's chief torturer three decades ago. Hong's father was formerly an official at the Japanese embassy in Cambodia, and he died in Tuol Sleng prison, which was run by Duch. Hong felt that Duch should have been given a life sentence. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

Information provided by Anonymous Reader

Ms. Hong Sovath who almost collapsed at the ECCC after hearing Duch's verdict is:

1- a Khmer Rouge victim:

• She lost a relative in Tuol Sleng
• She lost both her parents under KR years

2- a Khmer riche victim:

• Her motodoop (moto-taxi driver) husband was killed when a nephew of Hun Sen in his Cadillac Escalade ran over him about 1 year ago at night, as reported by The Phnom Penh Post.

Catholics remember Khmer Rouge victims amid war-crimes trial

Bishop Emile Destombes, apostolic vicar of Phnom Penh, blesses what used to be the bed of the late Bishop Joseph Chhmar Salas
You Prakort, younger sister of Bishop Joseph Chhmar Salas, tells the story of her brother’s death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge at a memorial service on May 7 at Taing Kauk Parish. Behind her is a picture of her brother

May 14, 2009

KOMPONG THOM, Cambodia (UCAN) -- As the U.N.-backed trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders continues in the capital, Catholics gathered to remember a bishop, priests and laypeople killed by the brutal regime about 30 years ago.

About 40 people from across Cambodia came together on May 7 for a special Mass at Taing Kauk, 100 kilometers north of Phnom Penh, a place Cambodian Catholics call Memorial Place or Land of Hope. Here they prayed on a day specially dedicated to remembering all the Catholics who died during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror which ended in 1979.

Bishop Emile Destombes, apostolic vicar of Phnom Penh, said in his homily that they were there to remember Khmer Bishop Joseph Chhmar Salas, former apostolic vicar of Phnom Penh, and all the priests, brothers and sisters who died during the religious persecution then.

Bishop Destombes gave thanks to God for their missionary work, which laid the foundations of the Catholic Church in Cambodia. "We have to continue this mission," to be "witnesses of Jesus" in Cambodia, he said.

Om Lan, 63, a Catholic living in Taing Kauk, told UCA News he was very proud of Bishop Salas. "Because of him we have a Catholic community here," he said.

According to Father Gnet Viney, a Khmer priest, the local Church chose this place as a memorial site as it is closely connected with the lives of Bishop Salas and some priests. They were forced to leave Phnom Penh Khmer when Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into the city on April 17, 1975, and eventually came to the Taing Kauk area.

According to You Prakort, a younger sister of Bishop Salas who also attended the memorial, the new arrivals in the area faced immediate discrimination by the local people. She said the Khmer Rouge forced her brother and his priests into hard labor by working in the fields. Bishop Salas later died from a combination of exhaustion and malnutrition, she said.

The prelate reportedly died in Taing Kauk in September 1977 at the age of 39.

In the Land of Hope compound, the church has erected a cross dedicated to Bishop Salas and reconstructed the hut where he and his priests used to live and celebrate Mass, said Father Viney.

Thirty years after the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror, alleged surviving leaders of the regime are now being tried for crimes against humanity by a joint U.N. Cambodian government court.In his Easter message, Monsignor Enrique Figaredo, apostolic prefect of Battambang prefecture, said the trial will conclude an era in Cambodian history. "Any justice from the trials may not impact much on peoples' lives now, but at least we will be able to look toward the future with some healing of past hurts and injustices," he said.

"We can hope that those who act with impunity now, will be brought to justice," he added.

Khmer Rouge Trials Important for All Humanity

Written by Antoaneta Bezlova interviews THEARY SENG

PHNOM PENH, Mar 31 (IPS) - Theary Seng, orphaned by the Khmer Rouge, believes in the invisible bonds that suffering weaves among people. She calls it the ”fellowship of suffering”.

When Theary started writing the story of the tragedy that befell her family, it was a quest for personal closure. But it has grown to be a powerful tool to communicate with other Cambodians because, as she says, ”every person in Cambodia is scarred”.

When friends in the United States - where Theary arrived after a long journey through gulag prisons and refugee camps - remarked that her story was ”extraordinary,” she had to counter that by saying it was just one of hundreds of thousands that unfolded during the collective insanity that gripped Cambodia under the 1975-1979 rule of ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge.

A fifth of the country's population, some 1.7 million people, had been executed or tortured or starved to death.

Theary was just a toddler when the Khmer Rouge executed her father. A few years later, she woke up in her prison cell one morning to find that her mother had disappeared too, taking away the last threads of childhood's ”dreamy quality”.

Thirty years later, the moment of justice finally seems to have arrived.

As the Khmer Rouge tribunal hauls up this week the regime's chief torturer, Kaing Guek Eav or Duch, to answer charges of crimes against humanity and murder, Theary is among the killing fields' orphans seeking justice for the deaths of their parents.

Pol Pot, the murderous regime's chief leader, is dead but four other key members of the gruesome movement, all now in their late 70s and early 80s, have been indicted.

Among them is Khieu Samphan, the Khmer Rouge's president and Pol Pot's most faithful lieutenant û the ”public face of the regime,” whom Theary holds accountable for the deaths of her parents.

IPS Correspondent Antoaneta Bezlova caught up with Theary, author of the memoir ‘Daughter of the Killing Fields' Fusion Press 2005).

IPS: Why was it important to write your family history?

Theary Seng: The book is a consolidation of my personal memories as a child. The memories were fragmented but pieced together through talking with my relatives. Cambodia has no culture of dialogue and few people like to share these experiences. Ours is a culture of directives from the parents to the child and from the government to its citizens.

Writing the book pushed me to explore the larger geopolitical context to my personal story. It is also my way of reaching out to other Cambodians because we all exist in this fellowship of suffering. Through this book I'm trying to say to them that we should not let suffering overpower us. Suffering is our past but we should work to overcome it and shape into something more beautiful.

IPS: Can you share what you felt when you came face to face with the man you hold responsible for the deaths of your parents? The episode when you meet him during your trip to Pailin- the mountainous stronghold of the former regime - is among the most powerful in your book.

TS: Seeing Khieu Samphan in person, for the first time, was surreal; I have seen him many times before in photos and film clips, so when I saw him in person at his house in Pailin, before his arrest, it was as if I have always known him. I couldn't nicely fit the image before me, which was very grandfatherly, with the image I had held in my mind which was that of a monster. I was initially startled when I first saw him, with mixed emotions of overwhelming sadness, grief and a giddy sensation of not being.

IPS: Some have criticised the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders as flawed. What do you think? Is the ongoing court of justice significant?

TS: The trial is important on several levels. It helps shed light on a very dark period of the Cambodian history. As a court of law, it also helps chip away at impunity which is prevalent in current Cambodian society. It is important and relevant for every one because it is a very powerful, visible symbol of justice. It allows for justice to be seen and done.

We know that trauma, like violence, is passed on. As violence begets violence, so trauma is inherited by the second generation. This is why the Khmer Rouge trial can help elucidate the emotional and psychological aspects of our national trauma for every Cambodian, including those who were born after and who were overseas.

IPS: You are a civil party to the trial. Are you seeking justice for personal reasons?

TS: On a personal level, my involvement as a civil party in the trial means that I have an opportunity to honour the memories of my dead parents. On a public level, it means that I can help shape this process. I'm a victim but I'm also a lawyer. I know Cambodian people and I can help expand their pursuit for justice.

Our current government often says what is important now is that we have peace. But what we have is the absence of war. We have no presence of justice. All Cambodians seek peace and this trial would allow us to seek justice. With my team at the Cambodia Centre for Social Development we are trying to start a civil party of orphans, to engage a group of individuals who lost their parents to the Khmer Rouge regime.

IPS: Is the Khmer Rouge trial a trial of individuals or a trial of an ideology, a trial of a system?
TS: The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the formal name of the Khmer Rouge trial, is both a court of law and a court of public opinion. As a ‘court of law,' it is limited to trying individuals, not an ideology or a political system. However, as a ‘court of public opinion,' it is trying all these three - the individuals, the ideology and the political system.

The ECCC is only mandated to try the upper echelon of the Khmer Rouge regime. That is, the individuals are limited to the ‘senior Khmer Rouge leaders' and those Khmer Rouge in rank and file who were ‘most responsible'.

The ideology in the dock in the court of public opinion is class warfare û the elevating of the peasant class to a status of reverence - the cold war and imperialism. The system in the dock is communism generally, and as practiced by the Khmer Rouge.

IPS: How is the trial relevant to people who were born after the Khmer Rouge's fall from power (here I mean people from outside Cambodia)?

TS: It is relevant for everyone as we are trying crimes against humanity, not only against Cambodians. The crimes reached such scope and level of atrocious that they are an assault against mankind as a whole, and not only an individual or a people. They undermine human dignity.

Phymena Noun nominated as CNN Top 10 Heroes of 2008 for providing free schooling for children in Stung Meanchey trash dump

Phymean Noun (Photo: CNN)

Click here to vote for Phymean Noun

CNN reveals Top 10 Heroes of 2008

(CNN) -- For Liz McCartney, selection as one of the Top 10 CNN Heroes of 2008 could not have come at a better time.

"With the recent storms in Texas and southwest Louisiana, we have experienced a sudden drop in volunteers," said McCartney, whose St. Bernard Project helps Hurricane Katrina survivors rebuild their homes just outside New Orleans, Louisiana.

"While other areas need help, this recognition is letting the American people know that the New Orleans area still matters," McCartney said.

The diverse group of honorees includes a Cambodian activist who offers free schooling to children who work in Phnom Penh's trash dump; a Georgia prosthetist-orthotist who provides limbs and braces to hundreds of people in Mexico; and a Virginia woman who tapes video messages from incarcerated parents for their children.

CNN's Anderson Cooper announced the 10 honorees Thursday on "American Morning."

"Our Top 10 CNN Heroes are proof that you don't need superpowers -- or millions of dollars -- to change the world and even save lives," Cooper said. Watch Anderson Cooper name the Top 10 CNN Heroes of 2008 »

CNN launched its second annual global search for ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary deeds in February. The network has aired weekly CNN Hero profiles of those people, chosen from more than 3,700 nominations submitted by viewers in 75 countries.

A panel made up of world leaders and luminaries recognized for their own dedication to public service selected the Top 10. The Blue Ribbon Panel includes humanitarians such as Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall, Kristi Yamaguchi and Deepak Chopra.

"What an incredible group of people and how difficult it was to select only 10," said Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a panel member.

Archbishop Tutu added, "They all deserve to win. Thanks for saluting these remarkable human beings."

Each of this year's Top 10 CNN Heroes will receive $25,000 and will be honored at "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute," airing from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on November 27.

Hosted by Cooper, the Thanksgiving night broadcast will culminate with the announcement of the CNN Hero of the Year, selected by the public in an online poll that began Thursday morning. iReport.com: Tell us about your hero

Continuing through November 19, viewers can log on to CNN.com/Heroes to participate in the poll. The person receiving the most votes will receive an additional $100,000.

In alphabetical order, the Top 10 CNN Heroes of 2008 are:

Tad Agoglia, Houston, Texas --
Agoglia's First Response Team provides immediate help to areas hit by natural disasters. In a little over a year, he and his crew have aided thousands of victims at more than 15 sites across the United States, free of charge.

Yohannes Gebregeorgis, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia --
Moved by the lack of children's books and low literacy rates in his native Ethiopia, Gebregeorgis established Ethiopia Reads, bringing free public libraries and literacy programs to thousands of Ethiopian children.

Carolyn LeCroy, Norfolk, Virginia --
After serving time in prison, LeCroy started The Messages Project to help children stay connected with their incarcerated parents. She and volunteer camera crews have taped roughly 3,000 messages from inmates to their children.

Anne Mahlum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania --
On her daily morning jogs, Mahlum used to run past homeless men. Today, she's helping to transform lives by running with them, and others as part of her "Back On My Feet" program.

Liz McCartney, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana --
McCartney moved to New Orleans to dedicate herself to helping Hurricane Katrina survivors move back into their homes. Her nonprofit St. Bernard Project has rebuilt the homes of more than 120 families for free.

Phymean Noun, Toronto, Ontario --
Growing up in Cambodia, Noun struggled to complete high school. Today, she offers hundreds of Cambodian children who work in Phnom Penh's trash dump a way out -- through free schooling and job training.

David Puckett, Savannah, Georgia --
Puckett started Positive Image Prosthetics and Orthotics Missions -- PIPO -- to provide artificial limbs and braces and care to people in southeastern Mexico. Since November 2000 his mission has helped more than 420 people, free of charge.

Maria Ruiz, El Paso, Texas --
Several times a week, Ruiz crosses the border into Juarez, Mexico, to bring food, clothing and toys to hundreds of impoverished children and their families.

Marie Da Silva, Los Angeles, California --
Having lost 14 family members to AIDS, the Los Angeles nanny funds a school in her native Malawi -- where half a million children have been orphaned by the disease.

Viola Vaughn, Kaolack, Senegal --
The Detroit, Michigan, native moved to Senegal to retire. Instead, a group of failing schoolchildren asked her to help them pass their classes. Today, her "10,000 Girls" program is helping hundreds of girls succeed in school and run their own businesses.

"It is very rewarding to be able to honor these amazing, often unheralded individuals who are making a tremendous difference in their communities and beyond," Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide, said. "These stories of selfless achievement deserve to be told, and our multiple platforms around the world allow us to do that."

Obituary: Dith Pran

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Vann Nath to face Duch in KR Tribunal after 30-year of wait

Vann Nath the Painter of Tuol Sleng Prison
(Photo credit: Marwaan Macan-Markar)

Painter to Meet His Jailer at Khmer Rouge Trials

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 15 (IPS) - Sometime this year, two men who stood on either side of the genocide unleashed in Cambodia in the 1970s may finally face each other in a special war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh.

For one of them, Vann Nath, it is a moment that he has waited patiently for over almost three decades. He was one of only seven people who came out alive from Tuol Sleng, a high school in the Cambodian capital that was converted into a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime’s brutal grip on power from April 1975 to January 1979. At least 14,000 people who were imprisoned there were not as fortunate. They were all tortured and killed.

The other is Kaing Khek Eav, or ‘Duch’, who was the chief jailer of Tuol Sleng, or S-21, as it was known by the extremist Maoist group. He is currently under custody, along with four other surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, of the U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), as the special tribunal is officially called, is expected to hear its first case this year.

‘’I have been hoping for this tribunal for nearly 30 years. I wanted the Khmer Rouge leaders to face justice for what they did,’’ says Nath, who has carried the torment of his one year in S-21 since he found freedom in January 1979. ‘’I will go and attend the trial of Duch to see if the tribunal will deliver a good verdict.’’

But the 61-year-old, who has a shock of white hair and thick black eyebrows that have whitened at the edges, is prepared to do more. ‘’I am ready to go and testify if the court needs me as a witness,’’ he said in an interview during a recent visit to Bangkok. ‘’I think it is a secret of the court: to invite me or not.’’

Such an appearance will inevitably add to Nath’s legendary status in his country. For not only is he an inmate who witnessed the horrors that unfolded in S-21, but he has made it his mission, since his freedom, to tell the story of his nightmare through paintings that have a raw, immediate and blunt quality. They are frozen moments of agony that have flowed from his memory.

The exhibitions of his paintings since 1980 -- the first in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum -- have scenes of prisoners being whipped and their fingernails pulled out, of one having his neck sliced by a Khmer Rouge guard, and of a mother being beaten as her baby is grabbed from her hands by a prison guard. His most recent exhibition, which opened in Bangkok this month, has disturbing portraits of prisoners in chains and an emaciated figure of Nath being led away by two prison guards.

They are paintings, moreover, that have come to graphically represent the horror of the Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for killing close to 1.7 million people, nearly a quarter of the country’s population at the time. Most of the Cambodian victims, even babies, were either executed or died due to forced labour or starvation. Among them were two of Nath’s sons, who died of starvation while he was imprisoned.

But dredging up such memories for his next canvas brings little relief or creative joy. ‘’When I paint the scenes of prisoners being dragged by the guards, it is still very hard for me,’’ he explained in a flat, controlled tone of voice. ‘’They bring back memories of my time there. It makes me go into the painting and remember the painful moments of that dark period.’’

In fact, a book Nath wrote about his experience in S-21 confirms how close to the truth his images of torment are. During an encounter with ‘’the former butcher of Tuol Sleng,’’ as he described a former prison guard, Nath asks him how accurate the images of the prison were. ‘’No, they are not exaggerated,’’ the guard had said during that early 1996 meeting. ‘’There were scenes more brutal than that.’’

‘’Did you see the picture of the prison guards pulling a baby away from his mother while another guy hit the mother with a stick?’’ Nath writes in his book, ‘A Cambodian Prison Portrait’, of the question he next posed to the now freed Khmer Rouge guard. ‘’What did you and your men do with the babies? Where did you take them?’’

‘’Uh ... we took them out to kill them,’’ the guard replies. ‘’We were ordered to take all of them to be killed.’’

‘’You killed those small babies? Oh God!’’ writes Nath of his pained response. Then, he adds: ‘’My words dried up. His last statement was not a lie. All these years, in the back of my mind, I had always thought that they had spared the children.’’

Yet the ‘Painter of Tuol Sleng’ is the first to admit his work as an artist, which evokes so much pain, is also the reason why he survived the prison. For when Nath, who was born into a poor farming family, was arrested and dragged into S-21, he was singled out for his talent. Till then, he had been a painter of billboards in Battambang, a city in north-west Cambodia some 300 km from Phnom Penh.

He was ordered by the prison’s tormentors to paint the portrait of a man he had little knowledge of -- Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader. His first painting, in black and white, was based on a black-and-white photo of the reclusive tyrant. Later, he shifted to a painting in colour.

He knew, then, that he was painting for his survival. There was no provision for error. Some of the other imprisoned painters who had been ordered to do likewise had been executed for their failure.

The final arbiter was Duch, who had said ‘’good’’ and ‘’it’s all right’’ after studying one of Nath’s portrait of Pol Pot.

Yet how good Nath was in the eyes of Tuol Sleng’s chief jailer came to light after the Khmer Rouge was driven from power by the Vietnamese army. In 1980, while working at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Nath was shown a list by a researcher examining the prison’s documents.

It was a list of prisoners that Duch had authorised to be killed on Feb. 16, 1978. On it was Nath’s name. But next to it was an entry written in red ink. ‘’Keep the painter,’’ it is reported to have said.

Rotary to host 'Killing Fields' survivor

Kosal Suon, a survivor of the infamous “Killing Fields” and Project Director, Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association

Thu Feb 14, 2008
By Staff reports
Wicked Local Wellesley (Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, USA)

Wellesley - Many readers have already forgotten Pol Pot and his Cambodian “Killing Fields,” where two million were massacred and buried by his Khmer Rouge Communist regime between 1975 and 1979.

Not Kosal Suon.

Suon will recall the horrors of those years in his talk next Tuesday evening following the regular Rotary dinner held every Tuesday evening with a social hour beginning at 6 p.m. at the Wellesley Community Center, 219 Washington St.

Ten years in a Thai refugee camp put Suon in contact with many who lost their families only to end up in American cities unprepared to handle them.

Today, Suon is furthering his own higher education while working for the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Program in Lowell. There he helps a large number of immigrants to learn English and to pass their citizenship tests. CMAA also works with community, educational and social service agencies on behalf of the immigrant community.

Many of the children who come through CMAA face problems like Nanda (not her real name), a 15-year-old Cambodian-American refugee referred to a court-assisted youth program in Lowell.

Nanda, a frequent truant, and drug abuser, began acting out after witnessing and being victimized by her father’s violent outbreaks. Her story can be traced back to the inhuman history of her family in the Killing Fields. Suon’s group has helped her get back on her feet.

Suon will discuss his own family history in Cambodia and since coming as a new immigrant to the United States.

Rotary President Laurence Sheehan called Suon’s talk “an example of what Rotary does to fulfill its mission toencourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise.”

Sheehan explained Rotary’s four primary objectives: 1) The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service; 2) High ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society; 3) The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal, business and community life; 4) The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

Lone female survivor of Pol Pot's secret prison breaks silence

Jul 24, 2007
DPA

"I didn't tell anyone all these years. Not even my husband. It was too painful" - Chim Math, lone woman survivor of S-21

Phnom Penh - Possibly the only woman to survive Pol Pot's infamous Toul Sleng S-21 torture centre, Chim Math broke her silence Tuesday after nearly 30 years saying she wants to testify at an impending trial of Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge leaders.

The 49-year-old becomes the first woman and among only eight known survivors entered the gates of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's secret prison, where an estimated 14,000 people perished.

Previously, only three men were believed to still be alive as the 56-million dollar joint UN-Cambodia trial of a handful of surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge's brutal Democratic Kampuchea regime looms.

Former commandant of S-21, Kang Kech Ieu, alias Duch, is the only person currently in jail awaiting a decision by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia on indictments.

Documentation Center of Cambodia director Youk Chhang confirmed that records had been recovered from Toul Sleng proving Math had been held at the former school that became one of the epicentres of Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Chhang said Math had previously denied she had been held at the prison, possibly out of fear. Math says she kept her story secret because it was too difficult to tell.

'I didn't tell anyone all these years. Not even my husband. It was too painful,' Math said as she stared at her picture taken by her captors, among more than one thousand images documenting the victims of the slaughter that took place in S-21 between 1975 and 1979.

'Now the trial is coming, my family has persuaded me to come forward so I can be an eyewitness and help my country.'

Known as Khem Math at the time of her October 10, 1978 arrest, she says she was held in S-21 for two weeks before being transferred to nearby Prey Sar prison, which she escaped from to run to the mountains of Kampong Speu province when Vietnamese-backed troops overthrew the Khmer Rouge on January 7, 1979.

Math thinks she may have been spared because she was from Stoeung district in Kampong Thom, prison chief Duch's place of birth.

She held a copy of a Khmer Rouge document showing she joined the movement in 1974 as a 16-year-old. Above her picture is a stamp from S-21 in Khmer script. At the bottom corner of the page, a blank space remains next to the column grimly titled 'date of death'.

'This is a real breakthrough,' David Chandler, a historian and author of 'Voices From S-21,' replied in an email Tuesday.

Up to 2 million Cambodians are believed to have died during the four-year reign of the Khmer Rouge as the ultra-Maoists attempted to turn the country into an agrarian utopia, bereft of markets, money and social classes.

Math says two photos she kept with her of her father dressed in a Lon Nol-era police uniform had led to her arrest during a period when the south-western zone, led by former military commander Ta Mok, began conducting internal purges.

'I can't describe what I saw there. I could look out of my cell through cracks in the wall and see the torture and the bodies being thrown away like rubbish. For two weeks, that was my television. The smell of pig excrement mixed with blood which was S-21 will never leave me.'

Court officials say they hope hearings will get underway by early next year. Pol Pot died at his home in 1998 without facing trial. Ta Mok died in hospital of age-related complications last year.

Researchers say Math's testimony will shed invaluable light on the conditions inside S-21 for female prisoners, about which little was previously known.