http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEtfHGjg1v0
Showing posts with label Tour of Tuol Sleng. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tour of Tuol Sleng. Show all posts
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Khmer Rouge chief torturer weeps for 14,000 victims
Wed Feb 27, 2008
By Ek Madra
By Ek Madra
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The chief Khmer Rouge torturer on Wednesday led judges who will try him for crimes against humanity around the jail where about 14,000 presumed opponents of the ruthless revolutionaries were killed under his supervision.
Reporters were kept well away from the Tuol Sleng high school which became the Khmer Rouge "S-21" jail, but the judges and other officials of the U.N.-backed tribunal due to try Pol Pot's chief henchmen probably blanched at the sight.
Now a museum, photographs of terrified prisoners taken on their arrival cover walls. Concrete floored rooms contain only a bare iron bedstead and torture equipment. Some still have dried blood on the floor.
Men, women, children and even a few foreigners accused of being CIA spies went into the jail. They were tortured and forced to write confession after confession -- most still carefully catalogued -- until jailers were satisfied.
Nearly all were then killed. Only a handful survived until an invading Vietnamese army took the city in January 1979, ending the Khmer Rouge "Year Zero" revolution to produce an agrarian utopia.
An estimated 1.7 million people were killed or died through overwork, starvation and disease during their four years in power and the tour of the jail was meant to give tribunal officials a sense of what went on there.
A film crew working for the tribunal, due to start actual trials in July, filmed Kaing Guek Eav, 66, known as Duch, as he told the story of the jail he ran for the Khmer Rouge regime, keeping meticulous records, witnesses said.
"He cried again as he walked into his old office. It seems he has remorse for his past life," a police officer who accompanied Duch said.
On Tuesday, Duch wept and prayed for the victims as led the tribunal staff to some of the 129 mass graves of people killed by the Khmer Rouge just outside Phnom Penh.
"I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rouge soldiers smashed children to death," said a policeman who watched. "He cried and apologized to the victims."
Duch, detained in 1999 and now a Christian, is expected to be a key witness in the trials. His lawyers say he was only following orders.
The others arrested and charged with crimes against humanity are "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, right hand man to Pol Pot who died in 1998, Khieu Samphan, president under the regime, Ieng Sary, its foreign minister, and his wife.
All face life in jail.
Many Cambodians want to hear what Duch will have to say in court.
"I still do not understand why Duch jailed me, killed my wife and our baby," said Chum Manh, 78, one of the few survivors of Tuol Sleng.
(Editing by Michael Battye and Sanjeev Miglani)
Reporters were kept well away from the Tuol Sleng high school which became the Khmer Rouge "S-21" jail, but the judges and other officials of the U.N.-backed tribunal due to try Pol Pot's chief henchmen probably blanched at the sight.
Now a museum, photographs of terrified prisoners taken on their arrival cover walls. Concrete floored rooms contain only a bare iron bedstead and torture equipment. Some still have dried blood on the floor.
Men, women, children and even a few foreigners accused of being CIA spies went into the jail. They were tortured and forced to write confession after confession -- most still carefully catalogued -- until jailers were satisfied.
Nearly all were then killed. Only a handful survived until an invading Vietnamese army took the city in January 1979, ending the Khmer Rouge "Year Zero" revolution to produce an agrarian utopia.
An estimated 1.7 million people were killed or died through overwork, starvation and disease during their four years in power and the tour of the jail was meant to give tribunal officials a sense of what went on there.
A film crew working for the tribunal, due to start actual trials in July, filmed Kaing Guek Eav, 66, known as Duch, as he told the story of the jail he ran for the Khmer Rouge regime, keeping meticulous records, witnesses said.
"He cried again as he walked into his old office. It seems he has remorse for his past life," a police officer who accompanied Duch said.
On Tuesday, Duch wept and prayed for the victims as led the tribunal staff to some of the 129 mass graves of people killed by the Khmer Rouge just outside Phnom Penh.
"I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rouge soldiers smashed children to death," said a policeman who watched. "He cried and apologized to the victims."
Duch, detained in 1999 and now a Christian, is expected to be a key witness in the trials. His lawyers say he was only following orders.
The others arrested and charged with crimes against humanity are "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, right hand man to Pol Pot who died in 1998, Khieu Samphan, president under the regime, Ieng Sary, its foreign minister, and his wife.
All face life in jail.
Many Cambodians want to hear what Duch will have to say in court.
"I still do not understand why Duch jailed me, killed my wife and our baby," said Chum Manh, 78, one of the few survivors of Tuol Sleng.
(Editing by Michael Battye and Sanjeev Miglani)
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Khmer Rouge torturer to revisit prison
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- The accused war criminal who served as chief interrogator for the Khmer Rouge is to guide his judges around a torture center and execution site.
Kaing Guek Eav, who used the name Duch, will be accompanied by a few of the survivors of torture at Tuol Sleng, a school outside Phnom Penh that was converted to a prison, The Guardian reported. Only seven Tuol Sleng inmates are known to have survived the "Killing Fields" of the late 1970s.
On Tuesday Duch and the two judges, Marcel Lemonde of France and You Bun Leng of Cambodia are to visit Choeung Ek, where Tuol Sleng inmates were killed and buried. On Wednesday, they are to go to the prison, The Guardian said.
Duch, a former math teacher who converted to Christianity after his years as a Khmer Rouge torture chief, has said that he was following orders from Pol Pot when he presided over the torture and execution of thousands of people.
He and four other former Khmer Rouge leaders are to be tried for crimes against humanity.
Kaing Guek Eav, who used the name Duch, will be accompanied by a few of the survivors of torture at Tuol Sleng, a school outside Phnom Penh that was converted to a prison, The Guardian reported. Only seven Tuol Sleng inmates are known to have survived the "Killing Fields" of the late 1970s.
On Tuesday Duch and the two judges, Marcel Lemonde of France and You Bun Leng of Cambodia are to visit Choeung Ek, where Tuol Sleng inmates were killed and buried. On Wednesday, they are to go to the prison, The Guardian said.
Duch, a former math teacher who converted to Christianity after his years as a Khmer Rouge torture chief, has said that he was following orders from Pol Pot when he presided over the torture and execution of thousands of people.
He and four other former Khmer Rouge leaders are to be tried for crimes against humanity.
Khmer Rouge prison chief to take judges on tour of Killing Fields
Saturday February 23 2008Ian MacKinnon, South-east Asia correspondent
The Guardian (UK)
The Khmer Rouge's chief interrogator who headed the notorious prison where 14,000 Cambodian men, women and children met their deaths is to return to the scene of his alleged crime next week.
Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, 65, will guide judges from Cambodia's UN-backed genocide trial through the Tuol Sleng torture centre almost three decades after he fled advancing Vietnamese troops who ended the Khmer Rouge's four-year reign of terror.
Some of the seven people who survived their incarceration in the former school in Phnom Penh's suburbs will join the party next Wednesday and give taped evidence at the tribunal's headquarters.
A day earlier Duch, charged with crimes against humanity along with four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders, will be taken to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where most Tuol Sleng inmates were murdered and buried in shallow graves.
Duch, a former maths teacher before joining the revolution to establish a peasant utopia, will explain to the French co-investigating judge, Marcel Lemonde, and his Cambodian counterpart, You Bun Leng, what happened there after 1975, when up to 1.7 million people died.
The first war crimes trials are due to begin later this year, confounding fears of many of the Khmer Rouge's victims that the communist ideologues responsible for killing a quarter of the population might never be brought to justice.
The re-enactment is part of the judges' investigative process to gather evidence against Duch, who has already acknowledged his role in the Killing Fields after finding Christianity. However, he has always contended he was following Pol Pot's "verbal orders". Duch will be accompanied by his lawyers as he walks around the sites. Both serve as a memorial and museum but will be closed to visitors.
Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, 65, will guide judges from Cambodia's UN-backed genocide trial through the Tuol Sleng torture centre almost three decades after he fled advancing Vietnamese troops who ended the Khmer Rouge's four-year reign of terror.
Some of the seven people who survived their incarceration in the former school in Phnom Penh's suburbs will join the party next Wednesday and give taped evidence at the tribunal's headquarters.
A day earlier Duch, charged with crimes against humanity along with four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders, will be taken to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where most Tuol Sleng inmates were murdered and buried in shallow graves.
Duch, a former maths teacher before joining the revolution to establish a peasant utopia, will explain to the French co-investigating judge, Marcel Lemonde, and his Cambodian counterpart, You Bun Leng, what happened there after 1975, when up to 1.7 million people died.
The first war crimes trials are due to begin later this year, confounding fears of many of the Khmer Rouge's victims that the communist ideologues responsible for killing a quarter of the population might never be brought to justice.
The re-enactment is part of the judges' investigative process to gather evidence against Duch, who has already acknowledged his role in the Killing Fields after finding Christianity. However, he has always contended he was following Pol Pot's "verbal orders". Duch will be accompanied by his lawyers as he walks around the sites. Both serve as a memorial and museum but will be closed to visitors.
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