Duch’s trial loses its track in upside-down hearing

Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 10/06/2009: Richard Rogers, head of the Defence Support Section, during a joint press conference with the ECCC spokespersons who said that an investigation was carried out regarding the confidential documents found in a ditch, but the report was still being drafted… (Photo: John Vink/ Magnum)

10-06-2009
By Stéphanie Gée
Ka-set

There are days at the court when the substance of the case is pushed so much to the background and repetitions are so countless that the scenario of a lengthy trial appears difficult to dismiss. Debates on the armed conflict between Democratic Kampuchea and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam erred in unforeseen meanderings, with a sluggishness of the judges to bring discussions back to focus. The whole day of Wednesday June 10th was again necessary to exhaust the topic, although the two witnesses invited to testify on this issue did not have the opportunity to show their faces. As a trial management meeting in camera is scheduled for Thursday, the hearing will resume on Monday June 15th, with the examination of the functioning of the S-21 security centre and the mass grave of Choeung Ek, which were both under Duch’s responsibility.

The Vietnamese prisoners: enemies like others

Judge Cartwright continued the examination of the accused on the issue of the armed conflict, started on the previous day. Duch explained that the Vietnamese prisoners were classified into three categories: fighters, civilians and spies. However, these statutes did not affect the fate they were reserved. As long as they were sent to S-21, Duch reminded, they were considered as enemies and therefore had to be smashed in accordance with the policy of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). The accused recognised he had annotated their confessions, easily managed to spot in a list of S-21 prisoners identified as Vietnamese those who were arrested in Vietnam, and admitted that some of their confessions were read on the Khmer Rouge propaganda radio, the Voice of Democratic Kampuchea.

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Khmer Rouge prison chief testifies that Vietnamese prisoners were tortured, killed

Wednesday, June 10, 2009
By Sopheng Cheang

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The man accused of running a torture centre for Cambodia's Khmer Rouge testified Wednesday that hundreds of Vietnamese civilians and prisoners of war at his jail were put to death after being accused of espionage.

Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch (pronounced Doik), commanded Phnom Penh's S-21 prison, where as many as 16,000 men, women and children were tortured before being sent to their deaths when the communist group held power in the late 1970s.

Duch, 66, is being tried by a U.N.-assisted tribunal for crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture. About 1.7 million Cambodians died from forced labour, starvation, medical neglect and executions under the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime.

He testified that at least 345 Vietnamese civilians and prisoners of war were arrested as a result of border hostilities and were tortured before being executed.

The Khmer Rouge considered all of them spies. They were detained for several months before being killed, Duch said.

Cambodians have traditionally considered their bigger neighbour Vietnam an avaricious enemy, and having communist regimes in common failed to temper that xenophobic stand among the Khmer Rouge. Racism toward Vietnamese is not unusual.

Khmer Rouge raids against several Vietnamese villages near their common border escalated over time to large-scale fighting, until Vietnam finally invaded in late 1978 to topple the Khmer Rouge regime.

Most of the prisoners at S-21, Cambodian and otherwise, were forced to make confessions that suited their interrogators political desires. Although most apparently were innocent, many confessed to being spies for the CIA, Russia's KGB or Vietnam.

Duch testified that once an acceptable confession was extracted, the prisoner was executed - he used the word "smashed," a Khmer Rouge euphemism - under standard operating procedures.

Responding to questions from tribunal judge Dame Silvia Cartwright of New Zealand, Duch said he received orders from the Khmer Rouge leaders to have the Vietnamese prisoners confess that Vietnam's government planned to invade Cambodia and turn it into a member of an Indochinese communist federation, under Hanoi's control.

Duch said three specially trained interrogators were assigned to grill the Vietnamese prisoners upon their arrival at S-21.

When asked by judges whether he had been aware of international law regarding the treatment of foreign nationals and prisoners of war, the former schoolteacher said he had not known about it and was only concerned with the war with Vietnam.

International law including the Geneva Conventions forbids the torture and killing of prisoners of war.

In testimony last month, Duch described a dispute between Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot - who died in 1998 - and Vietnam's then-communist party boss Le Duan as a "life and death" conflict.

He said that like many senior Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot resented Vietnam's claims to be the leader of the communist movement in Indochina, covering the former French colonies of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

While Duch was testifying Wednesday, another defendant at the tribunal, former Khmer Rouge Social Welfare Minister Ieng Thirith, 77, was taken to the hospital for a medical checkup, said tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath.

Duch is the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to face trial, and the only one to acknowledge responsibility for his actions. Senior leaders Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith are also detained and likely to face trial in the next year or two.