By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The first trial of a senior Khmer Rouge cadre was set to open Tuesday, 30 years after the end of a brutal communist regime that took the lives of as many as one-fourth of Cambodia’s population.
The first defendant is Kaing Guek Eav, 66, better known as Duch, the commandant of the Tuol Sleng prison and torture house, which sent at least 14,000 people to their deaths in a killing field.
The purpose of Tuesday’s hearing was to address procedural issues and set a date for substantive sessions, expected to begin next month.
Duch (pronounced Doik), known for his brutality, has confessed to committing atrocities. He is charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, and with murder and torture in his prison, which was known as S-21.
Duch admitted his crimes to journalists before his arrest nine yeas ago but said he was acting under orders and would himself have been killed if he disobeyed.
Four senior Khmer Rouge officials who were in a position to give those orders are also in custody, but court officials say their trials may not start until next year.
They are Nuon Chea, 82, the movement’s chief ideologue; Khieu Samphan, 76, the head of state; Ieng Sary, 82, the foreign minister, and his wife, Ieng Thirith, 75, a fellow member of the Khmer Rouge Central Committee.
The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998. Many Cambodians say they fear that some of the defendants may also die before they are brought to trial, and the tribunal has been providing them the best medical care Cambodia has to offer.
The trials are being held by a mixed United Nations tribunal that includes Cambodian and foreign judges and prosecutors in an awkward legal compromise that has drawn criticism from human rights advocates and legal scholars.
The chief concern is that the Cambodian members of the tribunal will not be independent of their government’s political agenda. Already, questions have been raised about the Cambodian co-prosecutor’s reluctance to recommend further indictments.
Analysts say the government, fearing a widening circle of defendants that could reach into its ranks, wishes to limit their number, harming the tribunal’s credibility.
“We wish to see this tribunal for at least these five, and this is the minimum of the minimum,” said Kek Galabru, a leading Cambodian human rights campaigner. “A lot of people ask, ‘Why only five? Why only five? Why only five?”
In addition, the United Nations has investigated allegations of corruption among the Cambodian members of the tribunal. The trial is supported by donations from other nations, and further funding is being delayed pending a resolution of these questions of corruption.
David Chandler, the author of “Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison” (University of California Press, 1999), said he believed that a flawed trial would be better than no trial at all.
“These guys should have to finally face some of the people and some of the evidence of what they did,” he said. “It doesn’t seem right that they just die in bed, tending to their chickens.”
In a fanatical attempt to create a pure peasant society, the Khmer Rouge turned their country into a giant labor camp, evacuating cities, banning commerce and religion, and attempting to exterminate the country’s educated class.
Between 1975 and 1979 at least 1.7 million people were executed or died of overwork, starvation, torture and untreated disease.
The Khmer Rouge left behind an eviscerated and traumatized society, and some human rights advocates hope the trial can bring some measure of closure.
A recent survey by the Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley, found that even after three decades, the traumas and hatreds persist.
Nearly half the respondents said they were uncomfortable living close to former members of the Khmer Rouge. Two-thirds said they wanted to see former cadres suffer in some way. Forty percent said they would take revenge themselves if they had the opportunity.
Chum Mey, 77, who is one of only a handful of people who survived Tuol Sleng, said he still feared Duch and was unable to look him in the eye at a pre-trial hearing last November.
In the hearing room, he said, Duch behaved with the same air of confidence, disdain and command that characterized his tenure as prison chief.
“They tortured me for three months,” Chum Mey said, recalling his time as a prisoner. “They beat me. They removed my toenails. They gave me electric shock in my ear — kup-kup-kup-kup, it sounded like a machine in my head, and my eyes were like burning with fire.”
He is on the witness list to testify against Duch. “I want to stay alive to give evidence,” he said. “Because I survived the Khmer Rouge, and if I die before the trial, what was the point of surviving.”
In an innovation, dozens of victims have enrolled as civil parties to the case. They have grouped themselves by ethnicity or by the nature of their complaints and will be permitted to demand symbolic damages.
One of them is Sok Chear, 42, an office worker whose father died under the Khmer Rouge. “We want to ask their leaders, who ordered this? Why did you kill Cambodian people? For what?” she said.
But not all Cambodians want to relive their traumas, which psychiatrists here say may be reactivated by the trial. One of them is Sok Chear’s sister.
“She says the government is finding peace for the people,” Sok Chear said. “‘Why do you want to make trouble again? They killed our father already. Now let’s just forget it.”
The trial, in a former military headquarters outside the city, is taking place in a strange vacuum of time and place.
This is a nation that has attempted, in the words of Prime Minister Hun Sen, to “dig a hole and bury the past.” Its traumas lie beneath the surface of daily life, and the opening of the trial has drawn only moderate attention here.
The Berkeley study found that 85 percent of respondents had little or no knowledge of the tribunal.
It found that their main concerns were jobs, services to meet basic needs and food. When asked what the priorities of the government should be, only two percent said justice.
For many in the younger generation, the Khmer Rouge atrocities are already ancient history.
“Honestly, we don’t pay attention to these things,” said Ung Suchida, 24, a waitress. “They are already old. Some people, they are interested. But not me.”
The first defendant is Kaing Guek Eav, 66, better known as Duch, the commandant of the Tuol Sleng prison and torture house, which sent at least 14,000 people to their deaths in a killing field.
The purpose of Tuesday’s hearing was to address procedural issues and set a date for substantive sessions, expected to begin next month.
Duch (pronounced Doik), known for his brutality, has confessed to committing atrocities. He is charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, and with murder and torture in his prison, which was known as S-21.
Duch admitted his crimes to journalists before his arrest nine yeas ago but said he was acting under orders and would himself have been killed if he disobeyed.
Four senior Khmer Rouge officials who were in a position to give those orders are also in custody, but court officials say their trials may not start until next year.
They are Nuon Chea, 82, the movement’s chief ideologue; Khieu Samphan, 76, the head of state; Ieng Sary, 82, the foreign minister, and his wife, Ieng Thirith, 75, a fellow member of the Khmer Rouge Central Committee.
The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998. Many Cambodians say they fear that some of the defendants may also die before they are brought to trial, and the tribunal has been providing them the best medical care Cambodia has to offer.
The trials are being held by a mixed United Nations tribunal that includes Cambodian and foreign judges and prosecutors in an awkward legal compromise that has drawn criticism from human rights advocates and legal scholars.
The chief concern is that the Cambodian members of the tribunal will not be independent of their government’s political agenda. Already, questions have been raised about the Cambodian co-prosecutor’s reluctance to recommend further indictments.
Analysts say the government, fearing a widening circle of defendants that could reach into its ranks, wishes to limit their number, harming the tribunal’s credibility.
“We wish to see this tribunal for at least these five, and this is the minimum of the minimum,” said Kek Galabru, a leading Cambodian human rights campaigner. “A lot of people ask, ‘Why only five? Why only five? Why only five?”
In addition, the United Nations has investigated allegations of corruption among the Cambodian members of the tribunal. The trial is supported by donations from other nations, and further funding is being delayed pending a resolution of these questions of corruption.
David Chandler, the author of “Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison” (University of California Press, 1999), said he believed that a flawed trial would be better than no trial at all.
“These guys should have to finally face some of the people and some of the evidence of what they did,” he said. “It doesn’t seem right that they just die in bed, tending to their chickens.”
In a fanatical attempt to create a pure peasant society, the Khmer Rouge turned their country into a giant labor camp, evacuating cities, banning commerce and religion, and attempting to exterminate the country’s educated class.
Between 1975 and 1979 at least 1.7 million people were executed or died of overwork, starvation, torture and untreated disease.
The Khmer Rouge left behind an eviscerated and traumatized society, and some human rights advocates hope the trial can bring some measure of closure.
A recent survey by the Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley, found that even after three decades, the traumas and hatreds persist.
Nearly half the respondents said they were uncomfortable living close to former members of the Khmer Rouge. Two-thirds said they wanted to see former cadres suffer in some way. Forty percent said they would take revenge themselves if they had the opportunity.
Chum Mey, 77, who is one of only a handful of people who survived Tuol Sleng, said he still feared Duch and was unable to look him in the eye at a pre-trial hearing last November.
In the hearing room, he said, Duch behaved with the same air of confidence, disdain and command that characterized his tenure as prison chief.
“They tortured me for three months,” Chum Mey said, recalling his time as a prisoner. “They beat me. They removed my toenails. They gave me electric shock in my ear — kup-kup-kup-kup, it sounded like a machine in my head, and my eyes were like burning with fire.”
He is on the witness list to testify against Duch. “I want to stay alive to give evidence,” he said. “Because I survived the Khmer Rouge, and if I die before the trial, what was the point of surviving.”
In an innovation, dozens of victims have enrolled as civil parties to the case. They have grouped themselves by ethnicity or by the nature of their complaints and will be permitted to demand symbolic damages.
One of them is Sok Chear, 42, an office worker whose father died under the Khmer Rouge. “We want to ask their leaders, who ordered this? Why did you kill Cambodian people? For what?” she said.
But not all Cambodians want to relive their traumas, which psychiatrists here say may be reactivated by the trial. One of them is Sok Chear’s sister.
“She says the government is finding peace for the people,” Sok Chear said. “‘Why do you want to make trouble again? They killed our father already. Now let’s just forget it.”
The trial, in a former military headquarters outside the city, is taking place in a strange vacuum of time and place.
This is a nation that has attempted, in the words of Prime Minister Hun Sen, to “dig a hole and bury the past.” Its traumas lie beneath the surface of daily life, and the opening of the trial has drawn only moderate attention here.
The Berkeley study found that 85 percent of respondents had little or no knowledge of the tribunal.
It found that their main concerns were jobs, services to meet basic needs and food. When asked what the priorities of the government should be, only two percent said justice.
For many in the younger generation, the Khmer Rouge atrocities are already ancient history.
“Honestly, we don’t pay attention to these things,” said Ung Suchida, 24, a waitress. “They are already old. Some people, they are interested. But not me.”
7 comments:
God finally, will we get one of them! Go to hell, killer.
Yes one by one! We must bring all the ex-prison commanders to court as well. It s a pay back time.
Ta Mohn prison was one of the worse killing in Kompot province, Ta ni touk meas district which my parents were sent and excuted.
It's all Ah Scam Rainxy's evil trick to deny Khmer people the justice they deserved.
And how about Norodom Sihanouk, the main actor in Khmer Killing Fields ???
Is he innocent about that crime against Humanity ???
Hanoi gave birth to Khmer Rouge, Hanoi armed the KR, Hanoi endoctrinated the KR to kill Cambodians for Viet, and joining by N.Sihanouk in this process of the Destruction and Vietnamisation of Cambodia in the near future.
This ECCC serves the Viet interests, instead of justice for Cambodian people, the victims, including my parents, brothers and sisters.
The author of Norna Chea Kheatakors Reas Khmer ?
Hin Sithan
Sihanouk got good reason to kill those who couped his arse in 1970. There is nothing wrong with that. No gain to keep them, no lost to kill them.
Hin Sithan
is the dumbest below the dumbest being brainwashed by his junk book. You are right in one thing that KRT was orchastrated by Communist Vietnam, but you refused to understand the US is also with this orchestration.
Your crazy story is written by your crazy imagination which is not based on fact.
You must be too crazy to think that King Sihanouk wanted to destroy his nation.
Your intelligence quotient must be below normal. Get real and search for more. Because what you saw was not what happened during Cold war.
Search from the French occupied Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam until KR killed each others.
You insulted Vietnamese but your lack of intelligence lack of wisdom, you are the one who serve the interest of Vietnamese.
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