Tearful Cambodians commemorate Khmer Rouge victims

Cambodians pray during the annual 'Day of Anger' at the Choeung Ek killing fields

Thursday, May 20, 2010
AFP

CHOEUNG EK, Cambodia — Tearful Cambodians marked an annual "Day of Anger" with a re-enactment of Khmer Rouge crimes at a notorious "killing field" on Thursday to commemorate relatives killed by the regime.

Some 3,000 people, including Buddhist monks, watched as students mimed raping, bludgeoning, strangling and eviscerating bound victims to remember those who died at Choeung Ek, a field outside the capital Phnom Penh.

Many sobbed during the performance by the black-clad students just metres (yards) from mass graves where Khmer Rouge soldiers murdered thousands of people during the rule of the hardline communist movement in the late 1970s.

"I still feel very much anger toward the regime," Chea Thov, 63, told AFP during Thursday ceremony.

"Justice is near. But I want all bad Khmer Rouge leaders to be sentenced to death," she said, adding that Khmer Rouge killed her husband and 15 relatives.

Up to two million people were executed or died from starvation, overwork and torture during the communist regime's 1975-1979 reign as it emptied Cambodia's cities and enslaved the population on collective farms.

Five Khmer Rouge leaders are being held by a UN-backed genocide court over their roles in the hardline communist government.

Final arguments in the court's first trial, of Khmer Rouge's main prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, ended in November and a verdict is expected later this year.

Four other leaders including the regime's "Brother Number Two" ideologue Nuon Chea and head of state Khieu Samphan, foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife, minister of social affairs Ieng Thirith are expected to stand trial next year.

"I am speechless about Khmer Rouge crimes. I hope justice will be rendered very soon so that sadness will fade away from the people's hearts," said another relative of the regime's victims, Nob Chin, 72.