Cambodia tunes in for Duch trial

Duch on Trial: Week 20 (September 21-September 24, 2009) from East-West Center on Vimeo.

Millions watch coverage of Khmer Rouge prison chief's genocide hearings, which wrap up this week

Monday, Nov. 23, 2009
Phnom Penh — From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

As news anchors come, Ung Chan Sophea and Neth Pheaktra are among the dourest on television anywhere. They go on air every Monday for 25 minutes and speak to millions of Cambodians with one unbreakable rule between them: Never smile, no matter what.

The material they have to work with certainly helps them keep that pledge. Ms. Ung and Mr. Neth are famous faces in this country for narrating the torture, starvation and genocide of Cambodia's recent past.

The program they co-host, Duch on Trial, provides a weekly synopsis of the legal proceedings against former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Comrade Duch. By boiling hundreds of hours of often gruesome testimony down to a short highlight reel of the week's events – with in-studio analysts helping cut through the legal jargon – Ms. Ung and Mr. Neth have helped make the often dense and slow-moving proceedings of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia accessible to the nearly three million viewers, roughly a fifth of the country's population, who tune in each week.

As the trial nears an end, the ECCC – which began in February with 85 per cent of Cambodians saying they had no idea it was taking place, according to one poll – has become the subject of chatter and debate at restaurants and barber shops here in the city where Comrade Duch ran the infamous S-21 detention centre, also known as Tuol Sleng. Final arguments, including a closing statement from Comrade Duch himself, are scheduled for this week.

Some 14,000 Cambodians passed through the converted high school under Comrade Duch's watch, only seven of whom survived. Over 72 days of hearings, the tribunal, which is made up of three Cambodian and two international judges, has heard evidence of electrocution, bloodletting and medical experimentation at S-21. For overseeing it all, Comrade Duch has been charged by the ECCC with crimes against humanity, homicide and torture.

Though many have criticized the tribunal for moving too slowly, the process seems to be galvanizing Cambodians as Comrade Duch's trial nears an end. Tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said seven million Cambodians – or more than half the country – tuned in Monday to hear the final presentations from civil parties who took part in the trial.

Interest is expected to be even higher Tuesday when the prosecution gives its final arguments and the fascination will peak Wednesday when Comrade Duch will speak in his own defence and try one last time to explain to the country why he did what he did 30 years ago. Mr. Reach said Mr. Duch has told his lawyers that he would like to address the tribunal for an hour or two before they give their own final statements.

Some viewers are tuning in to relive, and perhaps understand, a dark part of their country's history. Others are hearing about the horrors of that era for the first time.

“In the beginning, it was a lot of elderly people who were watching. But now more and more young people are, too. I've had young people come up to me in the street and ask me if I'm the person who presents the Duch program,” said Ms. Ung, a 26-year-old journalist who had never worked in television before she was hired to host Duch on Trial, which is funded by the British embassy and George Soros's Open Society Institute.

Ms. Ung said hosting the show spurred her to ask her own parents about their experiences during the Khmer Rouge era, when they were forced to flee to Vietnam.

Mr. Reach said millions of Cambodians will watch on television Tuesday and Wednesday because they are fascinated by the character of Comrade Duch, a mathematics teacher before joining the Khmer Rouge who has since converted to Christianity. Early in the proceedings, Comrade Duch expressed remorse for his actions – while denying he personally tortured or killed anyone – and asked Cambodians to forgive him.

“People heard him apologize once [at the beginning of the trial] when he said he wanted the door to be open for him to get a pardon, now people want to hear his final words,” Mr. Reach said.

An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died from overwork, famine or execution during the Khmer Rouge's period in power from 1975 to 1979. Despite the scale of the trauma, the Khmer Rouge period has been left out of school history textbooks until this year, when it was added to the Grade 12 curriculum.

While Pol Pot died peacefully in 1998, four other senior members of his regime are slated to be tried by the ECCC within the next two years. Prosecutors recently submitted a list of five others who allegedly took part in the genocide, but efforts to expand the tribunal have been resisted by the current government, which includes several former Khmer Rouge cadres, including Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Time Magazine Calls Weekly Program on Khmer Rouge Trial a 'Sleeper Hit' in Cambodia

September 17, 2009
East-West Center

The goal is to help make the trial proceedings accessible to everyone in the interest of furthering the process of international justice.

With up to 3 million viewers each week, "Duch on Trial" program provides many with primary source of information on the international tribunal.

Honolulu, HI (Vocus/PRWEB ) September 17, 2009 -- A current article in Time magazine calls a Cambodian television program that summarizes proceedings in the U.N.-assisted trial of a notorious Khmer Rouge figure "a sleeper hit" that is the main way many Cambodians find out about the trial. According to the article, the "Duch on Trial" program - a collaborative production of the East-West Center, the UC Berkeley War Crimes Study Center and Khmer Mekong Films - garners up to 3 million viewers each week, or 20 percent of Cambodia's population.

"With one in five Cambodians watching the show every week," writes Time correspondent Christopher Shay, "'Duch on Trial' has become the main way many young Cambodians, who were not taught about the Khmer Rouge in school, learn about the historic Khmer Rouge tribunal unfolding in Phnom Penh -- and, in a lot of cases, hear about this dark chapter of their country's history for the first time."

The program, with English subtitles added, can be viewed online by audiences worldwide at forum.eastwestcenter.org/Khmer-Rouge-Trials.

Hosted by veteran Cambodian journalists Neth Pheaktra and Ung Chan Sophea, the weekly half-hour show endeavors to explain the complex legal proceedings in the case against Kaing Guek Eav, alias "Duch," in an accessible and informative manner through the use of trial footage, expert commentary and interviews. Duch has admitted that he ran the Khmer Rouge's dreaded S-21 torture center.

"We consider these films to be a vital tool in helping the Cambodian public and the world at large better understand the complex issues involved in these groundbreaking trials," said David J. Cohen, Director of the Asian International Justice Initiative, or AIJI, which initiated and oversees production of the "Duch on Trial" programs. "The goal is to help make the trial proceedings accessible to everyone in the interest of furthering the process of international justice."

Gregory Stanton, president of the Washington-based NGO Genocide Watch, told Time that the program, with its millions of viewers, has been uniquely effective in bringing the trial into people's lives. "You'll go out to (a) local little village … and there will be almost nothing there," Stanton said. "Yet there will be a TV set hooked up to set of car batteries, and people watching."

The AIJI engaged Cambodia's premier television production company, Khmer Mekong Films, to produce the "Duch on Trial" programs. The programs are shown on Cambodia's most-watched television network, CTN, as well as being available online for easy viewing worldwide.

The AIJI is a collaboration between the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the War Crimes Study Center at UC Berkeley in California. Prior to the start of the trial, the AIJI conducted extensive legal trainings for the officers of the court, as well as a public education campaign that included several informational films that were shown on Cambodian television and at screenings throughout the country. Major funding for the project has come from the British Embassy in Phnom Penh.

Now that the tribunal's first trial is underway, the AIJI has drawn upon five years of experience by the War Crimes Studies Center in conducting human-rights trial monitoring in Sierra Leone, East Timor, Rwanda, and Indonesia to establish a regionally based trial monitoring and film outreach program. The goal of the project is to raise awareness about fair trial rights in Cambodia, as well as document ways in which the trial's proceedings can have a positive impact on Cambodia's domestic criminal trials through the court's interpretation of human rights and domestic criminal procedures.

In addition to a permanent AIJI monitor, the monitoring team includes young lawyers and legal researchers from Cambodia, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Japan, the Philippines, Switzerland, Germany and the U.S. The monitors write reports on the proceedings as well as assist the film-maker on a weekly basis to choose the highlights from proceedings to be included in 'Duch on Trial'. Additionally, they provide a daily update on the trial which is also utilized by the Court's press and public affairs section. Weekly reports are issued in English, Khmer, Bahasa Indonesia and Mandarin. The team also produces periodic analytical assessments of the trials.

The EAST-WEST CENTER is an education and research organization established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to strengthen relations and understanding among the peoples and nations of Asia, the Pacific, and the United States. The Center contributes to a peaceful, prosperous and just Asia Pacific community by serving as a vigorous hub for cooperative research, education and dialogue on critical issues of common concern to the Asia Pacific region and the United States. Funding for the Center comes from the U.S. government, with additional support provided by private agencies, individuals, foundations, corporations and the governments of the region.

Click here for links to all East-West Center media programs, fellowships and services.

Connect with the East-West Center on Facebook.

Media Contact:
Derek Ferrar,
Media Relations Specialist
+1 808-944-7204

Cambodia's Trial of the Century, Televised

Kaing Guek Eav, former chief of the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison, is seen on a screen during his trial in Phnom Penh on July 13, 2009 (Heng Sinith / AP)

Friday, Sep. 11, 2009
By Christopher Shay
Time Magazine (USA)

Like any pair of good TV news hosts, Neth Pheaktra and Ung Chan Sophea deftly play off each other, finishing each other's thoughts and building on each other's ideas. But unlike the playful banter of most local news shows, neither host ever cracks a joke, or even smiles. Instead, the two veteran Cambodian journalists look directly into the camera and talk to viewers every Monday at 1 p.m. about torture, murder and the law.

Neth Pheaktra and Ung Chan Sophea's 24-minute weekly show summarizing and analyzing the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as 'Duch,' the chief of the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 interrogation facility also known as Tuol Sleng, has become a sleeper hit in Cambodia. With one in five Cambodians watching the show every week, Duch on Trial has become the main way many young Cambodians, who were not taught about the Khmer Rouge in school, learn about the historic Khmer Rouge tribunal unfolding in Phnom Penh — and, in a lot of cases, hear about this dark chapter of their country's history for the first time.

From 1975 to 1979, the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia's cities, abolished money and turned its upper classes into de facto slave laborers in an attempt to form a radical agrarian utopia. More than 30 years later, Cambodia is still rebuilding — both economically and socially. For overseeing the execution of more than 15,000 people during that era, Duch has been charged by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a hybrid Cambodian-international court backed by the U.N., with war crimes, crimes against humanity, homicide and torture. S-21, the facility that he headed from 1976 until 1979, was a local Phnom Penh high school that the KR transformed into what one scholar later called "the anteroom to death."

(See pictures of the rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge.)

Not surprisingly, testimonies at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) have been grim since the trial started in February of this year. Duch, a mathematics teacher before joining the Khmer Rouge, admitted that his guards smashed babies against trees. One guard on the stand outlined the process of live blood-letting, and a rare survivor described the pain of having his toenails ripped out.

Despite the gruesome tales, Duch on Trial has attracted up to three million viewers a week in recent months — a whopping 20% of the country's population. The success of the show, which premiered in April, rests on its ability to decode the trial's complex proceedings to a mass audience — no small task in this largely rural, poorly educated country where only about 30% of students who enter school graduate from grade 9. The ECCC was established as a hybrid court after years of negotiation between the U.N. and the Cambodian government, and the result is a complex hodgepodge of international and domestic law.

Matthew Robinson, the British producer of Duch on Trial and executive director of Khmer Mekong Films, took the show's predecessor — a pretrial miniseries about the ECCC — to focus groups around the country, fine tuning the show's language to ensure it could be understood. But while the show may keep it simple, it is still able to highlight complex themes raised in the trial — like mental health and forgiveness — that are relevant to people's daily lives in a nation still suffering from collective post-traumatic stress.

The endeavor was something of a gamble. With the Khmer Rouge only being introduced into the school curriculum this fall, many born after 1979 know little about Cambodia's darkest period. And for those who did, before the Duch trial, over two-thirds of people born after the Khmer Rouge rule said they rarely or never talked about the era. Robinson said before he produced the first episode, he went to his local eatery and asked the staff if they would be interested in a half-hour show about the Duch trial. "They said, 'No, no, no.' But I was there on the Monday [when the show first launched], and all of them were watching. At the end, they gave me a big thumbs up." Now the restaurant shows Duch on Trial every Monday at lunch.

The show, largely funded by the British government, is played on the Cambodian Television Network (CTN), Cambodia's most watched channel. Controlled by Cambodia's richest businessman, Kith Meng, CTN is not playing the show in a prime-time slot as a public service, but because it glues so many Cambodians to the TV screen.

Nonetheless, Duch on Trial is helping fulfill one of the Court's central mandates, according to ECCC chief spokesperson Reach Sambath: to educate Cambodians about the Khmer Rouge. In the last seven months, some 23,000 Cambodians have come to the courts to watch the trial, and the Documentation Center of Cambodia has discussed the trials with nearly 100,000 villagers throughout the country. The trial "is an education. It's equal to a professor of history," says Reach Sambath.

But with its millions of viewers in Cambodia, television has proven to be better positioned to bring the trial into people's homes. "You'll go out to the local little village in the middle of Kampong Speu [a province in Cambodia], and there will be almost nothing there," says Gregory Stanton, the president of the Washington-based NGO Genocide Watch. "Yet there will be a TV set hooked up to set of car batteries, and people watching."

Though the government has not publicly commented on the show, Robinson says he's heard that high-ranking government officials also watch it to keep tabs on the trial. The current government contains many former members of the Khmer Rouge, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was a low-level cadre and even lost his eye fighting for the Khmer Rouge during the invasion of Phnom Penh. It was Hun Sen who initially asked the U.N. for help in establishing a tribunal in 1997, but he has since been accused by critics like Human Rights Watch for trying to limit the trial's scope in order to protect members of his own Cambodian People's Party (CPP).

But for Reach Sambath and many other Cambodians, this trial is not just about teaching the public or finding justice but about accelerating a long-overdue healing process. "The witnesses cry. The accused cries. The audience that comes to the court or watches on television cries," Reach Sambath says. "But they cry not to be more painful, but to release their pain that they have been holding for 30 years."

Duch is only the first Khmer Rouge member to sit behind the bulletproof glass at the ECCC. A joint trial of four other defendants will start within the next two years, and on Sept. 8 despite objections from Hun Sen, prosecutors submitted a list of five additional former high-ranking members of the Khmer Rouge who may one day end up at the tribunal. No matter how open Duch is about the horrific details of S-21, he cannot supply all the answers about the Khmer Rouge, as he played no policy role. "The people we've interviewed say, 'We want to know why these educated people did this to our country?'" Robinson said. "And they won't really get this answer through the Duch trial."

The next hearings, however, expected begin in 2010, will include several people who did derive the Khmer Rouge philosophy, like Pol Pot's second-in-command Nuon Chea and the Khmer Rouge's former head of state Khieu Samphan. Robinson is hoping Khmer Mekong Films will be there too, helping give millions of Cambodians the answers they've been waiting three decades to hear.

Horror trial is TV hit in Cambodia

A man in Cambodia watches a live telecast of the trial of chief Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch. [Reuters]

Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Robert Carmichael, Phnom Penh
ABC Radio Australia

A half-hour television show has proved a surprise success in Cambodia by telling people about the trial of Comrade Duch, the former Khmer Rouge prison commander.

It has become an important way to tell the country of the crimes committed under the Khmer Rouge regime.

Much television fare in Cambodia is light entertainment.

But this show presented by journalists Neth Pheaktra and Ung Chan Sophea is at the other end of the spectrum.

It deals with the continuing war crimes trial of Comrade Duch - Kaing Guek Eav - the former Khmer Rouge cadre who ran the notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh in the middle and late 1970s.

Diary

Co-presenter Neth Pheaktra told Radio Australia's Connect Asia: "It is a summary of the week of the Duch trial.

"During the 24 minutes of the program we have the summary, the diary of the Duch trial, and also the key points that the witness, the defendant and also the judges reveal in the court."

At least 15,000 people were sent to S-21 prison, and almost all were tortured and executed. As many as two million people are thought to have died during the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

Informing Cambodians of the facts of the country's genocide is a key part of the remit of the joint UN-Cambodian Khmer Rouge tribunal, says tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath.

But that is a challenge in Cambodia, where more than 80 percent of people live in rural areas, and levels of illiteracy are high.

Reach Sambath says TV and radio broadcasts are an important way of informing people.

Another way is physically to bring them to the courtroom, which is located on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

Believing

"By the end of this week we had more than 17,000 Cambodians (visit) from across the country," says the spokesman.

"And when they come to the court, which we call 'Seeing is Believing', everybody goes home and they talk with their friends and relatives."

The weekly television show, which is independent of the tribunal's public affairs section, reaches a lot more people than that.

Reach Sambath says the show provides an excellent summary of the week's events for people who are too busy to watch the daily live feed broadcast on television.

The program is the creation of a local production company called Khmer Mekong Films, or KMF, and is funded mainly by the British Embassy.

KMF executive producer, Briton Matthew Robinson, says the broadcaster estimates the show, which runs in the prime lunchtime slot on Mondays and is repeated on Tuesdays, is seen by up to three million of Cambodia's 15 million people.

Presenter Ung Chan Sophea says informing Cambodia's youth of the terrible events under the Khmer Rouge regime is extremely important.

She regularly has young people telling her how much they enjoy the show, and how much they have learned from it.

"I am very happy because I can contribute by participating in this program and helping people to understand."