Trial starts of Khmer Rouge leaders

  Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologue, showed no emotion as the short clip of him, dating from 2001 or later, was shown on the second day of opening statements in the trial at the UN-backed court in Phnom Penh.

International co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley told the court that Nuon Chea and his two co-defendants were “thieves of time” and “common murderers” of a whole generation of Cambodians.

“Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, former head of state Khieu Samphan and ex-Foreign Minister Ieng Sary all deny charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide for the deaths of up to two million people during the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-79 reign of terror.

“The accused who are before you are thieves of time and common murderers of an entire generation of Cambodians. They robbed decades of development and prosperity from this country,” International co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley. “No one in this country is left unhurt or unaffected by what these three elderly men have done.” 

 Prosecutors showed the packed court the footage of Nuon Chea, taken from the 2009 documentary “Enemies of the People”, to support their claim that the movement had a policy of killing enemies and those it regarded as disloyal.

“If these traitors were alive, the Khmers as a people would have been finished so I dare to suggest our decision was the right one,” Nuon Chea calmly tells a Cambodian journalist in the clip.“If we had shown mercy to the people, the nation would have been lost.”

The footage was shot at some point between 2001 – when the journalist began interviewing Nuon Chea – and the former top regime leader’s arrest in 2007.

Mr Cayley spoke of mass killings of Vietnamese and Cham Muslims, saying that regime leaders had “a systematic plan of genocide” for them, and of the “smashing” of perceived enemies at detention centres across the country.
The defendants knew about and participated in five main accusations against them, Mr Cayley said, including forced evacuations into rural areas, enslavement of the population in labour camps and the widespread practice of forced marriages.

Missing from the courtroom is the fourth accused, Ieng Thirith – the regime’s “First Lady” and the only female leader to be charged by the court – after she was ruled unfit for trial last week because she has dementia.
Nuon Chea was put in the spotlight again when Mr Cayley showed footage of a 2009 court tirade by Ieng Thirith in which she blamed Pol Pot’s right-hand man for having her students “executed” and said everything “was done by Nuon Chea”.
Owing to fears that not all of the accused, who are in their 80s and suffer from various medical ailments, will live to see a verdict, the court recently split their complex case into a series of smaller trials. But during opening statements the prosecution and the defence may address all of the accusations against the three.

Hmm Here's looking forwatd to these three not only surviving their trials but living long enough for a good stretch in prison.

Comrade Duch gets 35 years

According to the Guardian Comrade Duch has been sentenced to 35 years in prison by a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Cambodia. The sentence was the first verdict involving a leader of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.

Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, listened impassively as the chief judge read out the verdict, convicting him of crimes against humanity and war crimes. He will serve only 19 years of the sentence, because Judge Nil Nonn said the court would shave off the 11 years he has already spent in detention and five more for being illegally detained in a military court.

Duch, 67, had faced a maximum sentence of life in prison, and many victims and their relatives watching the verdict were angry that his sentence was not more severe. Some of them broke down in tears.

Duch admitted to heading Toul Sleng, a top secret detention centre in Phnom Penh for the worst "enemies" of the state. More than 16,000 people passed through its gates before they were killed. Torture used to extract confessions included pulling out prisoners' toenails, administering electric shocks and waterboarding.

"I can't accept this," said Saodi Ouch, 46, echoing what many Cambodians would see as a light sentence. She was weeping so hard she could hardly talk. "My family died … my older sister, my older brother. I'm the only one left."

An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died from starvation, medical neglect, slave-like working conditions and execution under the Khmer Rouge’s insane regime. Although the leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 four other top members of the Khmer Rouge are awaiting trial.

A former maths teacher, Duch joined the Khmer Rouge in 1967. Ten years later, he was the trusted head of its ultimate killing machine, S-21, which became the code name for Tuol Sleng. Only 14 prisoners are thought to have survived ordeals at the prison that included medieval-like tortures, followed by executions and burials outside Phnom Penh.

Although an effective 19 year sentence does not sound much for such appalling crimes, it should mean that Duch will die in prison in a way that his victims did not. That Duch has expressed remorse for his crimes should make the sentence meaningful. Now off to prison and die in misery you evil bastard!

Comrade Duch and the sailor “spies”

Although the trial of Comrade Duch quite rightly focuses on the many thousands of innocent Cambodians who were tortured and butchered under his auspices at S-21 a small number of foreigners ended up in his evil grasp too.

Next month New Zealander Rob Hamill will testify as a victim at the Cambodian war crimes trial of the Comrade Duch. Mr Hamill’s brother Kerry was murdered by the Khmer Rouge in 1978.

According to the Scoop.NZ article, Mr Hamill’s appearance at the Extraordinary Court of Cambodia trial of Comrade Duch comes almost 31 years to the day after his brother Kerry Hamill and Englishman John Dewhirst were snatched from their yacht which blundered into Cambodian waters. Fellow sailor, Canadian Stuart Glass was killed, on 13 August 1978.

Kerry and John were tortured for two months at S-21 and forced to confess they were CIA spies, before being executed.

“I expect to experience the widest possible range of emotions when I see Duch,” said Mr Hamill who will be one of two Western victims to testify, “a lot of nervous energy will be expended. Duch says he is sorry and wants forgiveness, but I want to find out whether he truly understands the impact of what he did and the damage he caused. I’m not sure that he does comprehend what he and the Khmer Rouge did to the people of Cambodia, let alone to the families of Kerry, John and Stuart.”

The Wikipedia article on John Dewhirst lists other westerners who suffered their same terrible fate at S-21.

Americans James Clark, Lance McNamara, Michael Scott Deeds and Christopher DeLance

Australians Ronald Dean and David Scott

French brothers Rovin and Harad Bernard and Andre Gaston Courtigne

The article also states that several dozen Vietnamese, Thais, Laotians, Indians, Pakistanis and Arabs were detained in the prison at various times. They are not named

None of them fared any differently than the Cambodian prisoners.

Mr Dewhirst was one of two Britons to die in Pol Pot's Cambodia. The other Malcolm Caldwell, an academic and apparently a fervent supporter of the regime. He was assassinated during a visit to Phnom Penh in December 1978. but that is a different story...

Meanwhile in Phnom Penh Comrade Duch stands trial

Vann Nath, Tuol Sleng survior, now one of Cambodia's foremost artists.

The trial of Kaing Guek Eav (aka comrade Duch) the commandert of the Khmer Rouge murder centre Toul Sleng or S21 is underway in Cambodia (which apparently and appropriately means Hill of poisonous trees in Khmer). On Monday there were numerous reports of the testimony of Vann Nath, one of the seven people believed to have survived imprisonment inside that evil place.

Vann Nath described how hunger had driven him to eat insects, and said he had also eaten the food beside corpses of starved fellow prisoners. "The conditions were so inhumane and the food was so little," he told the tribunal, as he broke down in tears. "I even thought eating human flesh would be a good meal."

He said he was fed twice a day, but each meal only consisted of three teaspoons of rice porridge. "We were so hungry, we would eat insects that dropped from the ceiling," he said. "We ate our meals next to dead bodies, and we didn't care because we were like animals."

He described how prisoners were kept shackled - 20 or 30 of them together - and ordered not to speak or move.

Vann Nath survived due to his skills as a painter. He was forced to produce portraits of Khmer Rouge leaders - on pain of death. "I thought that if I could do good pictures and they were satisfied with what I painted, they would be happy and I would survive,"

Van Nath's portraits passed muster - and he has since become one of Cambodia's most famous artists, and his work often depicts scenes from Tuol Sleng.

Comrade Duch has admitted responsibility for his role as governor of the jail, and begged forgiveness from his victims. At least his long overdue punishment, when it comes, will have some meaning.

Khmer Rouge butcher faces trial

Former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary appeared before Cambodia's genocide tribunal to appeal against his detention. The 82-year-old is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the regime's rule in the late 1970s.

Some 1.7 million people are thought to have died under the brutal regime. Hundreds of thousands starved as the Khmer Rouge tried to create an agrarian society. Many others perceived as educated were tortured and executed.

Ieng Sary is the most prominent surviving Khmer Rouge. He received a royal pardon 12 years ago after reaching a deal with the government that resulted in the eventual surrender of the Khmer Rouge. On this basis his lawyers are arguing that he should not now be facing charges. They will also argue that a trial would amount to double jeopardy.

The Vietnamese-backed forces which ousted the Khmer Rouge in 1979 tried Ieng Sary in absentia and found him guilty of genocide. That verdict was overturned by the pardon. But Cambodians who survived Khmer Rouge prison camps feel particularly strongly about the former foreign minister. Many of them were well-educated people who returned to the country after personal appeals from Ieng Sary to help rebuild Cambodia. They were arrested on arrival, and thrown into brutal detention centres.

Ieng Sary's wife, former social welfare minister Ieng Thirith, is also facing charges.Trials are expected to begin later in the year.

It’s a shame he wasn’t tried in 1979. He would have been rotting in prison for the best part of 30 years already. Here’s hoping he spends the end of his life there.

The tears of Comrade Duch

I have already posted twice about Comrade Duch (aka Kang Guek Eav or, Kang Khek Ieu. Click here and here for my earlier posts) , who is standing trial for his role in the Khmer Rouge regime. Duch himself played a major part in this atrocity as head of Tuol Sleng prison – only Twelve out of over 20,000 souls who entered the prison came out alive. Only four of these are still alive today.

Two days ago he was taken back to the Killing Fields where between one and two million Cambodians were butchered and buried in mass graves between 1975 and 1979. "It was emotional, of course, and very quiet," said Reach Sambath, a spokesman for the tribunal that is hearing Duch’s case "Everyone was very quiet."

The best-known site of mass graves, littered with bones and pieces of ripped clothing, is Choeung Ek, about 10 miles south of Phnom Penh. Duch, a born-again Christian, was taken there in a heavily guarded convoy with up to 80 tribunal staff, judges, lawyers and four witnesses who served as Khmer Rouge guards at Tuol Sleng."The four witnesses explained what had happened in front of the accused, Duch," said Mr Sambath, who said he was not permitted to reveal details of the testimony. "He also explained what had happened there as well. Everything was recorded."

After the testimony had been given Duch broke down, first as he passed a tree bearing a sign that said babies' heads were smashed against its trunk, and second, as he made his way back to his car and stopped at a Buddhist stupa that contains the skulls of more than 8,000 of the Khmer Rouge's victims. "He kneeled on the ground and paid his respects and prayed for the souls of those who were killed," said Mr Sambath. "He cried ... When he got to the car he also paid his respects to the skulls behind the glass. He also knelt on the ground and prayed."

I don’t know whether his contrition is sincere or not. Personally I hope it is as his certain inevitable punishment will be more meaningful than if he had continued to justify his behaviour. It is scant comfort to the victims of such a monstrous regime

The trial of Duch is scheduled to begin in July.

The banality of evil - Cambodia

Kang Khek Ieu was a Khmer Rouge torturer who oversaw the deaths of 17,000 people. An interview with him featured in today’s Independent. If Hannah Arendt had not already coined the phrase banality of evil, someone would surely invent it for this man. Better known by his nom de guerre Duch, Kang Khek Ieu was one of Pol Pot's trusted henchman.

Asked whether he had any moments of uncertainty, any doubts or feelings of rebellion while he set about wiping out his country's entire intellectual class, he answered: "There was a widespread and tacit understanding. I and everyone else who worked in that place knew that anyone who entered had to be psychologically demolished, eliminated by steady work, given no way out. No answer could avoid death. Nobody who came to us had any chance of saving himself. All the prisoners had to be eliminated. We saw enemies, enemies, enemies everywhere. If I had tried to flee, they were holding my family hostage, and my family would have suffered the same fate as the other prisoners. If I had fled or rebelled it would not have helped anyone."

Of the Khmer Rouge’s two million victims, more than 17,000 musicians and dancers, were brought to a former school in the heart of Phnom Penh that had been converted into a torture centre. Only six came out of it alive. Codenamed S-21, the centre was run by Duch, a former maths teacher who had become the head of the regime's secret police. In the former classrooms, over a period of 40 months, Duch oversaw the extermination of the entire Cambodian intellectual class with mathematical rigour.

Confessions were extracted by primitive torture: prisoners were strapped to iron beds, suspended upside down from ropes, threatened with drowning, tormented with knives and pincers, locked in tiny cells. Then, at night, they were taken by lorry to the outskirts of Phnom Penh and killed in the rice fields. The Khmer Rouge were obsessed with killing by night.

Duch, the nickname he assumed when he was young and joined the guerrillas, told me that the torture centre at Tuol Sleng was set up in August 1975, four months after the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, and began work two months later. "I was given the task of creating it and starting it up, although I never found out why they chose me. Before 1975, when the Khmer Rouge lived in hiding, in the jungle, or in the liberated zones, I was the head of Office 13, I was the chief of police in the special zone bordering on Phnom Penh."

"Every day I had to read and check the confessions. I read from seven in the morning until midnight. And every day, towards three in the afternoon, Professor Son Sen, the minister of defence, summoned me. I had known him since my time as a high school teacher. It was he who had asked me to join the guerrillas. He would ask me how my work was going. Then a messenger would arrive, an envoy, who collected the confessions that were ready and took them to Son Sen. These messengers were the only links between one office and another."

"I obeyed. The work carried on until 7 January 1979, when the Cambodian liberation forces, supported by the Vietnamese, conquered Phnom Penh. There was no escape plan, no pull-out plan " After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the executioner blended back in among his countrymen, and disappeared, as so many did in the post-war chaos, swallowed up by the void.

Many years later he was converted to Christianity by American missionaries. His true identity was discovered in 1998 and soon afterwards he was arrested. After years of argument between the Cambodian government and the United Nations, the surviving members of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy are finally being brought to justice. They will be tried under a hybrid UN-Cambodian tribunal known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; the pre-trial hearings began in November and are still going on. Pol Pot, is long dead as is the bloodiest of his comrades, Ta Mok, died in 1996. But five senior leaders including Khieu Sampan, the Khmer Rouge president, await trial.

Duch made his first appearance in court in November when his lawyer asked for him to be let out on bail because his "human rights had been violated, even if he was not beaten or tortured". A ripple of ironic laughter ran round the courtroom. The request was rejected.

What more is there to say but hope he his remaining years are long and miserable?

Khmer Rouge head torturer stands trial

The genocide tribunal in Cambodia staged its first historic hearing yesterday when Kaing Guek Eav (aka Duch), the head of the butchering regime's Toul Sleng torture centre, appeared before the panel of judges, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The first hearing of the war crimes tribunal gives millions hope that the Khmer Rouge's senior leaders will finally face justice and provide answers as to why "Cambodians killed Cambodians". In the tribunal's so-called "pre-trial chamber" Duch was watched by a handful of journalists and members of the public. The atmosphere crackled as everyone craned to see the former maths teacher, who was in charge of a prison where 14,000 men, women and children died.

He stood before the panel of robed judges - three Cambodian and two international - bowed slightly and held his palms together in a gesture of respect. "My name is Kaing Guek Eav," he said. "I am 66 years old." Lawyers for Duch argued that their client should be given bail until his trial, due to begin in the middle of next year, as he has been held in custody for eight years without trial, which they said breached Cambodian and international law. But descriptions of the crimes committed on his orders at Toul Sleng prison were also detailed: the people allowed to bleed to death, victims whose toe-nails were pulled out, or those put in pits that filled with water until they drowned. Prosecutors argue that his freedom could stir anger and unrest and fear he might flee justice, and observers believe it highly unlikely the tribunal will grant him bail after refusing an earlier application.

Duch, who became a born-again Christian, was seized on May 10 1999, after confessing and expressing remorse to British photojournalist, Nic Dunlop, who spent years tracking him down. He claimed he acted on Pol Pot's orders. He was transferred into the custody of the £23m war crimes tribunal and charged in July when the rules governing the hearings were finally settled after tortuous talks between Cambodia and the UN. The landmark hearing brought a crumb of comfort to some of those who crowded into the courtroom to witness the day they have long awaited but feared would never come.

"[Duch] should acknowledge his guilt," said a villager, Chhouek Sao, 55, who lost five members of his family to the Khmer Rouge. It's obvious that justice has been delayed and some people are so frustrated by waiting for so long. We victims of the Khmer Rouge absolutely want Duch to be kept in jail forever because he killed so many people."

I wish Duch a long, lucid life so that he can reflect on his terrible crimes. He is a man with a lot of justice coming his way and a hell of a lot to repent.

Perhaps some justice?

Some very, very belated good news and hopefully a little justice for a Khmer Rouge butcher: Cambodian police have arrested Nuon Chea, the most senior survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Nuon Chea, 82, who was arrested as part of a UN-backed genocide investigation, has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity and Cambodian and foreign judges at a special genocide tribunal.

Known as “Brother Number 2”, he was second-in-command to Pol Pot from 1975-79 - during this 1m people, possibly more, were butchered. He has spent the past few decades living freely in Pailin near the Thai border, the movement's former jungle headquarters.

Nuon Chea rose quickly through the ranks of the Khmer Rouge, as it grew from a small Maoist rebel group to a force capable of taking over the country. Analysts say he had an important decision-making role in the regime, which instituted radical policies aimed at creating an agrarian utopia, but in reality caused the deaths of more than a million people through hunger, illness, overwork and execution. Nuon Chea himself has consistently denied any responsibility for the deaths, but earlier this year he indicated he was ready to face the tribunal.

UN-backed trials are finally expected to begin next year. Only one other suspect, Kang Kek Ieu - also known as Duch - has so far been detained Duch, who was arrested in July, was in charge of the notorious S21 jail in Phnom Penh, where more than 17,000 men, women and children are thought to have been imprisoned and brutally tortured. Four other people are said to be under investigation.

Survivors have welcomed the charges against Nong Chea and Duch, but they have also expressed doubts about whether these elderly leaders will ever be brought to account for their deeds during the Khmer Rouge years.

Why did it take so long for This butcher to be arrested? Why was a Khmer Rouge apparatchik allowed to keep the Cambodian UN seat after the Fall of the Khmer Rouge? What part did the Thais play in protecting the Khmer Rouge after 1978? Did the US indirectly support the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s? The responsibility for the Killing Fields lies fairly and squarely with the Khmer Rouge butchers, there are no mitigating circumstances. I have a feeling though that the Khmer Rouge’s survival for years after their overthrow is a story that will make uncomfortable reading.........