The Khmer Rouge trials; Justice late, better than never

The Khmer Rouge trials

Justice late, better than never

Aug 7th 2014, 13:34 by L.H. | PHNOM PENH

For Cambodians it has been a long wait. Almost 35 years after the Khmer Rouge were driven from power by a Vietnamese invasion, the movement’s last surviving senior leaders have been found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to jail for life.

Or whatever is left of their lives. Nuon Chea, chief ideologue for the Khmer Rouge and “Brother No. 2” after Pol Pot, is 88 years old. Khieu Samphan, once the head of state in Democratic Kampuchea as the country had been renamed, is 83. When they were taken away from the purpose-built courthouse on August 7th, a palpable sense of relief descended on the room.

Hundreds of Cambodians had been brought from far and wide to pack the public gallery for the historic decision. Many of them hugged, smiled and bowed in a show of respect to the tribunal that saw the case through, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Bou Meng, a survivor of the S-21 torture and extermination camp, smiled broadly and expressed his approval simply: “good, good”.

In passing their final sentence, the judge Nil Nonn said that these two leaders had stripped Cambodians of their fundamental rights in the course of perpetrating a joint criminal enterprise to “suppress and subjugate the human population”. They were found guilty of conducting a systematic attack on civilians.

“The attack took many forms, including forced transfer, murder, extermination, enforced disappearances, attacks against human dignity and political persecution,” Mr Nil Nonn said. “This attack victimised millions of Cambodians.” He cited one testimony according to which witnesses saw “a Khmer Rouge soldier tear apart a crying baby who was crawling on his dead mother's body.”

As many as 2.2m people perished between April 1975 and January 1979. At that point the Vietnamese-led Communist takeover marked the end of one civil conflict but also the beginning of another, as Pol Pot led his loyalists into the jungle to fight a rearguard war against the new regime in the capital.

While the Khmer Rouge were still in Phnom Penh, the institution of money itself was abolished—along with all semblances of traditional Khmer life—as the cities and towns were emptied and millions of civilians forced into the remote countryside. There they were worked under wretched conditions, desperately lacking food, water and medicine.

In a way, there were too many crimes with which Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and many of their cohorts should have been charged. The fraction of their guilt that was decided in this hearing, Case 002/01 it is called, focused on the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh, the forced movement of people up until late 1977 and the persecution of former soldiers, civil servants and their families from the regime of Lon Nol, the American-backed nationalist who preceded them.

Nuon Chea wore his characteristic grimace and black sunglasses and remained seated in his wheelchair. Khieu Samphan stood as their verdicts and sentences were read. Neither man flinched.

Both had insisted they were innocent of the specific charges against them. At its heart their justification was that the evacuation of Phnom Penh had been deemed necessary to save the Cambodian people; they had reason to believe that the Americans were intending to bomb the capital. Mr Nil Nonn said the bench of international and Cambodian justices had decided their defence deserved no credence.

Nuon Chea had also claimed evidence used against him was “littered with doubts and full of lies”, in particular the testimony given by Kaing Guek Eav. “Duch”, as he is also known, is already serving a life sentence, for the role he played in killing thousands of detainees processed under his command at a prison complex called S-21.

Khieu Samphan’s judgment was less severe. The court found that he had never held sufficient authority to issue orders to commit the crimes in question. He had however “justified, defended and praised the common purpose and policies” of the Khmer Rouge that resulted in the atrocities.

The ECCC, which is backed by the UN, has been criticised sharply during its nine years in operation. Its critics fault it for lengthy delays; its susceptibility to interference by Cambodia’s current prime minister, Hun Sen; and for kickbacks to local staff, when it was being established.

It has also been costly. More than $200m has been spent on its proceedings already. The tribunal’s supporters justify the high cost by arguing that the total sum works out to equal about $100 for each person who died under the reign of the Khmer Rouge. It makes for a macabre accounting of the ultra-Maoists’ dream of moulding Cambodia into an agrarian utopia.

Youk Chhang is the executive director of an NGO called the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which has been dedicated to collecting evidence from the Khmer Rouge period that could be used in a prosecution. He is among those who thinks that the court’s search for justice was better late than never, even if its legal processes were flawed.

Its accomplishment is more significant, Mr Youk Chhang says, in light of the fact that the world has done so little to change its ways in the decades since the Cambodian nightmare. Indeed, in his view “since the UN signed the Genocide Convention in 1948, not one genocide has been prevented. A court of law is only established after millions have already died. We need to search for a means to prevent such crimes from happening again,” he said.

Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan know now where they will be spending the rest of their days, as they did long before this verdict. Whether this will be their final conviction is another question. Both men are facing additional charges of genocide in Case 002/02; it was launched last week and is expected to take another two years.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/08/khmer-rouge-trials

Three Years, Eight Months and Eleven Days, the Hell Cambodia went through..

When you travel, you see so much, experience much more, sometimes there are experiences locked in your heart that have to be shared, these haunt you, this is one of these experiences.
What do you expect,when you get to Cambodia? Angkor Wat, of course. Thousands of tourists pour into Cambodia every year to see the majestic Angkor Wat Complex. But Cambodia is not just The Khmer Empire with its temple complex at Angkor Wat. Cambodia nurses a deep, dark secret, which the people of Cambodia, the Khmers, insist on sharing with every tourist who visits their peaceful country.
A bit of history, we leave the turbulent times of long ago and move a little closer to our times. Between 1969 and 1973, as we know the United States of America fought a senseless war against Communism in Vietnam. United States Armed Forces bombed and briefly occupied Cambodia in an effort to disrupt the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge. Some two million Cambodians were caught in this absurd war and became refugees. Estimates of the number of Cambodians killed during these bombing campaigns vary widely, as do observations of the effects of the bombings.
As the Vietnam War ended, as was expected Cambodia faced severe famine in 1975. Most of its draft animals destroyed, rice planting for the next harvest had to be done by the hard manual labour of an already seriously malnourished people. As if that was not enough, as if the Khmers had not had enough of death, torment, starvation, the Khmer Rouge reached Phnom Penh and took power in 1975, led by Pol Pot.
If you wanted indescribable hell, Cambodia was the place to go during the Pol Pot Regime.
Pol Pot changed the official name of the country to Democratic Kampuchea. He and his aides forcibly evicted entire cities, sent people on forced marches to work on rural projects. Pol Pot attempted to rebuild the country's agriculture on the model of the 11th century. Everything Western was discarded; this included Western medicine, destruction of temples and libraries. At least two million Cambodians, out of a total population of 8 million, died from executions, overwork, starvation and disease.
And now, ladies and gentlemen,we enter Tuol Sleng.
Tuol Sleng was a high school, the Chao Ponhea Yat High School, here there was laughter, light and happy banter, children running everywhere, it was a happy place, as is any school. It was a school where mothers waited for their kids at the end of the day and asked them ‘How was your day today’ or would say to them ‘I have cooked something special for you’, or the child would say 'Do you know how mean that teacher is?
Overnight the Chao Ponhea Yat High School turned into Security Prison 21 (S-21).
Overnight the classrooms with black and yellow patterned tiles, where happy children had studied and played were converted into torture chambers, mass cells. The benches and chairs disappeared; we now have long iron bars to which prisoners were shackled. The shackles were fixed to alternating bars; or were fixed to the floor.
No more teachers and students reading out their lessons, reciting poetry or memorizing tables. The prisoners slept with their heads in opposite directions, on the floor without mats, mosquito nets, or blankets.
No more light hearted banter, no more silly quarrels, the shackled prisoners were forbidden to talk to each other.
Life in the prison followed a routine, much like the schoolchildren followed their own routine.
A day in the prison began at 4:30 a.m. when prisoners were ordered to strip for inspection. The guards checked to see if the shackles were slack, or if the prisoners had hidden objects they could use to commit suicide. Over the years, several prisoners had managed to kill themselves, so the guards were very careful with the shackles and the cells. The prisoners received four small spoonfuls of rice porridge and a watery soup of leaves twice a day. Drinking water without asking the guards for permission resulted in serious beatings. The inmates were hosed down every four days. The prison had very strict regulations, and severe beatings were inflicted on any prisoner who tried to disobey. Almost every action had to be approved by one of the prison's guards.
At Tuol Sleng commonplace objects changed into killer objects, you could die anywhere…
At Tuol Sleng, the ordinary boundary wall was no longer just a simple wall, it had rows upon rows of barbed wire always electrified....
At Tuol Sleng, a simple iron bed was not something where you slept after a hard day's labour, you could use it to shackle prisoners, and maybe if you felt like it you could slit their throats with a curved knife, that also can be used to to harvest coconuts......
At Tuol Sleng, the large yellow tiled classrooms, so happy and cheerful could be converted into box sized cells, where prisoners awaiting torture could be shackled....
At Tuol Sleng, the blackboard could be used to write the roll call of the cell inmates......
At Tuol Sleng, water boarding meant a sloping wooden piece,prisoners could be shackled and water from a blue watering can poured over their faces until they ‘confessed’.....
At Tuol Sleng, the pictures of women and men you see, were not those of merit students, about to receive prizes, they were of prisoners, who have given up hope, eyes vacant already dead.....
And the baby in his mother’s arms would never know what it is to crawl on the floor chasing his cat....
Welcome to the world of Pol Pot, where ordinary everyday objects take on different meaning and function.
Outside on a huge board, there are the rules for the inmates, written in Khmer and translated into French and English
1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that; you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dares to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

I read the rules, but I read and reread Rule 6
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
I cannot stop reading this rule. My son pulls me away gently.....

I sit on a stone seat under a frangipani tree, shedding its flowers gently on 14 graves. These were the graves of the prisoners found by the liberating Vietnamese Army, their throats slit. One of them a woman.
I pray, I do not know for what, Tuol Sleng teaches you to pray without words to any God who might hear your prayer.
For Three Years, Eight Months and Eleven Days the Cambodians prayed……..