Thousands of men, women and children were duly photographed, tortured, their forced confessions transcribed and then killed at S-21, the former school converted into the secret police headquarters. The walls of the school today are covered with the photos of those killed.
Credit: Archives of the Cambodian Genocide Program |
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The long-awaited trial in Cambodia for surviving members of the Khmer Rouge (KR) marks a historic event. It will be the first time members of a communist regime have been tried under UN auspices for their actions while in power. This process took a giant step forward on 8 May 2006, when King Norodom Sihamoni approved the official list of Cambodian and foreign judges and prosecutors.
The 17 Cambodians and 13 foreigners will serve on what is officially being called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a joint UN-Cambodian Government-organised trial process that is expected to cost around US $50m.
Unofficially, the process has already come to be known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, or KRT for short.
The Khmer Rouge, led by the infamous Pol Pot, ruled Cambodia from 17 April 1975 until 7 January 1979.
After a bloody civil war from 1970 to 1975, the Khmer Rouge overthrew the US-backed Lon Nol regime and imposed an extreme totalitarian form of communism that led to the executions, starvation and disease of almost two million of the country’s population - one of the worst examples of human rights abuses in the history of the twentieth century given the high percentage of the population that was killed.
Urban areas were emptied, people with high school education and above were arrested and killed, religion was banned, all schools were closed, and Cambodia was completely cut off from most of the world.
After repeated cross-border raids against neighbouring Vietnam in 1977 and 1978, the communist government in Hanoi, a former ally of the Khmer Rouge, finally decided to oust the KR and organised a full-scale military invasion of Cambodia in late December 1978. A pro-Vietnamese political system was established in Phnom Penh, led by Heng Samrin, a member of the Khmer Rouge who had previously fled to Vietnam in fear of being killed. Samrin, along with Cambodia’s current prime minister, Hun Sen, as well as other Khmer Rouge defectors, formed the Peoples’ Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) in January 1979.
With Vietnamese and Soviet Bloc support, the PRK organised a tribunal in 1979, at which Pol Pot and KR deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ieng Sary, were convicted of genocide in absentia. They were sentenced to death.
Most observers believe that the trial was a politically motivated showpiece, lacking international legal standards. At the time, even the defence lawyer for the KR officials made no attempt to plead their innocence.
Although the KR had been ousted, they remained unbeaten. Pol Pot and his followers fled to the Thai border areas in the west of the country where they were given sanctuary by Thailand.
In one of the strangest combinations of Cold War bedfellows, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), the US and China actually helped revive the Khmer Rouge, along with two other armed Cambodian factions, out of fear that Cambodia would remain occupied by the Vietnamese army.
The 1980s saw a protracted guerilla war between what was called the Coalition Government of Democratic Cambodia (CGDK), which held a seat at the United Nations and included the KR, and the Vietnamese-backed PRK. Thus, any efforts at the time to prosecute the KR leaders were thwarted by political considerations.
Khmer Rouge secret police turned this Phnom Penh high school into its headquarters between 1975-78, renamed it S-21 and tortured and executed thousands in its former classrooms. Today it is a museum to remember the genocide.
Credit: Archives of the Cambodian Genocide Program
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Extensive negotiations led to a peace treaty signed in 1991, which resulted in the establishment of the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). At the time, it was the UN’s largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation, involving the deployment in Cambodia of 26,000 military, police and civilians, and costing about $2.3bn.
UNTAC organised and supervised elections (which the KR boycotted) in 1993 and which led to the formation of a new, internationally-recognised government - a first in more than 18 years. The KR was left in remote jungle areas, devoid of any major foreign backers.
At this stage, with Cambodia no longer a pawn in a power chess game, calls were again made for a trial to prosecute Khmer Rouge leaders.
The country’s two co-prime ministers, Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen, wrote to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, requesting help to conduct such a trial in 1996.
A prolonged, six-year negotiation process between the UN and the Cambodian government - interrupted by Cambodia’s own internal political disturbances and complicated by divergent views on what it would take to conduct an internationally recognised judicial process - resulted in an agreement to create a mixed UN-Cambodian tribunal in Phnom Penh.
That tribunal - the ECCC - is now firmly established with the appointment of the judges and prosecutors.
So what do the Cambodian people think about these tribunals? The short answer is that the response is mixed.
The Center for Social Development (CSD), an NGO with headquarters in Phnom Penh, conducted a series of public enquiries designed to look at the topic “Khmer Rouge and National Reconciliation”.
At meetings held in Phnom Penh, Battambang and Sihanoukville, participants were asked in a secret questionnaire: “Which solutions can bring about a true national reconciliation?” Participants were allowed to choose more than one answer, and an overwhelming 84 percent picked: “The former Khmer Rouge leaders must be tried” as their first answer.
Former Khmer Rouge general Ta Mok, known as ‘The Butcher’. On March 6, 1999 the general was captured by the Cambodian army near the Thai border and bought to Phnom Penh. He was the last leading member of the Khmer Rouge to remain at large in Cambodia.
Credit: Archives of the Cambodian Genocide Program
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When the CSD meetings took place, it was already clear that the period within which crimes would be examined for the KRT would be limited to the 17 April 1975 to 6 January 1979 period; this in spite of the fact that Cambodia had been engulfed in various forms of civil war from 1970 to 1998.
Accordingly, the CSD also listed the option: “The trial should apply to persons from all regimes both before 1975 and after 1979 and not just to the Khmer Rouge leaders”.
More than 56 percent of respondents chose this as their first answer, indicating that substantial segments of the population want something more that what the KRT will provide.
Youk Chhang, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge era, has been working closely with other survivors to help prepare them for the trial. As director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), Youk has spent the last decade collecting information on the Khmer Rouge. By the end of this year, DC-Cam will have brought more than 6,000 people who suffered during the Pol Pot regime to Phnom Penh to be acquainted with the trial process.
“The public has benefited from the discussion,” said Youk, reflecting on the many years it has taken to get the trial underway. His comments no doubt reflect that with such a high illiteracy rate in Cambodia, and the fact that high school graduates do not study the Khmer Rouge, many people have only scant information on the trial.
“People will use the tribunal in different ways and some have found justice already. They have overcome the fear of their killers,” he added.
“As for the $50m price tag for the trial, only a few people argue it is too much money,” says Youk.
One of those people is Cheng Eam, 53, from Kampot province. As one of the participants that DC-Cam brought to Phnom Penh to learn about the trial, Eam said the trial would be worthless and that the money should be spent on building houses.
In spite of the various opinions on the Khmer Rouge trial, it is clear that the wheels are turning on a process the outcome of which is difficult to predict.
“Once a trial begins, it is an organic thing, it takes on a life of its own,” says Peter McGuire, author of a book on the Nuremburg trials, and another called “Facing death in Cambodia”. “If Cambodia believes they can control the outcome of a credible war crimes trial, they are sadly mistaken.”
This report was written by Michael Hayes of the Phnom Penh Post for IRIN
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