A Meeting between Sihanouk and his comrades the Khmer Rouge leaders in 1973

Sihanouk in a working meeting with Khmer Rouge leaders including, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Hou Youn, Hou Nim, and two provincial chiefs not identified, in 1973 in Northern Cambodia

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Khmer Rouge Trial Chronology

Table of contents

1. Khmer Rouge Warden asks to be freed

2. Cambodia: Khmer Rouge Trial year Zero

3. Khmer Rouge court calls government witnesses

4. More recent upadated news (2009) on the Khmer rouge Trial and on Cambodia

5. Opposition parties sign pact to align under one name

6. Digging deep into the Kilkling Fields of Cambodia

7. Son Soubert's press release protesting Hun Sen celebrating January 7, as 'Liberation Day"

8. Flood of Funcinpec defectors continues

9. KRT staff targeted by lawyers

10. My View on the International Co-Prosecutor’s Request to File Charges Against Additional Members of the Khmer Rouge

11. No more KR Suspects, Cambodian prosecutor

12. Khmer Rouge Leader gets trial date,at last

13. 30th anniversary of Cambodia "liberation" Day marked

14. Cambodia: 30 Years after Fall of the Khmer Rouge, Justice still Elusive

15. Statement of the Co-Prosecutors, ECCC

16. Pity the Poor Neocons

17. KRT prosecutors at impasse

18. Cambodia enjoys exchanges and cooperation with Vietnam

19. Cambodia-Vietnam Central Banks sign MoU.

20. Cambodia: Khmer Rouge in Court:Policies and Practices of

the Past on Trial

21. The Politics of the Khmer Rouge Trial by the Vietnamese

22. Talks to Save Khmer Rouge Trials

23. John Kerry and the Khmer Rouge Trial link

24. Must Justice Be Seen To Be Done?

25. Kickback Claims stain the KRT

26. Realpolitik interview with Pen Sovann (Former Prime Minister of

Cambodia under Vietnamese occupation)

27. Interview with Pen Sovann by Dr. Naranhkiri Tith

28. Cambodia: Crisis Talks to Khmer Rouge Trials

29. My other web site containing additional supporting documents on the

Khmer Rouge Trial

30. Khmer Rouge regime public debate in Phnom Penh

31. A link of a Power Point presentation on Cambodia's failure to defend

itself against foreign aggressions

32. Major barrier to Khmer Rouge Trial is removed

33. Closure for Cambodia?

34. For whom the Bell tolls; unsolved murders under Hun Sen's dictatorship

35. CBA's road to Stand off with CEEE over fees on foreign lawyers representing accused

36 Statement from the Review Committee of the Extraodinary

Chambers in the Court of Cambodia

37. Bar fee dispute delays Khmer Rouge trials

38. High Time for Justice: The US and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal by Craig

Etcheson

39. Legal issues dominates discussion by Milton Osborne

40. Culture of Dependence on Foreign Patrons by David Chandler

41. Cambodian Bar Association accuses international judges of hindering

Khmer Rouge Tribunal (AP)

42. What is the Cambodian Bar Association (CBA), is it allied to Hun Sen?

43. International judges of ECCC say that April Plenary is not possible

44. issued at the Request of the National Judges of the ECCC

45. Khmer Rouge Trial a Step Closer

46. ECCC statement on the lowering of the fees by the CBA for foreign lawyers

47. Key Khmer Rouge Trial talk held; Not the end of the story yet

48. Statement from Rupert Skilbeck; Head of the Defence Support Section, regarding Agreement on the rules of proceedures in KRT

49. Observers say potential impediments await Cambodia's Genocide tribunal

50. Tribunal finally ready to probe 'Killingh Fileds.' KRT about to take off?

51.ECCC: Project Board Meeting Held

52. Khmer Rouge Tribunal Runs Out of Money

53. Khmer Rouge Trial; from the defense point of view

54. The ECCC Statement on the possible and likely facts that may constitute crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge

55. Time for answers from the 'kiliing Fields' Trial

56. First Khmer Rouge suspect quizzed

57. Khmer Rouge Official to Reveal Crimes

58. Mass Murderer on Notice

59. Assessing the 'Evil' of Democratic Kampuchea Throught the Origins of Ideologies

60. Genocide Tourism; Tragedy Becomes Destination

61. UN Urges Cambodia to Reconsider judges's Transfer from Genocide Tribunal

62. Freedom of Information law misinterpretation and manipulation by Hun Sen

63. UN Envoys Slam Cambodia over Genocide Judge's Transfer

64. Cambodian Government Heeds Call to Keep Judge at Genocide Tribunal

65. Innocent until Proven Guilty, Is there a Khmer Rouge Exception?

66. Chronology of the Khmer Roge Trial, Updated

67. A link to the most up-to-Date information on the activities of the ECCC

68. Top Khmer rouge leaders detained

69. Key Khmer Rouge figures charged

70. Key figures in the Khmer Rouge

71. Delayed and Denied

An important link to the Chronology of the Khmer Rouge Trial published by DCCAM. See also the link posted by Hun Sen and his CPP

(http://www.dccam.org/Archives/Chronology/Chronology.htm)

For recent updated news (2009) on the Khmer Rouge Trial and other news on Cambodia, please, click the link pasted below

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeof03b/id47.html

Digging deep into the killing fields of Cambodia

By Bun Ang Ung - posted Thursday, 6 December 2007

It is true that if there is a will, there is a way. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has so demonstrated with its recent arrests of former Khmer Rouge minister for foreign affairs Ieng Sary and his wife, ex-minister for social affairs Ieng Thirith.

There had been some doubt if Ieng Sary would be charged by the ECCC at all because of a royal pardon he had received in 1996 for his previous role in the Khmer Rouge regime. In 1979, he was sentenced to death along with Pol Pot by a “people's revolutionary tribunal” for genocide. In 1996, however, he led a breakaway faction that split the Khmers Rouge, hastening the end of its insurgency. He was rewarded with an amnesty which annulled the 1979 verdict. The pardon failed to last, however.

The ECCC did not charge Ieng Sary with genocidal crimes. To sidestep a potential controversy of trying the suspect twice for the same crime, it indicted him instead for crimes against humanity and war crimes. It is fascinating how legal terminology can be creatively exploited to suit a particular purpose.

An interesting question, nevertheless, is how deep the ECCC is prepared to dig into what else happened during the Khmer Rouge regime. Of course, the underlying agreement between the United Nations and the Cambodian government to create the ECCC refers only to crimes committed by “senior” leaders, which may appear to restrict the ECCC terms of reference. But the terminology seems to be loose enough for creative minds to explore further possibilities of enforcing liability for all involved, not just a select few.

The ECCC is charged with an interesting task of trying those who were alleged to be responsible for mass killings. This is the first necessary step towards addressing a culture of impunity that has, up to now, spread like bushfires in Cambodia. Its leaders in the past 50 years have been literally getting away with murder for too long. The ECCC trial ought to convey a message that their collective irresponsibility and impunity are no longer tolerated.

For now, the ECCC seems to deal only with soft targets - the losers who are also frail and in need of geriatric care. It is ironic that the arrests seem to do these accused a favour by bringing them to comfortable accommodations at the ECCC compound with nutritious food and round the clock top medical care. For any old and frail in any country, such a free treatment is a godsend.

It would be challenging, however, for the ECCC to extend their examination beyond the losers to include the winners who were thriving during the Khmer Rouge and are currently in government. Of course, incriminating evidence against winners is often unavailable, especially when they are still in power.

Influential academics and researchers, who had cosy relations with the Khmer Rouge, claimed they had found - when the Khmer Rouge was still in power - no evidence to support refugees’ early reports of killing fields in Cambodia. The reports were dismissed as a mere reflection of mental instability and as a justification for fleeing the country and their desire to be accepted for resettlement. Not until after the regime disintegrated have those same researchers produced evidence of the losers’ atrocities.

It would be an uphill, if not impossible, battle for the ECCC to dig deep to uncover what the winners were up to during the Khmer Rouge regime. It would have to take on some prominent ex-Khmer Rouge members who are now occupying high positions in the current government, such as the prime minister and minister for foreign affairs.

The prime minister was once a rising star in the Khmer Rouge cadre; he was a junior army officer who rose quickly to a commanding rank in the Khmer Rouge army in a relatively short period of time. It is indeed difficult to explain his meteoric rise without making an inference that he must have done something very right to impress, and thus secure quick promotions from the meritocratic regime that relied on mass killings to remain in power.

Another intricate case relates to the current finance minister, who served in 1976 as a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office of the Khmer Rouge regime when Pol Pot decided to appoint himself as prime minister, thus ending his obscure leadership role. It is incomprehensible that anyone could rise and stay close to the top without some essential personal attributes usually required by any tyrant. The minister was among the few in the leadership who survived Pol Pot’s suspicion and wrath; he would have had more than luck.

It is a tough call for the ECCC to come up with a full account of what all “senior” Khmer Rouge leaders and significant others did at the time. It would require much more than just the creative manipulation of the legal terminology.

But if there is will, there is way. Failing that, one has to wait until another regime change for evidence to come out.

The Politics of the Khmer Rouge Trial by the Vietnamese, in 1979

27 Years On, Another Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Luke Hunt | 30 Aug 2006

World Politics Watch Exclusive

(http://worldpoliticswatch.com/article.aspx?id=149)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Shortly after Vietnamese tanks rumbled across

Cambodia's border in late 1978 the Khmer Rouge elite fled the capital and a

new regime first attempted what the United Nations is poised to try again more

than a quarter of a century later -- account for the grisly deaths of up to two

million people.

Pol Pot and perhaps his closest friend from their university days in France, Ieng Sary, were long ago sentenced to death in absentia for genocide, in a trial widely regarded as a legal farce. It was so badly handled and wrapped-up in Cold War politics that it escaped the attention of the outside world and for only a handful of people it remains a distant and inconvenient memory.

In the wake of the Vietnam War, the West and Washington in particular preferred to recognize Pol Pot as head of state, and despite the atrocities committed by the hard line cadre that surrounded Brother Number One, Hanoi's occupation of Cambodia was deemed illegal and their Soviet-backed effort to deliver justice for the dead was damned as a rigged show trial.

Twenty-seven years later, however, that two-day tribunal is on the verge of

re-emerging onto the final stage of the Khmer Rouge era with legal ramifications that prosecutors would like the defense to forget, but with evidence so compelling and gut-wrenching that lawyers and the West can no longer ignore it.

The original trial began on Aug.15, 1979, with testimonies from 54 people.

Hundreds in the audience wept openly as Sim Phia told the court: "Hidden

from behind a coconut tree, I saw the soldiers take nine children from 10 to

13 years of age out of trucks.

"The children's arms were tied. The soldiers pulled them up to the bridge over

the pool. No matter how much they cried or shouted for help, they were thrown

in as prey for the crocodiles."

Vang Pheap, a guard at the notorious S-21 torture and execution camp delivered unfettered insights into how 16,000 people would meet their ultimate fate. Pits were dug ahead of time and the prisoners were struck with an iron bar: "After that, Pol Pot's men cut the victims' throats or ripped their bellies to pluck

the liver."

Denise Alfonso, a former secretary at the French embassy, witnessed

cannibalism.

"The condemned man was tied to a tree, his chest bare and a blindfold over

his eyes. Ta Sok the executioner, using a large knife, made a long cut in the

stomach of the poor man."

Ms Alfonoso then testified the man screamed like a wild beast: "His insides

were all laid bare, and Ta Sok cut out the liver and cooked it on a little stove. . .

. They divided the liver among them and ate it hungrily."

Mass killings were well documented and Bun Sath, a political officer, told the

court of the steady precision required to carry out the leadership's commands.

Evenings were preferred because the streets were deserted. The prisoners

were bound in pairs and bashed on the napes of their necks.

Up to 300 were killed in a session: "We began at 6pm and continued until 9pm

or 10pm," the court heard.

Evidence of genocide committed against ethnic Muslim Chams, Vietnamese,

Chinese and intellectuals was overwhelming, and on Aug. 19 Pol Pot and Ieng

Sary were sentenced to death in absentia while they were holed-up in the

jungles of the remote countryside.

While the testimony was honest, the tribunal was not.

Hope Stevens, an African American, landed the job of defending Pol Pot and

Ieng Sarry. Because of her own background, she described herself as an

expert on "genocide, murder, rape, torture, mutilation, lynching and deprivation

of human rights."

She then labeled her own clients as "criminally insane monsters."

Few would take the verdict seriously, including the Khmer Rouge, which would

continue to wage its wars for another two decades. But that changed in 1996

when serious efforts were finally made to end the conflict and Ieng Sary, along

with the troops he personally commanded, defected.

His defection was assured only after negotiating a pardon of the verdict from

then-king Norodom Sihanouk. Thus from a legal standpoint the 1979 tribunal

was legitimized, posing serious questions for the current trial, which is

expected to get underway in earnest by early next year, and whether or not

Ieng Sary can be tried for genocide.

In his own mind, Ieng Sary believed he had immunity from any future prosecution.

However, advisors to the trial will argue that while a royal pardon may exempt

Ieng Sary from being put in the dock again on charges of genocide, the ageing

former foreign minister and Khmer Rouge power broker could still be charged

with murder or crimes against humanity.

Pol Pot, like many others in his circle who may have faced justice, has since

died. Of those who remain, Ieng Sary's wife Ieng Tirith, Brother Number Two

Nuon Chea and former prime minister Khieu Samphan are chief candidates for

prosecution at the tribunal.

If justice is to be delivered, a fair trial of Ieng Sary is crucial, but this will only

become possible once the legalities of the long forgotten 1979 tribunal have

been dealt with.

And this time around it will be those same original detractors -- the United

States, Australia, France and Japan -- who as chief backers of the current

tribunal will be forced to pay attention.

Luke Hunt is a Hong Kong-based journalist who has covered Cambodia for

many years. He was the Phnom Penh bureau chief for Agence France-Presse

from 2001 to 2004.

World Politics Watch

Talks to Save Khmer Rouge Trials

BBC

Cambodian and international judges have begun talks to prevent the possible

collapse of the Khmer Rouge trials.

The trials - which aim to put the surviving leaders of the brutal Maoist regime in

the dock - have ground to a halt over procedural differences. Foreign judges want full international legal standards, while the Cambodians say local law must take precedence.

About two million people died during the years that the Khmer Rouge ruled

Cambodia in the 1970s.

Aging defendants

Trial hearings are theoretically due to start later this year. But according to the

BBC correspondent in Phnom Penh, Guy De Launey, there is a real possibility

that the trials will collapse before they have even started.

The international judges have made it clear that they see this week's meeting as the final chance to make sure the trials meet international standards. "All the judges are mindful that the upcoming... meeting is of vital importance," tribunal officials said in a recent statement.

If an agreement cannot be achieved, the foreign contingent will ask the UN to

pull out. But local officials have been equally adamant that Cambodian law has

to have prime importance in the special courts, and according to our

correspondent, they feel they have been unfairly portrayed as being the sole

cause of the delays.

There are more than 100 items under discussion at this week's talks, but many

have already been resolved after lengthy informal negotiations.

Those involved admit that time is of the essence, if they are to bring elderly

Khmer Rouge members to court. "There is one point on which the international

judges are unanimous - these trials should take place quickly or not at all,

" French judge Marcel Lemonde of France told AFP news agency.

The death of military commander Ta Mok late last year heightened fears that

more key defendants and witnesses could die before facing justice.

Pol Pot, the founder and leader of the Khmer Rouge, has already died, in a

camp along the border with Thailand in 1998.

Story from BBC NEWS:

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6425589.stm)

Published: 2007/03/07 06:21:19 GMT

Johns Kerry is responsible for the collapse of the Khmer Rouge Trial.

Note: Please, click the link pasted below, to read a detailed file on the Chronology of the Khmer Rouge Trial.

(http://www.cambodia.gov.kh/krt/english/chrono.htm)

(Comments: In this file, you can see that Senator John Kerry (D. Mass) was instrumental in allowing Hun Sen to hijack the Khmer Rouge Trial process, by supporting the ruthless Cambodian dictator's plan to turning the trial from an international responsibility into Hun Sen's. His irresponsible act is the more tragic that Kerry knew full well that there was no judicial system that would meet international standard of justice in Cambodia under Hun Sen's corrupt and oppressive regime. Hun Sen used the pretext of Cambodian sovereignty for his hijacking of the Khmer Rouge Trial. It is the highest point of irony or hypocrisy in this tragic event that Hun Sen, a person who was put there by a foreign power (Vietnam) to control Cambodia, is now using Cambodian sovereignty as an excuse for denying the international standard of justice being applied to the Khmer Rouge Trial.

The excerpt taken from the above link on 'the chronology of the Khmer Rouge Trial,' clearly shows how Senator John Kerry, in 1999, lent his prestige, as a senator of the United States of America, and provided Hun Sen a perfect excuse to hijack to whole Khmer Rouge Trial process by turning it away from the responsibility of United Nations into that of the Hun Sen, despite the fact that Cambodia's judicial system is totally subservient to Hun Sen's political maneuvers, and totally corrupt.

For this reason, John Kerry owes the Cambodian people a sincere apology for the harm and suffering he has done to them. And more importantly, he must assume full responsibility of taking the initiatives of returning to the Cambodian people justice and normalcy in their life that he took away from them, by working hard to reverse his tragic and irresponsible act in 1999, and by asking the US Congress to request the Bush Administration to stop treating Hun Sen's regime as a democratic nation-state, which it is not. More importantly, the US Congress and the Bush Administration should take the Khmer Rouge Trial away from Hun Sen's corrupt and deadly grip. Hun Sen is a vicious dictator, and does not respect the rule of law, democratic principles, or human rights, the very principles that the USA is promoting, so loudly, all over the world. The USA should do what it so loudly preaches, and not completely the opposite. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC March 12, 2007)

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Excerpts from the above-link on the Khmer Rouge Trial

6 March; 1999

Khmer Rouge military leader Ta Mok was arrested and charged with violation of the 1994 Law to Outlaw the Democratic Kampuchea Group.

15 March

The Report of the Group of Experts recommending a completely international tribunal was presented to the General Assembly and Security Council.

April

Meeting between Senator John Kerry and Samdech Prime Minister, in which were laid own the principles of a national court with participation by foreign judges.

9 May

Duch, former director of S-21 Tuol Sleng prison was arrested and charged with the 1994 Law to Outlaw the Democratic Kampuchea Group.

Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Human Rights in Cambodia, His Excellency Thomas Hammarberg reached agreement with Prime Minister Hun Sen on a compromise of "national proceedings with international characteristics."

Cambodia requested a team of legal experts from France to help this issue, and France sent to Cambodia a team of high-level legal experts.

July

Prime Minister Hun Sen requested technical assistance from the UN in drafting the Law.

Australian government responds to Cambodian appeal for assistance by sending an expert to work with the Cambodian Government in preparing for the trials.

In New York the Office of Legal Affairs made its own proposal for the trials and presented it to members of the Security Council.

20 August

The Royal Government created its "Task Force for Cooperation with Foreign Legal Experts and Preparation of the Proceedings for the Trial of Senior Khmer Rouge Leaders", of which Sok An was appointed the chairman.

The Task Force commenced its work by drafting the law. This first draft law was produced in August 1999 and presented to a United Nations delegation led by H.E. Ralph Zacklin, deputy of Hans Corell who is in charge of legal affairs of the United Nations and holding the rank of Under Secretary-General.

The Cambodian Draft Law received legal and other technical contributions from experts from France, India, Russia and Australia, as well as the United States, in addition to the input from the United Nations.

The first UN delegation, sent in August 1999, studied the first draft law and presented its own draft. At that time there was no consensus. One major difference was that Zacklin wanted foreign judges to hold the majority, while Cambodia claimed that Cambodian judges must be in the majority.

20 September

During the United Nations General Assembly Samdech Prime Minister met H.E. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and he submitted a memorandum of three points, offering three options:

Firstly: the United Nations can contribute to providing judges and experts to help modify the draft law to achieve what is known as credibility, in conformity with procedures trusted by the international community, and can also provide judges to work with Cambodian judges in the court;

Secondly: the Secretary General may choose only to provide legal experts to help establish the draft law, and let Cambodian judges work alone at the trial stage;

Thirdly: the United Nations may withdraw from the process, and let Cambodia establish the draft law and organize the trial by itself.

At that time, the Secretary-General did not respond directly to the memorandum, but asked for the continuation of negotiations.

Must Justice be Seen to be Done?

Public Scrutiny and Participation in the ECCC

Everyone is waiting for the drama of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal ("KRT") to begin. But what many people do not realize is that, in many ways, it has begun.

As the judges wrangle over the internal rules and observers worry about the

integrity of the court, the prosecutors are already deep in the process of gathering the evidence to make their case, and getting ready to forward their files or dossiers to the investigating judges. Although the formal legal process will not actually begin until the internal rules governing the KRT are finalized, the pre-trial stage is already well under way. And because the pre-trial period is the heart of the civil law process on which Cambodian law is based, it is imperative that we understand that there be public scrutiny of this period.

The Heart of the Matter: the Pre-Trial Period

Everyone has been looking forward to seeing the most senior and most

responsible leaders of the Khmer Rouge ("KR") regime publicly tried for their past crimes. However, the public trial is bound to surprise some people when it eventually happens. Anyone expecting the Hollywood-like drama of a senior member of the KR being cross-examined by a quick-witted lawyer is likely to be disappointed. This is because the Cambodian justice system follows the French civil law model.

In this system, the pre-trial stage is the lengthiest period of the proceeding where information is gathered, witnesses are interrogated by the investigating judges, and credibility is determined. What happens at this stage dictates who will be charged, what crimes they will be charged with, and what recommendations the investigating judges will make to the trial judges. Eventually, the accused person(s) will stand before a panel of Khmer and foreign judges, and answer the well-documented charges against them. As we wait in the interim, some of the most important dramas and decisions of this historical trial are taking and will take place behind closed doors.

Civil Law vs. Common Law

It is not surprising that legal observers in Cambodia sometimes disagree about the kinds of laws that would best serve the KRT and the Cambodian people. This disagreement is really about a choice between the world's two major legal systems: civil law (or inquisitorial system, prevalent in Europe), and common law (adversarial system, used in the United Kingdom and its former colonies, e.g., the United States). Not all civil and common law systems are the same, but they tend to have general principles in common.

Civil law advocates believe that their system is the most efficient and fair, because it puts its trust in a neutral investigating judge whose job is not to find the guilt of the suspect, but to find the truth before the public trial begins. To find this elusive truth, the judge plays the role of interrogator, investigator, and decision-maker. The investigating judge evaluates the dossier submitted by the prosecutor, and directly questions parties and witnesses. Both the judges and the prosecutors represent the interests of the State, and work closely together, but it is the investigating judge who decides whether the prosecution has provided enough evidence against the accused for a case to go to trial. If s/he feels a prosecution would not be worthwhile under the circumstances, s/he has broad discretion to dismiss the case. Thus, the strength of this system lies in the power of the investigating judge, who is

ideally neutral and investigates evidence without any bias.

Common law advocates do not place so much trust in the benevolence of the State. Because the adversarial system questions all "truths" that emerge from behind closed doors, it takes the interrogating and investigating roles away from the judge, and gives them to the parties themselves, to debate in open court. There is an emphasis on openness and equality of arms; the public is able to observe the decision-making process as it happens. There is no investigating judge; the pre-trial period is short.

The public trial is the heart of the process. The parties are much more active,

challenging the sufficiency of the evidence and cross-examining witnesses to

test their credibility. By making the parties equal in status and by ensuring the evidence is legitimate and gathered in a legal way, the courts can help keep the police and the prosecution honest. The facts and law are debated in public, and the ultimate decision is usually made by a jury selected randomly from the community. The jury decides on the facts of the case, and the judge rules on the law. The judge merely acts as a referee, and has the power to impose the sentence.

Unfortunately, neither system is perfect. The civil law system is faulted for

neglecting a defendant's rights, while the common law system is criticized for putting a defendant's rights above the truth. The inquisitorial system is praised for its efficiency, while the adversarial system is criticized for its tendency to draw out the length of the trial by invoking procedural technicalities.

Both systems work best within a structure of true checks and balances, where the judiciary is independent from the influence of State leadership.

If judges are given unfettered discretion and are in collusion with the State with no external forces to counter-balance that power, the defendant faces extreme vulnerability and potential abuse of State power. While the civil law system may work well in a country like France with real consequences for biased judges, countries that lack such safeguards may do well to follow the adversarial system, which recognizes the imbalances inherent in a government prosecution and opens its evidence and legal process to scrutiny.

Pre-Trial Process: The Need for Public Scrutiny

The KRT was established for Cambodians for a variety of well-considered reasons. Not only was it established to bring the perpetrators to justice, but also so that justice could be seen to be done. It was established to set the historical record straight, to stimulate a national discussion, and to begin a long-overdue process of national reconciliation. It is difficult to achieve these goals if the important pre-trial process is conducted completely in private.

Some mechanisms are in place to inform the Cambodian public about the progress of the KRT, such as its public affairs office and a number of NGOs' outreach efforts, but it is likely that the bulk of the pre-trial process will take place in private.

All of these issues are more important than usual because this trial is more

important than usual. This is a trial about past atrocities, brought on behalf of the Cambodian people - so the people have both the need and the right to watch the trial process as it unfolds. Because a case in the civil law system unfolds almost completely before the public trial begins, it is imperative that the KRT institute some kind of formal public communication at the pre-trial stage. Whether this is through a special public hearing of witness testimony or a statement by the investigating judges summarizing the evidence, the pre-trial process in this momentous case must be transparent and open to public scrutiny.

Public Participation: the Involvement of Civil Parties

One significant way the public can be involved in the KRT from beginning to end is as a partie civile or "civil party" to the case. This idea, provided for in Cambodian law and squarely rooted in French civil law, allows a victim to participate in criminal proceedings as a civil complainant and to claim damages from an accused. A victim enters the process by filing a complaint with the prosecutor, and if it is relevant to the charges, a victim may potentially have similar rights to that of the defendant, such as access to the dossier and opportunities to be involved in the investigative process.

Although it is generally agreed that it would be impracticable for the KRT to be

used as a forum for reparation claims, the provisions permitting a civil party to be closely involved with the process are currently being considered. This is potentially a major breakthrough for victim involvement in the international criminal trials.

Reconciling the Laws in Cambodia

Cambodian law is a patchwork quilt of different traditions, including aspects of the adversarial and inquisitorial systems. Current laws have been influenced by the various international legal scholars who rotate through Phnom Penh and NGOs, offering funding and advice. Although the French relationship with Cambodia has the deepest roots, the foundations of Cambodia's relatively recent democracy and much of the content of its legal rights derive from common law norms found in the Cambodian Constitution and international instruments adopted by Cambodia, ie, the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights.

Cambodia's inquisitorial legal system provides clear benefits to the administration of justice, such as efficiency, truth-seeking, and the potential for KR victims to be involved with the KRT process as civil parties. However, it should also consider making its secret pre-trial process more adversarial and more open to public scrutiny. In recognition of the important values the KRT seeks to uphold, it would do well to incorporate the best aspects of both legal traditions.

Holly Telerant

CSD pro bono Attorney

Pen Rany

Court Watch Project Manager

The Center for Social Development (CSD) bears full responsibility for the

opinions expressed in the Voice of Justice.

Realpolitik with Pen Sovann

[Former Cambodian Prime Minister Pen Sovann sits before a photo taken of him shortly...]

Born in Takeo in 1936, Pen Sovann dropped out of school at 15 and joined a local anti-French movement led by Ek Choeun, later infamous as Ta Mok. After the Indochina War in 1954, he was one of some 1,000 Cambodians "regrouped" to Vietnam for military training. He joined the Khmer Rouge in 1970, and was in

charge of information until 1974. Claiming that "Pol Pot and Ieng Sary wanted to kill me," he fled back to Vietnam and was instrumental in forming the United

Front for the National Salvation of Cambodia in 1978. After the Vietnamese-

backed overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, he became the Front's secretary-general, and Prime Minister in 1981. Later that year, just days after criticizing the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia, his home was surrounded by "900 troops and 12 tanks," and he was handcuffed, covered with a black mask,

and rushed to Hanoi were he would spend the next 10 years in prison and home arrest.

Today, he sits in a wooden gazebo over a fish pond behind his home in Takeo

town. Tacked to the wooden walls are sepia-tinted photographs of Sovann alongside CPP stalwarts Hun Sen, Chea Sim, Say Phou Thong. In one he's standing in the back of a Soviet jeep reviewing troops in front of the Royal Palace in 1980. In another he's sharing a light moment with retired King Norodom Sihanouk. It's a comfortable home, but modest for a former head of state who has visited the White House, the Pentagon and the Kremlin. Besides the occasional foreign reporter or diplomat (former US Ambassador Charles Ray once lunched here), his days are undisturbed. He's the president of the National Sustaining Party of Cambodia, but the party sign in front of his home is adorned with rust and peeling paint. The government has been labeling him mentally ill for years.

Sovann once told the Post: "Cambodian politics has the head of a chicken and

the ass of a duck. They speak about democracy and multiple political parties, but they practice communist ways."

He spoke to Charles McDermid on February 17 about Ta Mok, Hun Sen and

the CPP's lingering links to communism.

Why do so many people have the opinion that you're crazy?

This comes from Hun Sen. In 1993 he made a statement to the people saying

I had mental problems. The people asked: "Where is Pen Sovann now?" And

Hun Sen said he's still alive, but he's stupid now and when he talks he foams

at the mouth. This isn't true. A person should be judged by how they act.

What was it like to work with "The Butcher" Ta Mok?

I met Ta Mok in August, 1949. Later, I became his bodyguard and adviser. At

the time he was teaching people about resistance tactics. He was a good help

to many people. At that time he was a good person with a good character. He

started to change around 1968.

How did you react when you learned Ta Mok died last year?

I had two feelings. First I felt very sorry to lose the person who taught me about

fighting injustice from 1949 to 1954. I also thought it was fair enough for him to die.

Ten of my relatives, including my siblings, died because of Ta Mok. I started

hating him in 1972: at that time he changed from a rabbit to a bear.

What was your relationship with Pol Pot?

I met him many times: the first was on March 12, 1950 and the last time was

March 18, 1970. At first we talked about the movement against the French. He had a good background and he had a good character at the time. Like Ta Mok he started to change around 1968 when he became influenced too much by China and became a Maoist.

Why did you leave the Khmer Rouge in 1974?

It was caused by different views on policy. They had started to trample on the

people and were following Mao. There was no justice. I went to Vietnam as a refugee. At the time Vietnam didn't want me to stay. They thought I was a spy for the Khmer Rouge. I tried to explain that the Khmer Rouge were killing

Cambodian people and that one day Pol Pot will try to invade Vietnam. At the time they didn't believe me. It wasn't until 1977 that Vietnam believed me.

They asked me to select people in border areas who were unhappy with the

Khmer Rouge to come to be trained in Hanoi. Among these people were Chea Sim, Hun Sen and Say Phou Thang and others who are now running the present government.

What was your first impression of Hun Sen?

First, he is a very proud man. He has always had one characteristic: he knows that Vietnam believes in him. I appointed him to be a member of the Front. I knew that the leaders in Vietnam thought Hun Sen was young and clever, but he had no experience and spoke no other languages. In October 1978, when I saw that they wanted to promote Hun Sen I went to them and asked them not to promote him. I asked that they not let Hun Sen be so proud. He was only in his 20s at the time.

Do you regret asking Vietnam to come into Cambodia to fight the Khmer Rouge?

I have no regret. I was the one who asked them to help, and they helped a lot of

people. But I asked for assistance, not an invasion.

To what extent does Vietnam continue to have an influence in Cambodia

government?

You must understand, Vietnam does not want to make Cambodia better. They

want Cambodia's economy to collapse. There is Vietnamese influence from top

officials to basic officials and the police. The people don't like this, they have

never liked the Vietnamese style.

Are you a communist?

I am not a member of any Communist Party. Communism itself is not bad, but its implementation has been bad. Communism states clearly to respect human rights, the poor and the benefit of the nation. I stopped believing in ommunism in March 1981 because communist regimes have slow economicgrowth, and under the powerful people in the party, citizens don't have freedom.

Why were you removed as prime minister?

The party leaders in Hanoi were trying to control everything in Cambodia: the

military, immigration and the economy. First, they accused me of building a

free-market economy that was against communist practice. Second, they

accused me of being a "narrow-minded nationalist" for speaking out against

Vietnamese immigration. Third, that I was disobedient for not respecting orders

from Hanoi. There were other things, too. I was against the K5 program [a

strategic military belt along the Thai border] and I had started an airport tax.

The charges weren't real. They were designed to arrest me, and the leaders

of the Front agreed.

After you, the next Prime Minister was Chan Si. In Margaret Slocumb's book

The People's Republic of Kampuchea 1979-1989 [pp 143-144], she wrote that

you believed Chan Si was killed by Hun Sen at a banquet in Phnom Penh in

1987. How did Chan Si die?

I could not give any comments about how the former Prime Minister Chan Si

died because I could get in trouble if I speak. This [story] has a lot of secrets.

In October 1991, the People's Revolutionary Party of Kampuchea (PRPK) officially abandoned Marxism-Leninism and changed its name to the CPP. Since that time, has the CPP acted in a democratic fashion or a communistic fashion?

Until now the ruling party was communist. Now they speak of democracy, but

it's just talk. It's communist inside. I have seen that the CPP's hierarchy and

policies are formed in the communist fashion. They talk about democracy just

because it sounds good. In reality what they implement is not the same as what they say. Cambodian people have never had real democracy. The country is controlled by powerful people, and the poor people are their slaves.

In your career in politics, what are you most proud of?

That no one could ever buy me.

Are you a patriot?

I don't want to be judged by words from my lips, but rather from my actions in the past.

Phnom Penh Post, Issue 16 / 04, February 23 - March 8, 2007

For permission to publish any part of this publication, contact Michael Hayes,

Editor-in-Chiefhttp://www.PhnomPenhPost.com - Any comments on the website

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CBA's road to standoff with ECCC

The Cambodian Bar Asssociation (CBA): Its roots, membership, political affiliation (CPP), structure, and policy:

1995: The Law on the Bar is passed. Cambodian Bar Association (CBA) is

established with Say Bory as president.

October 1998: Ang Eng Thong is elected CBA president.

2003: Cambodia's pending membership of the World Trade Organization requires the CBA to consider lifting restrictions on the rights of foreign lawyers to practice in the country. Restrictions are not lifted.

January 2004: Four senior members of the CPP - Hun Sen, Sar Kheng, Sok An, and Prum Sokha - apply to join the Bar Association.

February 2004: The Cambodian government-funded renovation of the CBA's Phnom Penh headquarters begins.

September 15, 2004: Hun Sen, Sar Kheng, Sok An, and Prum Sokha are sworn in as members of the CBA, despite evidence that none possess the requisite qualifications, such as a law degree.

September 16, 2004: Hun Sen presides over the opening of the CBA's new office building on Street 180.

October 16, 2004: Presidential elections for the CBA are held. In the second-

round runoff, incumbent president Ky Tech loses the election with 108 votes

to Soun Visal's 127.

October 26, 2004: Tech alleges that Visal breached the CBA's campaigning

rules and refuses to relinquish power.

November 19, 2004: The Court of Appeals holds a closed-door session in which the results of the October 16 election are nullified. Tech is awarded an interim three months presidency.

November 30, 2004: A majority of the council members of the CBA issue a statement backing Visal and saying they will refuse to recognize any actions taken by Tech.

June 2, 2005: The Supreme Court annuls the November 19 Court of Appeals

decision and sends the case back to them. Buoyed by this decision, Visal has a new CBA official stamp and bar letterhead made.

June 27, 2005: Tech filed a complaint with the Phnom Penh Municipal court accusing Visal and his colleagues of forgery over the use of the CBA's

official stamp and bar letterhead.

July, 4 2005: 12 CBA Council members appeal to Hun Sen for intervention to resolve the dispute over the presidency. No intervention is forthcoming.

July 6, 2005: 12 CBA Council members appeal to the Ministry of Justice for

intervention to resolve the dispute over the presidency. No intervention is

forthcoming.

September 15, 2005: 12 CBA council members request that the election of the council members - scheduled for October 16 - be combined with a vote for president. They also urge Tech to drop charges of forgery against Visal.

Both requests are denied and the CBA council members election is cancelled.

September 2005: The International Bar Association (IBA) warns the CBA it faces expulsion unless it can hold free, fair, and open elections.

December 5, 2005: Tech, Visal, and 17 of the 19 CBA council members convene at the bar office and, after discussion mediated by Mark Ellis, executive director of the IBA, agree to annul the results of the October 2004 presidential election and organize a new presidency and council election for March 16, 2006. It is agreed that all lawsuits will be withdrawn from the courts.

December 26, 2005: The agreement is sent to the general prosecutor at the Appeal Court, Hanrot Raken, who forwards it to the court for consideration.

The Appeal Court fails to respond. The March 16 election is unable to proceed.

July 17, 2006: The Appeal Court instructs Tech to organize presidency and council elections.

July 28, 2006: Tech invites council members to discuss the process of election preparation and the qualifications of the presidential and council candidates.

August 9, 2006: The CBA council decides, by a slim majority, to hold elections on October 16, 2006.

October 16, 2006: The CBA holds bar presidency and council member elections. In the second-round runoff Tech receives 157 votes, clearly beating Visal's 143, and giving him the presidency until October 2008.

"Even though it is unjust, I want to end the dispute; I am very bored with it,

" Visal said after the election.

November 20, 2006: Tech addresses the plenary session of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). His comments, and questions he raised about the roles of the CBA and the ECCC's defense unit, are controversial, ECCC observers say.

November 22, 2006: Tech threatens to take legal action against anyone who participates in a five-day training course on international criminal law offered by the Defense Office of the ECCC and the IBA.

November 23, 2006: The CBA issues a letter ordering members not to attend the IBA training session.

November 24, 2006: The IBA cancels the training course and issues a statement in which it says the CBA's prohibition on the training course is part of a wider scheme of opposition designed to obstruct the operation of the ECCC.

November 25, 2006: Officials from the ECCC fail to agree on crucial procedural rules. The most contentious issue is the role of the Defense Office of the ECCC and the process of certifying foreign lawyers to practice in Cambodia.

December 5, 2006: Human Rights Watch says the CBA's attacks on the ECCC's defense office are "politically charged."

December 5, 2006: Sok An writes to the United Nations asking to reopen dialogue to resolve the dispute over the role of the defense office at the ECCC.

December 19, 2006: Extracts of the UN's response to Sok An are released by the ECCC. The response quotes previous UN/Cambodian government agreements over the establishment of a defense office at the ECCC.

January 16, 2007: ECCC judges convene for a two-week meeting aiming to find a consensus on internal rules.

January 26, 2007: ECCC judges fail to reach agreement. The most important

unresolved issue is the right of foreign counsel to appear before the tribunal.

March 7, 2007: The ECCC rules committee meets in a final attempt to reach

agreement over the court's draft internal rules.

March 16, 2007: The international judges on the ECCC rules committee say the fees the CBA demands from foreign lawyers wanting to practice at the ECCC are too high. They say the CBA's fees are the only remaining obstacle to adopting the court's internal rules.

-Compiled by Cat Barton

Phnom Penh Post, Issue 16 / 06, March 23 - April 5, 2007

For permission to publish any part of this publication, contact Michael Hayes, Editor-in-Chiefhttp://www.PhnomPenhPost.com - Any comments on the website

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Khmer Rouge Regime public debate in Phnom Penh

(Comments: Thun Saray and Steven Morris seem to be echoing exactly what I had said in my interviews on the KRT with RFA)

Source: Development Weekly; February 26-March 4, 2007

Both Khmer Rouge victims and Cambodian youths discussed Khmer Rouge regime. Curiosity about the barbarous regime was revealed through numerous questions posed by guest speakers.

The questions included: “who is responsible for the Khmer Rouge regime and

why didn’t the United Nations intervene to prevent Pol Pot from killing the people?”

Responding to the questions, Philip Short, an author on the DK regime, said

that the UN did not want to encroach on the sovereignty and territory which

of a state which was its member.

Regarding foreign involvement in the regime, Steven Morris, author of a book

called ‘Why Vietnam invaded Cambodia.’ and other guest-speakers mentioned

the important role of Vietnam and China concerning the matter. “Without the

support of these two nations, the Khmer Rouge regime would not have existed

in Cambodia, “ he said.

The gathering of Vietnamese troops to liberate successfully on January 7, 1979, was not a humanitarian act, but “an invasion for its own interests,”

claimed Steven Morris.

The Vietnamese government was angry with the DK, which had taken a stance against the Vietnamese government, he explained, adding that Vietnam had decided to help “Kampuchea liberation troops’ by launching a massive attack on the Khmer Rouge regime and put in place a regime friendly to its government.

Balance of peace and justice

The forum’s participants condemned the Khmer Rouge regime and urged its leaders to be tried as soon as possible because ex-Khmer Rouge leaders who will likely face the tribunal are now getting old can chronically ill.

Thun Saray said that finding the truth of the history will offer a new identity to the Cambodian society.

“The justice demanded by Cambodian people and supported by the international community, with the formation of the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia, capable of trying senior Khmer Rouge leaders and people with the highest responsibilities for the most serious crime form 1975 to 1979, can contribute only to one part of the goal of seeking truth and justice from the Khmer Rouge regime, since it is needed to keep balance between peace and justice,” he added.

Like other guest speakers, Thun Saray warned that the ECCC will further hurt Cambodians, if it fails to try former Khmer Rouge leaders, because the treatment of the deep wound of the people depends on the special tribunal’s process.

Statement from the Review Committee of the Extraordinary

Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

On 16 March 2007, the Review Committee concluded a ten-day session in Phnom Penh on the draft Internal Rules. During the session, the Review Committee discussed in exhaustive detail many points and resolved all remaining disagreements, although some fine tuning remains to be done.

However, one issue not mentioned in the draft Internal Rules, but still outstanding, is the impact of the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia (BAKC) registration fees on the participation of foreign lawyers in the ECCC.

The latest decision of the BAKC imposes a fee that is unacceptable to the international judges, who consider that it severely limits the rights of accused and victims to select counsel of their choice. The international judges believe that the failure to fix an appropriate fee places an obstacle to adopting the Rules while the national judges consider that the registration fee, being an issue outside the scope of the draft Internal Rules, should not be an obstacle to their adoption. The judges are ready to hold a plenary at the end of April. For the international judges, this will be possible only if a satisfactory resolution of this issue is reached.

In order to find a solution that is acceptable to all parties so that the Plenary can proceed on 30 April 2007, the BAKC is invited to reconsider its position as soon as possible. The ECCC Defence Support Section is requested to work closely with the Bar on this process.

All members of the Committee remain dedicated to completing this complex effort of successfully harmonising international and national law so that the ECCC can discharge its historic responsibility to find justice for the Cambodian people The Rules Committee is composed of three national judges and two international udges, namely You Bunleng, Mong Monichariya, Prak Kim San, Agnieszka Klonowiecka-Milart and Marcel Lemonde. For the purposes of this review process four additional members were added - national judges Kong Srim and Sin Rith, and international judges Silvia Cartwright and Claudia Fenz -- making a total of nine judges.

For further information please contact the ECCC Public Affairs office: Mr. Reach Sambath

(012 488156), Mr. Peter Foster (012 488421), Dr Helen Jarvis (012 488 134)

Bar fee dispute delays Khmer Rouge hearings

Ian MacKinnon, Southeast Asia correspondent

Monday March 19, 2007

The Guardian International

A proposed £2,500 charge for international lawyers to take part in Cambodia's long-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide trial is threatening to derail the process.

Most lawyers are refusing to pay the fee set by the Cambodian bar association.

Concern is mounting that defendants could be denied a fair trial if international

lawyers pull out. The senior international defence lawyer in the trial, the British war crimes barrister Rupert Skilbeck, is to request talks with the Cambodian bar association to settle the dispute.

All other outstanding issues were resolved when a committee of Cambodian and international judges concluded 10 days of talks last week to thrash out ground rules for the trial. The agreement paves the way for the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders over the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians in the "killing fields" between 1975 and 1979.

The row over fees must be settled before a meeting set for the end of April of the Cambodian and international judges to approve the trial rules.

The role of overseas barristers in the UN-sponsored tribunal was one of the biggest hurdles in failed discussions in November and January. "If this can't be resolved the tribunal does not go forward," said Mr Skilbeck. "But I'm fairly confident we can find a way to sort this out."

Mr Skilbeck said the fees proposed would put off most international lawyers, leaving the defendants, thought to number as few as 10, with limited choice.

Establishing the tribunal has taken more than a decade since Cambodia's

government asked for UN assistance. The latest wrangling has eaten into the

three-year mandate of the court set up last July.

High Time for Justice: The US and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

University of Pittsburgh School of Law Jurist Legal News & Research

January 31, 2006

FORUM

Op-eds on legal news by law professors and JURIST special guests.

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Craig Etcheson, author of After the killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide (2005) and a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, says the time has come for the United States to throw its full diplomatic weight behind the new Cambodia-UN Khmer Rouge Tribunal finally being set up in Phnom Penh... (Craig Etcheson is a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. His most recent book is After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide (Praeger 2005).

In the late 1970s, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge murdered more than two million

people, and enslaved the survivors in a brutal rural gulag. The authors of these

crimes still ive freely, enjoying absolute impunity. It has been more than 27 years since the Khmer Rouge were driven from power, and nearly nine years since negotiations on an accountability process began between the Cambodian government and the United Nations. Despite this shameful record of delay and dithering, in the next few days, Cambodians finally expect to see the first glimmerings of justice.

UN officials are to join Cambodian jurists in establishing a unique "mixed"

national-international criminal tribunal to judge Khmer Rouge leaders responsible

for those crimes.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, as the Khmer Rouge

Tribunal is formally known, is an experimental form of internationalized justice

that attempts to reconcile the principle of complementarity with international concerns for due process and judicial independence. The two-chamber special court will have a majority of Cambodian judges at each level, working alongside a minority of international jurists nominated by the UN. Decisions in chambers will be taken by a "super-majority principle", which requires international jurists to concur in any judgment. Cambodian and international co-prosecutors and co-

investigating magistrates are to cooperate in trying a small group of surviving

Khmer Rouge leaders, with the personal jurisdiction of the court defined as

"senior leaders" and "those most responsible for the most serious violations"

. Temporal jurisdiction will be April 17, 1975 to January 6, 1979, the period

when the Khmer Rouge occupied Cambodia's capital. Subject matter

jurisdiction encompasses war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes against internationally protected persons, and violations of Cambodia's 1956 Code Penal.

Negotiating the jurisdictional contours of the court was challenging in part because the Cambodia's ruling party is led by former low- and mid-level Khmer Rouge officers, and a few of them have what is euphemistically known as "interesting resumes". Moreover, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is in the habit of using Cambodia's courts to harass his domestic political opponents. Recent arrests of Cambodian politicians, labor leaders, journalists, and human rights activists on flimsy charges have only underscored this tendency. Historically, Cambodia's court system has never exhibited a strong sense of judicial independence.

This goes a long way toward explaining why some international human rights

organizations remain wary of the proposed process. Human Rights Watch recently suggested it is "increasingly doubtful that a tribunal established within the Cambodian court system would ensure fair and impartial trials." Cambodian human rights campaigners, however, take a more realistic view, aware that transitional justice processes are inherently political, and that politics is the art of the possible. The Documentation Center of Cambodia's Youk Chhang, for example, argues that "some people want a perfect trial, but this is what we have. Let's make the best of it."

It is time to do just that, for the tribunal is fast approaching. On January 18th, the tribunal's recently appointed chief administrator took possession of the court's premises from Cambodia's Royal Armed Forces at Kambol outside Phnom Penh. The UN and Cambodia have largely completed the process of selecting judges and prosecutors, and will soon be announcing those appointments. They are now recruiting lower-level staff such as deputy legal officials, investigators, computer specialists and translators. Some of the finalists for the key international slots bring impressive credentials to the bench. The court's nascent administration has also begun taking initial steps to organize the already-mammoth amount of potential evidentiary material for the projected three years of proceedings. Much of that material was collected with funding from the United States government.

From 1994 to 2000, the United States played a pivotal role in shepherding the

Khmer Rouge Tribunal into being. In 1994, the US adopted the Cambodian

Genocide Justice Act, which made it "the policy of the United States to support efforts to bring to justice members of the Khmer Rouge for their crimes against humanity." In mid-1990s, the US funded the establishment of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has become the premier repository of evidence on Khmer Rouge crimes. In the late 1990s, US diplomats played a hands-on role in helping the Cambodian government devise the Extraordinary Chambers, creating the institutional structure for the coming proceedings. The US also was a key player in crafting the compromise between Cambodia and the UN Secretariat that persuaded the world body to participate in the trials.

With the election of George W. Bush in 2000, however, the US government dropped the ball, and has been largely silent on the issue ever since. But with

Condoleezza Rice's elevation to the post of Secretary of State, and the recent

departure of Ambassador Pierre Prosper from State's Office of War Crimes Issues, officials in Foggy Bottom have begun to reassess the policy of benign neglect that has governed Cambodian genocide justice policy in Washington for the last five years. This reassessment should result in a US re-engagement with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

The State Department has hinted in recent months that the US might contribute financially to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal if it shows itself to be "independent" and up to "international standards". Rather than standing by and clucking as the proceeding unfolds, however, the US can do more to assure that the tribunal is as good as it can be by becoming actively engaged in the process. The UN's expenses for the tribunal have already been largely subscribed by other international donors, but the US might consider contributing to the UNDP fund that is being established to defray Cambodia's tribunal costs. This is newly possible because this year Congress dropped legislative restrictions on US assistance to the tribunal.

Alternatively, the US could fund training programs for Cambodian and international officials of the tribunal, and direct resources to some of the any civil society organizations that are working to prepare for the trials.

These NGOs will need on-going support during the three-year duration of the trials as they engage in monitoring, outreach and other activities in conjunction with the tribunal.

Most of all, however, the State Department could make a difference on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal simply by throwing its weight behind the process. The tribunal should once again become a priority not only at the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, but also at the Office of War Crimes Issues, the Office of Legal Affairs, the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and the US mission at the United Nations.

Secretary Rice needs to get her people singing off the same sheet of music.

When US ambassadorial-rank diplomats join with those at the deputy and

assistant secretary levels to consistently and coherently press their concerns, UN and Cambodian bureaucrats sit up and take notice. The United States has exercised no leadership on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal for the last five years, and it is high time that it did.[End]

Legal Issues Dominate Discussion

Cambodia - March 2007

The New Year has seen legal issues come to the fore in Cambodia, so much so that Prime Minister Hun Sen's remarkable promise to go on leading the country until he is ninety years old - he turns 55 in August 2007 - evoked remarkably little comment. This is almost certainly a reflection of the general acceptance that, for the moment at least, Hun Sen is beyond challenge politically. Moreover, his latest statement on his planned political longevity builds on the promise he made nearly five years ago, when he spoke of staying in his position for another ten years.

For many, both Cambodians and foreign observers, the ostimportant contemporary political issue is the future status of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal - or to use its official name, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). When the ECCC met on 25 January in an effort to establish Internal Rules as how it would function there was a lack of agreement among the judges about procedures. Although there have been no public statements concerning the nature of these disagreements, it is widely believed that some of the international judges have objected to the proposed rules supported by their Cambodian colleagues. At the

same time, the issue of what role may be played by foreign lawyers, should the ECCC begin its hearings, remains unresolved. In regard to this latter point, some foreign NGOs, notably Human Rights Watch, have raised the possibility that objections to the role of foreign lawyers playing a part in proceedings from the Cambodian Bar Association are the result of government interference.

These developments, or the lack of them, are occurring at a time when prospective defendants before the ECCC grow older and more infirm. Currently, there is only one prospective defendant in custody, Duch, the former director of S-21, the Tuol Sleng extermination centre. Other possible candidates for prosecution are in their eighties or seventies, and in the case of Ieng Sary reportedly in very poor health.

In a city prone to rumour and conspiracy theories, there is no shortage in Phnom Penh of explanations for the slow pace of developments associated with the ECCC. Principally these relate to the fact that the present government has no wish to have a trial process take place which would reveal the extent to which there are many former Khmer Rouge figures holding positions of importance in the administration. There is an interesting contrary point of view to this theory, enunciated by the distinguished biographer of Pol Pot, Philip Short. While doubting the efficacy of the

proposed trial process, Short suggests that if the prosecutions take place they could serve to 'delineate' the current government as a separate entity from its criminal predecessor.

At the same time, there is a widespread belief in Phnom Penh circles critical of the Hun Sen regime that the Chinese government would prefer that the trials do not take place, since if they did the extent of Chinese support for the Pol Pot regime would once again be brought into public gaze.

Meanwhile, critical voices are also being heard in relation to Cambodia's judicial system as a whole. Nearly two years ago Hun Sen spoke very critically of Cambodia's court and the administration of justice, vowing to deal with the corrupt system with an 'iron fist'. Since then little, if anything, has happened to reform the system. As Human Rights Watch observed in its annual report on Cambodia, 'The courts . . . continue to be used to advance political agendas, silence critics and strip people of their land.'

Away from the legal arena, observers are waiting to see whether the government is going to act on the conscription law that it introduced last October. Variously condemned by its opponents as a means for controlling disaffected youths and as a law likely to be administered in a highly selective fashion, it is clear that a program of conscription will do little to counter the very high unemployment rate of young Cambodians.

WATCHPOINT: Will the Khmer Rouge Tribunal actually come into being, and if so on a basis that will make it legally and politically convincing as an institution.

Milton Osborne

Adjunct Professor

Faculty of Asian Studies

Australian National University

International Judges of ECCC say April plenary is not possible

UNAKRT Press Statement

03 April 2007

(Comments: One step closer to collapse of the KRT as the international judges decided that the Plenary session to adopt the internal rules of the court in April could not be held. It is understandable that the international judges and prosecutors could not just walk away form the trial, for fear of public criticism for being too impatient. However, there is a limit as to how long can these international jurists afford to allow Hun Sen to use them as a means to delay ad infinitum the KRT. There is a time when these international prominent judges have to stand up and say, 'enough is enough.' Hun Sen should not be allowed to continue to abuse the international community with impunity, as everything the Cambodian dictator has been doing in Cambodia, since he came to power. Judging from Hun Sen's past practice, the general public should be reminded that even if this fee issue raised by the Hun Sen-controlled CBA can be resolved with a great deal of delay, another obstacle will be created by Hun Sen in order to delay the KRT until all the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders are all dead.)

The international judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia today presented the President of the Supreme Court Chamber of the ECCC with a letter informing the Cambodian judges of their decision not to hold a judicial plenary session to adopt the internal rules of the court in April 2007.

The letter, signed by all the international judges of the ECCC, notes that two weeks have passed since the ECCC’s Review Committee issued a statement asking for the Cambodian Bar to reconsider its position over fees imposed on foreign lawyers. The letter states that the international judges were, “saddened that at the time of writing, the Cambodian Bar had not reconsidered its position.” With the fee issue still unresolved and not enough time remaining to fix their schedules or accommodate previous commitments, a 30 April plenary it is no longer possible for the international judges.

The international judges believe the Cambodian Bar's proposed first year fee of USD $4900.00 would create a prohibitive entry cost and was not in line with accepted practice at the international level. The proposed fee would severely limit the number of foreign lawyers able to appear before the ECCC and would allow the accused to argue that they have not been afforded the right to have counsel of their choice, in breach of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. Further, such a fee would exclude many lawyers that are volunteering to represent victims for free, as they would be left significantly out of pocket for offering their services pro-bono.

The international judges are aware of ongoing discussions between the Cambodian Bar and the ECCC’s Defence Support Section and express hope that these discussions will lead to an acceptable solution. As a result, they are willing to, allow for a short period to establish whether they may then be in a position to call a plenary session at a later date.

However, the international judges wish to emphasize that the window of opportunity is closing quickly and they simply cannot allow for endless delays.

The international judges will re-examine the situation, and any proposals from the Cambodian Bar, during the last week of April 2007. If at that time no progress has been made they will propose organizing the whole process of participation of foreign lawyers from registration to discipline without the assistance of the Cambodian Bar Association, in line with established practice in other international and hybrid tribunals.

The international judges end the letter with their commitment to, “the fair, transparent and expeditious trials for which the Cambodian people have been waiting for 25 years.”

Legal fees delay Khmer Rouge trial

POSTED: 6:01 a.m. EDT, April 4, 2007

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Reuters) -- A fee of less than $5,000 the Cambodian Bar ssociation wants to levy on foreign lawyers is threatening to torpedo the long-delayed trial of Pol Pot's top surviving henchmen for the atrocities of the "Killing Fields".

Bringing the former guerrilla leaders to justice was never going to be easy.

But after nearly a decade of tortuous negotiations and false dawns, Cambodia and the United Nations had agreed the outline of the joint court, donors had coughed up $53 million to pay for it and prosecutors had started combing through the evidence.

Only the most cynical saw any further delays in the attempt to find justice for the Khmer Rouge's 1.7 million victims.

Now, however, the U.N. is balking at the $4,900 in fees the national bar association

wants to charge each foreign defense lawyer, and the row is threatening to sink the whole enterprise.

Although paltry in the overall scheme of the trial, the U.N. said the charge was "not in line with accepted practice at the international level" as it would deter lawyers who might want to offer their services free of charge to defendants.

Digging in their heels after two weeks of talks, the international judges and lawyers said this week they were pulling out of a full session of the court planned for the end of April.

If the two sides could not reach agreement on the fees by then, the international side would decide the rules for foreign defense lawyers on its own, it said in a statement.

Window of opportunity "The international judges wish to emphasize that the window of opportunity is closing quickly and they simply cannot allow for endless delays," it said.

The Cambodian Bar Association (CBA) responded by saying the international lawyers would be flouting domestic law, which prohibits foreigners from representing clients in local courts unless they are Bar Association members.

As the court is officially called the "Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia", this rule must apply, the CBA said.

CBA secretary-general Ly Tayseng said his organization was charging foreigners $500 registration, $2,000 when they were chosen to represent a client and $200 a month in additional fees.

"We are still talking about the fees," Ly Tayseng told Reuters. "We, the Bar, and all Cambodians want the trial to happen to bring justice for the victims." Even though Phnom Penh and the U.N. agreed to the trials in 2003 and the judges were sworn in last year, wrangling over the nuts and bolts of the court have delayed any charges being filed.

Besides the clock ticking on the trial's budgeted three-year duration, time is also of the essence as many of the Khmer Rouge top command are dead or dying. Brother Number One" Pol Pot, presumed architect of the ultra-Maoist regime, died in 1998. His one-legged military chief Ta Mok -- dubbed "The Butcher" for his alleged role in mass internal purges -- died last year.

The main defendants are likely to be "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, former foreign minister Ieng Sary, former president Khieu Samphan, and Duch, head of the capital's Tuol Sleng interrogation and torture center.

ECCC: Statement from the International Judges of the

Extraordinary Chambers

in the Courts of Cambodia

30 April 2007

The international judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia were pleased to learn of the recent decision of the Cambodian Bar Council to institute a flat registration fee of 500 USD for all international lawyers appearing before the court. The international judges are confident that this fee will not hinder international lawyers, particularly those working in a pro bono capacity, from registering with the Cambodian

Bar and taking part in the historic work of the Extraordinary Chambers.

With this decision, the international judges believe that a successful plenary can now be called to adopt the internal rules of the Extraordinary Chambers. It is expected that this plenary will be held in the last week of May 2007.

The international judges express their hope that Extraordinary Chambers can move forward without further delay, so as to discharge its historic responsibility to find justice for the Cambodian people.

Key Khmer Rouge trial talks held

By Guy De Launey

BBC News, Phnom Penh

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6717767.stm)

Last Updated: Monday, 4 June 2007, 06:27 GMT 07:27 UK

(Comments: As some of us have been saying that the fact that Hun Sen has delayed and then allowed the KRT to go ahead is nothing new. His delay tactic has been well-documented and his objectives is still not to allow the KRT to go ahead as long as the current remainig Khmer Rouge leaders who know too much are still alive. This coming meeting between the International jusdges and the Cambodian counterparts will be crucial. Chances are that it will be again very protracted negociation and it will again delay the KRT. But, as some international judges have put, this is it. Either it will move ahead and quickly, or the international judges and prosecutors ahve the right and the duty to quit. Enough is enough! Nobody should blame the internaitonal judges for wuitting. Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D. Washington DC. June 4, 2007)

The judges have struggled to resolve their differences

Judges for the long-awaited Khmer Rouge trials have begun an important meeting in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. Local and international legal officials are hoping to agree on the ground rules for the special courts. The process has been delayed for more than six months because of disagreements among the judges.

As many as two million people are thought to have died during the four years of Khmer Rouge government in the late 1970s. A packed hotel conference room was the venue for the opening ceremony of the judge's plenary session. The process of drafting and discussing the internal rules of procedure has taken too long

Dame Silvia Cartwright; International judge

Academics, human rights workers and veteran observers of the trials all squeezed in for the occasion. They were keenly aware that the next week of discussion could make or break the special courts.

Quit threats

The problem is simple to explain but rather more difficult to solve. The courts are under Cambodian jurisdiction, but the UN-appointed legal officials have insisted that international standards of justice should apply.

The legacy of the Khmer Rouge years hangs over Cambodia Allying those concerns while respecting local laws has been at the heart of the disagreements. There have been months of behind-the-scenes negotiations since the previous plenary session ended in disarray last November. Now the international judges, led by Dame Silvia Cartwright, say it is vital to move forward.

"The process of drafting and discussing the internal rules of procedure has taken too long," she said.

"We are hopeful that after the next week of work the final details of the rules will be put in place, and that the first stages of the trial process can begin."

If an agreement is reached, then the prosecutors will pass on their files to the investigating judges. But some of the international officials have indicated they will

quit if negotiations break down, and that could mean the end of the process

Observers say potential impediments await Cambodia's genocide tribunal

Thursday, June 14, 2007

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP)

Efforts to prosecute Khmer Rouge leaders over the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians during the 1970s could face further obstacles despite judges approving rules for the U.N.-backed genocide trials, observers said Thursday.

"The hardest part has yet to come, and that is who and how many (suspects) should be or should not be" indicted, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group collecting evidence of the Khmer Rouge atrocities, said.

After repeated failures over the past six months, Cambodian and foreign judges announced the rules Wednesday that pave the way for the tribunal to begin investigating Khmer Rouge leaders for the mass killings during their 1975-79 communist rule.

The rules were one of the judges' last major tasks before they could begin working on the cases, but it was unlikely the trials would start anytime soon. That is a growing concern as there is a chance the aging defendants could all die before they are brought to justice.

The top Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998. Ta Mok, the Khmer Rouge army chief, died last July while in detention pending trial by the special tribunal. He was believed to be 80.

The only defendant now in custody is Kaing Khek Iev, also known as Duch, who headed the notorious S-21 torture center in the capital, Phnom Penh.

Their senior-level colleagues, Nuon Chea, the movement's chief ideologue; Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister; and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, live freely in Cambodia but are in declining health.

Cambodia and the United Nations created the genocide tribunal last year under an agreement they reached in 2003. The 17 Cambodian and 12 foreign judges and prosecutors have spent the last six months in sometimes rancorous disagreement on guidelines for the trials.

The tribunal is an unprecedented hybrid. It will operate under the Cambodian judicial system often criticized as weak, corrupt and susceptible to political manipulation. Decisions require support from a majority of the Cambodian judges, backed by at least one U.N.-appointed judge.

On Wednesday, neither the Cambodian nor the foreign judicial officials would give details about their cases or reveal names and the number of potential suspects.

Legal scholars have suggested less than a dozen former Khmer Rouge, mostly in leadership positions, are the most likely targets for prosecution, given time and financial constraints.

But even though it will not be able to prosecute hundreds of defendants, the tribunal will not necessarily limit its targets to only the most senior Khmer Rouge leaders, Marcel Lemonde, a co-investigating judge from France, said recently. Those who have committed large-scale atrocities will have to answer for their crimes regardless of rank.

Kek Galabru, president of the non-governmental human rights group Licadho, warned the Cambodian and foreign co-prosecutors could fail to reach a consensus on which suspects should be indicted.

If the prosecutors fail to reach a consensus, they will have to refer their disagreement to the tribunal's pretrial chamber, she said. The chamber, made up of three Cambodian and two foreign judges, would need to obtain a majority vote plus one to decide whether to allow an indictment to go ahead.

Tribunal finally ready to probe 'killing fields'

'These are the worst crimes, so we're dealing with the worst perpetrators ...,' says Canadian co-prosecutor

GEOFFREY YORK

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

June 14, 2007 at 4:45 AM EDT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com

/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070614.wcambodia14/EmailBNStory/International/home

(Comments: This article posted below seems too optimistic. I have heard that kind of optimism too many times, before. But, the main obstacle is still Hun Sen's unwillingness to allow the KRT to be completed anytime soon. Because, as I saind many times before,that he would stand to loose too much than to gain. So are other peoples such as Sihanouk. Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D. Washington DC June 16, 2007)

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BEIJING - Canadian prosecutor Robert Petit has spent more than a decade on

genocide and war-crimes trials for Rwanda, Sierra Leone and East Timor. But never has he experienced a tribunal as precarious as the one he has served for the past year in Cambodia.

Mr. Petit, a lawyer from Montreal, is the co-prosecutor on the long-delayed trial to bring justice to the victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s. And until yesterday, there were serious doubts that the trial would ever happen.

But after a year of internal squabbling, the tribunal in Cambodia is now on the verge of moving ahead with its first arrests and indictments.

Yesterday, the tribunal finally agreed on its internal rules. It was a crucial decision, clearing the way for the formal process of taking action against the elderly Khmer Rouge leaders who presided over the slaughter of up to two million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979.

The trial is expected to begin early next year, but the first indictments are likely to be issued within the next few months.

Pol Pot, the fanatical Maoist leader who emptied the cities and executed thousands of teachers and intellectuals in an attempt to create an agrarian utopia, died in 1998. But several other Khmer Rouge leaders are still living freely in Cambodia and could be indicted. Only one is in custody so far.

Until yesterday, a series of wrangles over legal fees and administrative procedures had stoked tensions and provoked threats of a walkout by some of the international judges on the tribunal.

The tribunal is a unique blend of Cambodian and international justice, and the hybrid was plagued with disputes.

"This is my fourth tribunal and I've got to say that this is probably the most precarious," Mr. Petit said in a telephone interview from Phnom Penh yesterday.

"All of us, the internationals, came here to help our Cambodian colleagues to deliver a measure of justice for their country and their people. With these new rules, hopefully we're going to be able to do that. We're all very much relieved. Now there's the pressure of getting on with it and doing it the right way."

The vast majority of Cambodians, he said, are still searching for answers about the "killing fields" of the Khmer Rouge era. Unlike most other wars or genocides, this was not about a territorial dispute, a religious conflict, a foreign invasion or an imperial struggle. This was Cambodians killing their fellow Cambodians on a massive scale - and the country wants the tribunal to explain it.

"A huge percentage of people here are under the age of 30, because of what happened in the 1970s, and the vast majority just want to know why it happened," Mr. Petit said.

"They want to know what happened - hopefully from the mouths of some of the

perpetrators themselves. Why did they kill and why did they keep on killing? There's been a lack of formal education by the government about that period. Courts are not the best way of providing that knowledge, but we are seen as the best option at this point. So we're going to have to make a big effort to answer that need."

With the help of the United Nations, the tribunal has a budget for three years of work. Canada is providing $1.7-million to help pay for the $56-million cost of the trial. But because of the administrative disputes, a year has already been expended - and another year could pass before the trial finally begins.

Some analysts believe that the Cambodian government - and its allies in China -- have been trying to sabotage or limit the tribunal's independence, perhaps because of fears that the trial will provide embarrassing revelations about the links between the Khmer Rouge and members of the current government of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Mr. Petit will not comment on these allegations, except to say that the Cambodian government has not interfered with his own work.

He says there is a simple motivation for his battle to seek justice for the victims of the Khmer Rouge. "If it's worth prosecuting a person who killed his neighbour, it's certainly worth prosecuting those who masterminded the killing of thousands or tens of thousands of their compatriots.

"These are the worst crimes, so we're dealing with the worst perpetrators and the most victimized people. This is a chance for me to have significant input into how these crimes are accounted for, and how the victims get some justice. To me, this is the best job I could do. It's a privilege."

COMING TO POWER

The Communist Khmer Rouge began an insurgency against government forces in 1970, gaining control of most of the country. In 1975, the movement, led by Pol Pot, overthrew the government, establishing Democratic Kampuchea and carrying out a radical agrarian revolution, in which as many as 1.5 million died.

In 1979, Vietnamese troops invaded, aiding a rival Communist faction to depose the Khmer Rouge government. All Cambodian factions signed a treaty in 1991, calling for United Nations-supervised elections and disarming 70 per cent of all forces. But the Khmer Rouge rejected the results of the election.

Factional fighting within the Khmer Rouge in 1997 led to Pol Pot's ouster, and the group continued to disintegrate.

Source: The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia

TOP SUSPECTS

Ieng Sary, 76: The foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge regime. There is

evidence that he publicly encouraged arrests and executions, and allowed

foreign ministry officials to be sent to the S-21 torture centre. Today he

lives in a lavish 12-room mansion in Phnom Penh, under police protection,

with his wealth acquired from smuggling gems and logs. He travels in a

chauffeured Toyota Land Cruiser. In spite of that, he is one of the Khmer

leaders thought most likely to face the court.

Khieu Samphan, 74: The president of Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge regime.

He is believed to have known about the atrocities, although he has denied

it, and to have contributed to the genocide by supporting the regime. Today

he lives freely in the town of Pailin, in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold

of northwestern Cambodia. He could be indicted.

Nuon Chea, 79: Known as Brother No. 2, behind only Pol Pot, who was Brother

No. 1, he was the leading ideologue of the Khmer Rouge and is believed to

have played a key role in devising and implementing its execution policies.

Today, he lives freely in northwestern Cambodia, where he is a neighbour of

Khieu Samphan. He once told a reporter that he does not shed any tears or

lose any sleep over the activities of the Khmer Rouge. He is also a

candidate for indictment.

Kaing Khek Ieu, 63: Known as Duch, he was commandant of the infamous S-21

torture and interrogation prison in Phnom Penh. His signature is on many of

the prison's documents, and he is known to have played a direct role in

supervising the prison's activities. Later he became a born-again

evangelical Christian. He has been in military custody since 1999.

Sources: Reuters, The Globe and Mail

Khmer Rouge Trial (With Images)

by Richard S. Ehrlich

Top Scoops: Richard S. Ehrlich: Khmer Rouge Trial (w. Images)

Saturday, 14 July 2007, 7:51 pm; Column: Richard S. Ehrlich

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0707/S00152.htm

(Comments:don't hold your breath yet. The Khmer Rouge Saga continues. From the principal defender, Lawyer rupert Kilbeck, the Khmer Rouge leaders who would be tried by ECCC Extraodinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia) special tribunal had just cautioned the world that there is no 'smoking gun' and that there is no clear ground to accuse the Khmer

Rouge leaders of genocide. So here we are at the starting point again, and still debating as to whether the massacre of more than 3 million innocent Cambodians and other nationalities, is or is not a genocide. So,the loss of more than three millions lives of innocent people are considered worthless.

However, don't blame any foreigners on this failure. The Cambodians are fully responsible for this human faisco, especially their 'leaders,' namely; Hun Sen, and Sihanouk. How can Cambodia expect to survive in this very competitive world where only the fittest and the smartest can survive. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC July 14, 2007)

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BANGKOK, Thailand -- Defending Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge leaders at an international tribunal may include arguing about genocide and the lack of a "smoking gun," despite the deaths of up to three million Cambodians, according to U.N. Principal Defender Rupert Skilbeck.

"One of the big questions will be whether, what happened in Cambodia, was genocide or not," Mr. Skilbeck said in an interview.

"There is a very strong legal argument to say that genocide is when you kill people because of their ethnicity, whereas the vast majority of the [Khmer Rouge] purges were not for ethnic reasons, but were for political reasons. So genocide may not be possible" as a successful prosecution charge.

Mr. Skilbeck heads the Defense Support Section of the tribunal, which is officially called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

A London-based criminal lawyer, Mr. Skilbeck was previously Defense Advisor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and head of the Criminal Defense Section for the War Crimes Chamber

in Sarajevo.

The ECCC is gearing up in Cambodia to put on trial a handful of elderly Khmer Rouge leaders, almost 30 years after their 1975-79 "killing fields" regime was toppled.

Khmer Rouge communist leader Pol Pot died in 1998.

Nuon Chea, who was Pol Pot's second-in-command, distanced himself from charges of mass murder when he told Cambodia's Phnom Penh Post newspaper in January: "Why should we have killed our own people? I do not see a reason.

"We wanted a clean, illuminating and peaceful regime," Nuon Chea, 80, said.

The number of Cambodians who died from executions, torture, starvation, disease and slavery under the Khmer Rouge is usually pegged as 1.7 million people, but the ECCC's Web site said "more than three million people perished" during to the regime's fanatic, back-to-the-jungle administration.

The surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, who reside in Cambodia, could defend themselves in various ways, Mr. Skilbeck said.

"There has to be a discussion about whether there was an international armed conflict or not," he said, because the Geneva Conventions are rules for armed conflict, which can differ for acts during peace or domestic unrest.

Pol Pot seized power after Cambodia's U.S.-backed leader Lon Nol flew to California, and Washington lost its regional Vietnam War which included massive U.S. bombardment of the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

America is not financially supporting the tribunal which is mostly funded by Japan and Europe, with help from India, New Zealand, Australia and others.

U.S. officials "made it very clear they will fund it, but only when they are sure it is going to be a fair process," Mr. Skilbeck said.

On November 26, 1975, seven months after Pol Pot's victory, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said to Thai officials: "You should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in our way.

"We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don't tell them what I said before," Mr. Kissinger said, according to a previously "secret" transcript recently published by the U.S. National Security Archive.

"Seven to 10 defendants," all elderly Cambodians, may stand trial at the ECCC, Mr. Skilbeck said.

Only one, Mr. Duch (pronounced: "doyk") -- who ran Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng torture chambers -- is in jail.

No arrest warrants have yet been issued to apprehend any others.

"The vast majority are living openly in houses, whether they are in Phnom Penh or in different places around the provinces.

"Some have been clearly identified as likely accused, so there is no secret about some of them. Some people perhaps won't be expecting a knock on the door. We will have to see what happens when they start to arrest people," Mr. Skilbeck said.

Cambodia abolished the death penalty.

"Anyone convicted of large-scale atrocity crimes is likely to get a sentence for the rest of their life," the U.N. Principal Defender said.

"The first trial starts sometime during next year. We will probably get a verdict before the end of next year...maybe the beginning of 2009. If there are any subsequent trials to that, it will probably take about six months each, so they'll come in six-month intervals after that."

Mr. Skilbeck said there is "no smoking gun," or single piece of evidence to convict the Khmer Rouge.

"There is no instance [on record] where the decision was made to make killings. There are no documents directly ordering large-scale atrocities to occur.

"So the prosecution, as often happens, will have to...piece together their case from lots of different people's evidence," the head of the ECCC Defense Support Section said.

Mr. Skilbeck is tasked to support the Khmer Rouge's defense lawyers -- foreign and Cambodian.

He does not personally defend the accused, or wield veto power over the lawyers.

"My job is really to organize the defense, and to get it ready, and to make it happen.

"I will get all the individual defense lawyers to do the cases. Once we've got them up, and they are able to do the cases, we will give them back-up legal support to help them do the job," he said.

"Foreign or Cambodian, they will be independent, only subject to the court's ability to discipline them if they get out of line during the courtroom hearings."

Source: DCCAM; Ten Years of Independently Searching for the Truth: 1997-2007

Youk CHHANG, Director

Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam)

STATEMENT OF THE CO-PROSECUTORS

(Comment: this may sound too good to be true. I would not believe it until this tribunal is off and running. These maneuvers are too well known in the past as diversion tactics, not as real progress. Narnahkiri Tih, Ph.D. Washington DC July 18, 2007)

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Today, the Co-Prosecutors filed the first Introductory Submission of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in the Office of the Co-Investigating Judges. An Introductory Submission contains facts that may constitute crimes, identifies persons suspected to be responsible for those crimes and requests the Co-Investigating Judges to investigate those crimes and suspects.

An Introductory Submission, by law, is a confidential document. Recognizing, however, the extraordinary nature of this court and the need to ensure that the public is duly informed of the ongoing proceedings, the Internal Rules of the ECCC allow the Co-Prosecutors to publish a summary of the Introductory Submission while protecting the integrity of the investigation, identity of victims and witnesses and the presumption of innocence of the suspects. Therefore, in consideration of the rightful expectations of the Cambodian people and the international community, the Co-Prosecutors have decided to issue this statement.

This first Introductory Submission represents the results of preliminary investigations conducted by the Office of the Co-Prosecutors with the assistance of the Cambodian national police during the past few months. Based on those investigations, the Co-Prosecutors believe that serious and extensive violations of international humanitarian law and Cambodian law occurred in this country during the period of Democratic Kampuchea from 17 April 1975 to 6 January 1979. These violations amount to crimes within the jurisdiction of the ECCC.

These crimes were committed as part of a common criminal plan constituting a systematic and unlawful denial of basic rights of the Cambodian population and the targeted persecution of specific groups. The purported motive of this common criminal plan was to effect a radical change of Cambodian society along ideological lines. Those responsible for these crimes and policies included senior leaders of the Democratic Kampuchea regime.

Pursuant to their preliminary investigations, the Co-Prosecutors have identified and submitted for investigation twenty-five distinct factual situations of murder, torture, forcible transfer, unlawful detention, forced labor and religious, political and ethnic persecution as evidence of the crimes committed in the execution of this common criminal plan.

The factual allegations in this Introductory Submission constitute crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, homicide, torture and religious persecution. The Co-Prosecutors, therefore, have requested the Co-Investigating Judges to charge those responsible for these crimes.

The preliminary investigation has resulted in the identification of five suspects who committed, aided, abetted and/or bore superior responsibility for those crimes. The Co-Prosecutors are satisfied that these suspects were senior leaders of Democratic Kampuchea and/or those most responsible for the crimes committed within the jurisdiction of the ECCC. The Co-Prosecutors have provided their identities to the Co-Investigating Judges and have requested that they act in accordance to the law.

In support of their factual submissions, the Co-Prosecutors have transmitted more than 1,000 documents constituting over 14,000 pages, including third party statements and/or written record of over 350 witnesses, a list of 40 other potential witnesses, thousands of pages of Democratic Kampuchea-era documentation and the locations of over 40 undisturbed mass graves. These documents have all been digitalized and indexed in a database. Both electronic and hard copies of these documents have been provided to the Office of the Co-Investigating Judges. A significant part of the evidence was gathered with the assistance of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia.

The Co-Prosecutors shall now continue to carry out their investigative mandate while also participating in the Co-Investigating Judges’ judicial investigation of the criminal acts identified in this Introductory Submission.

-- end --

Ten Years of Independently Searching for the Truth: 1997-2007

Youk CHHANG, Director

CAMBODIA: Time for Answers Arrives at 'Killing Fields' Trial

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38653;

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 06:56 GMT

(Comments: I wish it would be true that the KRT is really going to start early next year. In view of the remarks in this article, I still have enormous doubt whether Hun Sen will allow the KRT to start as expected in this article, early next year, after a very long delay due to Hun Sen's manipulations. Hun Sen and Sihanouk stand to loose more than to gain, if this trial is allowed to start, while the remaining senior Khmer Rouge are still alive. These KR senior officials might reveal a lot of negative information on both Hun Sen and Sihanouk role when they were with the Khmer Rouge, before and during the Vietnamese invasion. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. July 25, 2007)

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BANGKOK, Jul 25 (IPS) - For nearly 30 years, the Khmer Rouge regime that unleashed a reign of terror during it rule of Cambodia in the 1970s has been accused of committing genocide. But was this so?

An answer to that troubling question is slated for scrutiny as the war-crimes tribunal gets under way. Jul. 18 marked a milestone in this long-delayed trial, when prosecutors in the United Nations-sponsored special court submitted the names of five Khmer Rouge leaders to stand trial.

''Describing the acts committed in Cambodia as genocide has always been controversial. It is not easily accepted by the legal community,'' Rupert Skilbeck, head of the Defence Support Section of the tribunal, said in a telephone interview from Phnom Penh. ''The court will have to consider this question.''

The accepted definition of genocide is an act of violence aimed to ''destroy an ethnic group because of their nationality, race, religion,'' added the lawyer from Britain, who has also served as the advisor for the defence during the special war-crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone. ''Killing a people for their political views as happened

in Cambodia is different.''

There are other questions, too, that the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), as this tribunal is officially called, is expected to answer. Foremost among them is how many people the Khmer Rouge killed between Apr. 17, 1975, and Jan. 6, 1979, the period of this brutal regime's rule and the period that the ECCC is examining.

''The number of people who died in Rwanda was not challenged, but the number of deaths in Cambodia has not been confirmed; it could be challenged,'' Skilbeck said earlier this month when he met journalists in Bangkok. In the African nation, there were an estimated 800,000 people from the ethnic Tutsi community who were slaughtered by Hutu extremists during the Rwandan civil war. That act of

genocide occurred in 1994.

The Khmer Rouge has been accused of killing close to 1.7 million Cambodians, which was a quarter of the South-east Asian nation's population at the time. The victims were either executed or they died as a result of forced labour or starvation from famine as this Maoist group tried to turn the country into an agrarian utopia.

The tribunal's attempt to shed light on these mass deaths may also prove embarrassing to major powers that were involved during the years when Cambodia was dragged into the U.S. war in Vietnam, which raged through the 1960s and early 1970s, and after. The Washington-approved bombing raids over Cambodia have been documented, so has the role Beijing played to prop up the Khmer Rouge as it pursued its policy of slaughter.

''America's illegal bombing raids will come up in figuring out how many died in Cambodia,'' says Skilbeck. ''There will be lots of issues that will come up during the trial that will be embarrassing to many countries.''

The quest for justice to try those responsible for this country's ''Killing Fields'' got under way 10 years ago, when talks began between the UN and Phnom Penh to set up the ECCC. But this journey since 1997 faced many hurdles, including those placed by the Cambodian government, which has been under the firm grip of Prime Minister Hun Sen for decades.

Hun Sen has not only backtracked on financial commitments to the tribunal but has also heaped scorn on human rights groups who have challenged Phnom Penh's choice of judges for the war-crimes trial. The ECCC, unlike other tribunals, such as the one that investigated crimes against humanity committed in former Yugoslavia, is not completely international in nature. It combines local and foreign jurists.

In fact, the ECCC is also expected to bring to the fore a question related to these very Cambodian lawyers and judges. It stems from concerns by human rights groups about the Cambodian jurists' grasp and application of international law, which will be the basis of the tribunal's proceedings.

After all, the country's legal community was equally brutalised by the Khmer Rouge as other professional groups. The educated men and women became key targets of the extreme Maoists, who deemed intellectuals as enemies of the state after declaring its first phase of power as the ''Year Zero.'' Only nine lawyers and judges survived the years of terror, according to some estimates.

For the Cambodians who survived the brutality of the late 1970s or who are among the millions who lost relatives to the Khmer Rouge, there are equally relevant questions they hope the ECCC will help answer. ''Many people want to know why the Khmer Rouge killed their own people and how they were killed,'' says Im Sophea, a ranking member of the Centre for Social Development, a Phnom Penh-based non-governmental body. ''We expect the court to reveal answers for this. Public expectation is very high.''

The events over the past week have triggered new interest in the trial among people in the city and in rural areas, Im said in a telephone interview from the Cambodian capital. ''They feel the wait for answers is finally over.''

Of course the trial will not hear from Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, who died in 1998. Nor will Ta Mok, widely known in Cambodia as "The Butcher" for the atrocities he committed during the brutal regime's rule, take the stand; he died in June last year.

The five names submitted last week to stand trial at the ECCC were major figures in the Maoist group. According to reports in the Cambodian press, they include Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's deputy; Khieu Samphan, former head of state during the Khmer Rouge years; Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister; and Kang Kech Eav, also known as Duch, who was the head of he infamous Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. (END/2007)

Ten Years of Independently Searching for the Truth: 1997-2007; Youk CHHANG, Director; Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam)

First Khmer Rouge suspect quizzed

By BBC News Service, July 31, 2007

Duch has been in prison since 1999. Judges at the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia have begun to question the first of the suspects they say could stand trial. Kang Kek Ieu, also known as Duch, was in charge of a notorious prison in the country's capital, Phnom Penh.

He ran a facility known as S21, where thousands were tortured and executed.

He is one of five suspects prosecutors have asked judges to investigate over deaths under the Khmer Rouge government in the late 1970s, a spokesman said.

As many as two million people are thought to have died during the four years of Khmer Rouge rule.

Killing fields

Duch was not among the top level of Khmer Rouge leaders but he has become one of its most notorious members, says the BBC's Guy Delauney in Phnom Penh.

Key figures in the Khmer Rouge

There are only seven known survivors of the S21 prison. A museum at the site illustrates in graphic detail what happened to the rest of the inmates.

Many of them were executed at the so-called Killing Fields outside the city.

Judges will question Duch, who has been held in a military prison since 1999, about his role in the events at S21.

"They (the judges) need to do an initial interview with him, but he has not been formally charged yet," said tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath.

The UN-backed tribunal has taken years to get off the ground.

But by questioning Duch, the judges are sending out a clear message that the special courts are now operational and moving more quickly than many people expected, our correspondent says.

Bringing in the other four suspects could, however, be more difficult.

None of them have been named officially but all of the surviving former leaders of the Khmer Rouge have been living freely in Cambodia, our correspondent adds.

Mass Murderer on Notice

(http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-efron2aug02,0,2615756.story?coll=la-opinion-center )

We can take another swipe at the following-orders defense with a Cambodian tribunal.

By Sonni Efron

August 2, 2007

Can monsters be deterred? Or are the people who commit the most unthinkable crimes against humanity — mass murder, torture, genocide — so hell-bent on evil that the normal considerations of common criminals, such as fear of being caught, don't apply? If Pol Pot were alive today, would he be deterred from his epic mass murder by the international laws against genocide or the tribunals for crimes against humanity that did not exist when he was working the killing fields of Cambodia in the 1970s?

The question is not as academic as it sounds, particularly when considering the case against one of Pol Pot's most ghastly lieutenants, Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch. Now 64, Duch has been in prison since 1999, but he was finally charged Tuesday with crimes against humanity for his role as commander at Tuol Sleng prison, the secret Khmer Rouge jail where at least 10,000 men, women and children were tortured and killed. Only a handful survived. But many photographs taken of the victims before their interrogations have survived, and the images are haunting.

The impunity of the Khmer Rouge leaders believed responsible for exterminating 1.7 million people is one of the great outrages of the 20th century. Pol Pot died in 1998, but two of his henchmen, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan are still living freely. Duch's testimony against them is expected to be valuable — if only for historical purposes. His defense is one that was discredited at Nuremberg: He was just following orders.

So, does the prospect of a trial for Duch, even 30 years after his crimes, send a message to murderous leaders around the world that the painfully slow arm of international law will catch up with them eventually?

Well, yes. But the effect of that message is unfortunately not as clear-cut as we would like it to be. For one thing, the proliferation of international tribunals means that more war criminals in more corners of the world are being indicted than ever. Problem is, they're not all being caught.

Former Serbian officials Radovan Karadžiæ and Ratko Mladic have been hiding out for 12 years despite their 1995 indictments on genocide charges.

"The Karadžiæ and Mladic precedent is if you can keep your head down long enough, the international community will lose interest and you'll get de facto immunity," said international rights lawyer Paul Williams. "They'll probably both die of heart attacks before they're arrested. So the Duch case is even more important because it's an antidote to the sense of impunity that you see."

Also still on the loose is Uganda's unspeakable Joseph Kony, who still heads the Lord's Resistance Army despite his 2005 indictment by the International Criminal Court. Some have argued that Kony's indictment backfired, because it has made him less likely to agree to a peace settlement for fear that stability in Uganda will lead to his arrest and transfer to The Hague. Similarly, there is widespread speculation that fear of an international tribunal is one of the reasons the geriatric tyrant Robert Mugabe refuses to step down. And there is, after all, a precedent for such paranoia: After losing power, Slobodan Milosevic was spirited off to The Hague even before the Serbian Parliament had time to approve his extradition.

It's clear that the trials of Milosevic, Sierra Leone's Charles Taylor and Iraq's Saddam Hussein have gotten the attention of other murderous regimes. Officials in Khartoum have asked international lawyers for copies of the U.N. Genocide Convention and Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir is reportedly nervous about being indicted in connection with war crimes in Darfur.

But it's naive to believe that fanatical zealots like Pol Pot and Kony would cease and desist merely because they might end up in The Hague in 20 years, any more than Charles Manson would refrain from mass murder because California had a murder statute.

The difference, though, is that mass atrocities cannot be committed by one man alone. Genocidal leaders need people like Duch to follow orders — lots of them — and the evidence suggests that the followers are usually less fanatical and often can be induced to cease or defect. "You always have to have a sense of accountability," said Don Steinberg, a former U.S. ambassador to Angola now with the International Crisis Group. "Even in the societies that most want to put the past behind them, individuals have to be held responsible for their actions.... And the societies that go through this have to be very, very strong

A link to the most recent ECCC activities

For up-to-date information on the Khmer Rouge Trial or the activites of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), please click on the link pasted below:

(http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english/default.aspx)

Cambodia: Khmer Rouge in Court: Policies and practices of the past on trial

(Comments: this article is informative but, extremely biased in favor of Vietnam/Hun Sen regimes, and against open society. Jenna uncritically gave all the credits to Vietnam for its invasion, or 'liberation' of Cambodia, without looking at the history of how Vietnam, an Imperialist, communist ,and colonialist country, has been wiping out its weaker neighbors such as Champa, and Southern Cambodia, known as 'Kampuchea Krom,' since the 16th century.

A typical outrageous statement such as the one pasted below, is typical of Jenna's extreme bias:

'Almost three decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, a UN-sponsored tribunal has been set up in Cambodia to prosecute the leaders responsible for genocide. Yet non-Cambodians who share responsibility for the deaths will not be indicted.'

Of course, he did not mean 'Vietnamese,' when he mentioned the word 'non-Cambodians'. He also conveniently forgot to mention that, it is Hun Sen and his CPP who created endless obstacles for the Khmer Rouge Trial to make sure that it cannot take place. Those international experts who have been working on this trial are almost unanimous in their judgment on this fact.

He also, did not pay attention to the special meaning of the Communist jargons such the words 'liberate', as it was used by the former Soviet Union regarding the invasion of the Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or Poland 'liberation' by the former Soviet Union. And the use of the word 'save' in the case of Vietnam vis a vis Cambodia.

How seriously could Vietnam possibly 'save' Cambodia, when this very communist country still mistreats its own minorities peoples, such as the Cambodian minority known as 'Khmer Kroms', and the minority peoples like the Montagnards, not to forget about the mistreatment of the Catholic and Protestant population of Vietnam? (For more insights on the hidden but real role of Vietnam in Cambodia, please, see the two interviews of Pen Sovann, former Prime Minister under Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia, in the same page.

This article is posted to purposely show how difficult it is to bring the Khmer Rouge to trial, while this type of strident bias is still very much alive, long after the collapse of Communism in Europe in 1989, and in the world except; Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and China.)Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. May 11, 2007)

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Le Monde diplomatique

October, 2006

(http://mondediplo.com/2006/10/11cambodia)

Almost three decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, a UN-sponsored tribunal has been set up in Cambodia to prosecute the leaders responsible for genocide. Yet non-Cambodians who share responsibility for the deaths will not be indicted.

By Raoul-Marc Jennar

Vietnam invaded Cambodia (which the Khmer Rouge had renamed Democratic

Kampuchea) in December 1978, after three years of Khmer Rouge attacks on its territory.

The world then discovered the mass crimes of the Pol Pot regime (1). The United Nations, the United States, China and their allies responded by jointly condemning a change of regime brought about by foreign intervention: the Cambodians had committed the crime of being liberated from a barbaric regime by an ally of the Soviet Union.

The new People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was not recognised, and the Khmer Rouge’s ambassador, Thiounn Prasith, continued to occupy Cambodia’s seat at the UN for another 10 years while, inside the country, the Khmer Rouge massacred the population in areas still under their control.

The US classified the Khmer Rouge leaders as “non-communist personalities” (2) to be supported in their struggle against Vietnamese occupation; China and the West rebuilt Pol Pot’s army in Thailand.

In 1979, the UN Commission on Human Rights refused to consider a report containing 995 pages of testimony on mass violations of basic rights in Kampuchea. For 10 more years the UN rejected all efforts by the PRK, by survivors such as Dith Pran (3) and by human rights activists such as David Hawk, to bring the Khmer Rouge leaders to justice.

Peace negotiations began in 1989. Because of the desire to involve the Khmer Rouge (which led to the failure of the UN’s attempt to pacify Cambodia), the crimes of the Pol Pot regime were passed over. The terms “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” were banned from all official documents. The Paris Accords of 1991 employed the phrase “policies and practices of the past” to denote what was in fact the extermination of nearly a third of the Cambodian population.

A trial is a necessity for the survivors now demanding justice: the crimes in question have never been tried by a neutral and impartial court. The resulting impunity is intolerable. How can there be justice in ordinary affairs when the greatest criminals go free? The field is wide open for revisionists of all shades. What the absence of justice can lead to became clear in 2004 when the head of one of the three parties represented in Cambodia’s National Assembly congratulated the Khmer Rouge movement on “its action over the last 30 years”.

Kampuchea was in fact tried by a “revolutionary people’s court” in 1979, in the person of two of its leaders, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, the deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. Both were sentenced to death in absentia. But that trial, which gave many survivors an opportunity to testify, is tainted in the collective memory of the Cambodian people by the fact that it was held under Vietnamese influence. Until

the movement’s demise in 1998, the Khmer Rouge continued to claim that the

massacres perpetrated by the Pol Pot regime had been carried out by the Vietnamese. That claim still provides a satisfactory explanation for the young in a country where 51% of the population is under 18.

A step forward

It is a positive development that the trial, finally decided on by the Cambodian government and the UN in 2003 and scheduled to begin in 2007, will be held in Cambodia and in the Khmer language.

In a letter of June 1977 to the UN secretary general, the Cambodian authorities requested “the assistance of the UN and the international community in bringing to justice those responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity during the period of Democratic Kampuchea”, with the aim of “establishing the truth” and “trying those responsible”. The UN General Assembly acceded

to that request at the end of the year. But it took seven years of negotiations to overcome the difficulties.

The UN proposed an international tribunal but Cambodia wanted a Cambodian court assisted by foreign judges and advisers. In response, the UN demanded compliance with international judicial standards, guarantees of the arrest of suspects identified by the court and the involvement of international judges at all stages of the proceedings. The problem was that all Cambodian judges are both judge and party to the case, since they are all survivors of the Pol Pot regime and relatives of its victims. The Cambodian judiciary, rebuilt after 1979, has obviously not yet achieved a satisfactory level of competence and independence.

A law passed in 2001 was amended in 2004 to make the proceedings of the “extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia for the prosecution of crimes committed during the period of Democratic Kampuchea” acceptable to the UN. All indictments will be the joint responsibility of a Cambodian prosecutor and a foreign prosecutor proposed by the UN, each assisted by an investigating magistrate of the same nationality. The trial court will have three Cambodian and

two foreign judges, and its decisions will require the affirmative vote of four judges. The Supreme Court will have four Cambodian and three foreign judges,and its decisions will require five affirmative votes. So the agreement of a foreign judge will be required in all cases.

It took two more years for the United Nations and the Cambodian government to raise the $56m budget, and for the judges (17 Cambodian and eight foreign) to take up their duties. Suspects will be prosecuted for breaches of Cambodian criminal law in force in 1975, international law on human rights, and international conventions ratified by Cambodia. The court will also be competent to try crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and violations of the Geneva Conventions on which international human rights law is based. It can also try breaches of the Hague Convention on the protection of cultural property.

Genocide contested Some people dispute that genocide happened. Yet the use of that term seems unquestionably justified in the case of the extermination of nearly 40% of the Muslim population, the Cham, for no other reason than that they were Cham.It also seems justified in the case of the thousands executed for not having “a Khmer soul in a Khmer body”, meaning people of Thai-Khmer or Sino-Khmer parentage, and especially Vietnamese-Khmer people who were suspected of sympathising with Vietnam.

Members of Pol Pot’s government, of the leadership of the Communist Party of

Kampuchea (Angkar, “the organisation”), of the security forces (Santebal, the political police) and of the S-21 torture and execution centre are still alive. These include Khieu Samphan, head of state; Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two, who was Pol Pot’s closest associate, the head of Angkar and the regime’s second-in-command; Ieng Sary, who was the deputy prime minister; Khieu Thirith, who was Ieng Sary’s wife,Pol Pot’s sister-in-law, a minister and member of the central committee; Thiounn Mumm, a minister; Keat Chhon, another minister (4); and Thiounn Prasith, who was ambassador to the UN and the man who knows most about the US role in supporting the Khmer Rouge from 1979 to 1990. Kang Kek Ieu, alias “Duch”, the head of Centre S-21, is also still alive; as are Sou Met and Meah Mut, the commanders of the air force and the navy. Except for Thiounn Prasith, who appears to be under US protection, all are currently living in Cambodia.

But will they all be investigated with a view to indictment? Doubts arise because of the nature of the pacification process from the departure of the UN in 1993 to the surrender of the last Khmer Rouge stronghold in 1998. Ieng Sary went over to the government side in 1996 and was granted a royal amnesty for his 1979 conviction. Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea gave themselves up at the end of 1998. Sou Met and Meah Mut have joined the Cambodian armed forces. Only Duch is in prison. The number and status of those who are prosecuted will be a major indication of the trial’s credibility.

Another question is whether the investigating prosecutors will ask for Angkar, the regime’s supreme administrative organisation, in whose name the massacres were carried out, and Santebal, the political police, to be declared criminal organisations. Or for the standing committee of the Communist Party of Democratic Kampuchea, which decided on and planned the massacres, to be declared such an organisation. If so, it will be possible to indict any person on the grounds that he was a member of one of those organisations 27 years before the trial investigation began this July.

Pol Pot, Son Sen, the minister of defence and the man in charge of Santebal; Yun Yat a minister; Thiounn Thieunn, a minister; Ta Mok, a military commander; and Ke Pauk, who was Ta Mok’s second-in-command, have all died, having enjoyed the protection of the international community from 1979 to 1993. Son Sen was a member of the supreme national council established by the Paris Accords of 1991 and the designated embodiment of national sovereignty during the transition period.

The US accepted the principle of a trial on condition that the court’s jurisdiction be confined to crimes committed in Cambodia during the period 17 April 1975 to 6 January 1979. Foreigners who share responsibility for the tragedy before and after the period of Democratic Kampuchea will not be indicted. No Thai civil or military leader will stand trial, although Thailand constantly interfered in Cambodian affairs from 1953 onwards, spared no effort to destabilise the neutral Cambodian regime before 1970 and served as a rear base for Pol Pot’s army from 1979 to 1998.

Singapore was the hub for supplies to Pol Pot’s army after 1979, but its leaders

will not be brought to book. Nor will the European governments, led by Britain, that supplied arms and munitions to the Khmer Rouge from 1979 to 1991. Nor Henry Kissinger, for his responsibility in illegal bombings from March 1969 to May 1970, the coup of 18 March 1970 that overthrew Sihanouk, and the invasion of Cambodia in April 1970. Nor US President Jimmy Carter and his national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 1979 chose to condemn the liberation of Cambodia by Vietnam, impose a total embargo on Cambodia and support the rebuilding and supply of Pol Pot’s army (5). That preference remained the choice of the Reagan and Bush (Sr) administrations until 1990.

Cambodia's Khmer Rouge tribunal running out of money
07-04-2007

(Comments: The endless problems facing the KRT is again come to the surface, and the main cause is Hun Sen and his CPP. this time, Hun Sen claimed that the Cambodian government does not have the money to pay for the 13 million share of Cambodia's contribution to the KRT. Why Hun Sen and his extended family who controlled and have been looting the natural resources of Cambodia since the Vietnamese had placed him in power in the mid 1980's, while he is maintaining a private army of a brigade, and own a fortress in Takhmau, and a vacation home in Sihanoukville worth more than US$2 million. It is a sad but tragic situation for the Cambodian people. While Hun Sen is putting all the obstacles against the KRT, Sihanouk, not only he had not protested, but he even suggested that the money can be used for better purposes such as to help the poor. In saying so, Sihanouk, as usual, had ignored the notion of justice which is important for long term prosperity and lasting peace in Cambodia. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. July 4, 2007)

--------------------------------------------------

      Cambodia's Khmer Rouge tribunal could run out of money in early 2008, more than a year before the proceedings are scheduled to wrap up, officials said Wednesday.

      Efforts to prosecute those who carried out one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century were currently funded through next April, tribunal spokeswoman Helen Jarvis told AFP.

      But she also said several new initiatives such as the creation of a victim protection unit will have "quite significant budgetary implications."

      "Of course there is concern -- we know we need these funds to do the job properly," she said, but added: "I don't think there's any sense of panic."

      The joint UN-Cambodian tribunal has been continually beset by budget problems, starting with the Cambodian government's failure to shoulder most of its share of the costs.

      The three-year tribunal is budgeted at 56.3 million dollars, of which Cambodia agreed to pay roughly 13 million dollars.

      But the government has since said it cannot meet the payments, forcing tribunal officials to scramble for donors.

      Jarvis said an appeal was likely later this year after future cost estimates are tallied.

      "There is a continuing request for more funds," she said. "We have not mounted a major appeal but expect to do so ... when projections are clearer."

      Tribunal officials have repeatedly complained that the tight budget was one of the biggest obstacles to the trials, which have suffered numerous delays since Cambodia first approached the United Nations a decade ago for help in prosecuting former Khmer Rouge leaders.

      Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed during the communist regime's 1975-1979 rule.

      The Khmer Rouge abolished religion, schools and currency, exiling millions to vast collective farms with the aim of creating an agrarian utopia.

      So far only one possible defendant is in custody -- former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Khek Iev, also known as Duch -- while several live freely in Cambodia.

      Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.

PHNOM PENH (AFP)
©2007 The Anatolian Times

Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime

StoryfromBBCNEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7002629.stm

Published: 2007/09/19 12:53:09 GMT; © BBC MMVII

The Khmer Rouge was the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, but during this short time it was responsible for one of the worst mass killings of the 20th Century. The brutal regime claimed the lives of more than a million people - and some estimates say up to 2.5 million perished. Under the Marxist leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge tried to take Cambodia back to the Middle Ages, forcing millions of people from the cities to work on communal farms in the countryside. But this dramatic attempt at social engineering had a terrible cost, and whole families died from execution, starvation, disease and overwork.

Communist philosophy

The Khmer Rouge had its origins in the 1960s, as the armed wing of the Communist Party of Kampuchea - the name the Communists used for Cambodia.

Based in remote jungle and mountain areas in the north-east of the country, the group initially made little headway.

But after a right-wing military coup toppled head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970, the Khmer Rouge entered into a political coalition with him and began to attract increasing support.

In a civil war that continued for nearly five years, it gradually increased its control in the countryside.

Khmer Rouge forces finally took over the capital, Phnom Penh, and therefore the nation as a whole in 1975.

During his time in the remote north-east, Pol Pot had been influenced by the surrounding hill tribes, who were self-sufficient in their communal living, had no use for money and were "untainted" by Buddhism.

When he came to power, he and his henchmen quickly set about transforming Cambodia - now re-named Kampuchea - into what they hoped would be an agrarian utopia.

Declaring that the nation would start again at "Year Zero", Pol Pot isolated his people from the rest of the world and set about emptying the cities, abolishing money, private property and religion, and setting up rural collectives.

Anyone thought to be an intellectual of any sort was killed. Often people were condemned for wearing glasses or knowing a foreign language.

Hundreds of thousands of the educated middle-classes were tortured and executed in special centres.

The most notorious of these centres was the S21 jail in Phnom Penh, where more than 17,000 men, women and children were imprisoned during the regime's four years in power.

Hundreds of thousands of others died from disease, starvation or exhaustion as members of the Khmer Rouge - often just teenagers themselves - forced people to do back-breaking work.

Opening up

The Khmer Rouge government was finally overthrown in 1979 by invading Vietnamese troops, after a series of violent border confrontations.

The higher echelons of the party retreated to remote areas of the country, where they remained active for a while but gradually became less and less powerful.

In the years that followed, as Cambodia began the process of reopening to the international community, the full horrors of the regime became apparent.

Survivors told their stories to shocked audiences, and in the 1980s the Hollywood movie The Killing Fields brought the plight of the Khmer Rouge victims to worldwide attention.

Pol Pot was denounced by his former comrades in a show trial in July 1997, and sentenced to house arrest in his jungle home.

But less than a year later he was dead - denying the millions of people who were affected by this brutal regime the chance to bring him to justice.

Top Khmer Rouge leader detained

Police in Cambodia have arrested Khieu Samphan, the Khmer Rouge's former head of state, and taken him to a UN-backed genocide tribunal.

The elderly ex-leader was taken from a hospital in the capital, Phnom Penh, to face a panel of investigating judges.

He is the fifth person to be targeted by the court, set up to bring surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge to the dock.

More than one million people are thought to have died between 1975 and 1979 under the brutal Maoist regime.

Close confidant

Khieu Samphan's arrest had been widely expected.

WHO WERE THE KHMER ROUGE?

Maoist regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979

Founded and led by Pol Pot, (above) who died in 1998

Abolished religion, schools and currency in a bid to create agrarian utopia

Brutal regime that did not tolerate dissent

More than a million people thought to have died from starvation, overwork or execution

A former guerrilla fighter, he became the president of Democratic Kampuchea - as Cambodia was then known - after the Khmer Rouge came to power. He was a close confidant of leader Pol Pot.

He has long claimed that his position was ceremonial, and in a recently published book he denied responsibility for policies to starve people and orders to carry out mass killings.

Last week, amid reports that his detention was imminent, he was flown to hospital in Phnom Penh after apparently suffering a stroke.

Early on Monday, police entered the hospital and drove the former leader to the special courts to appear before a panel of investigating judges.

"An initial appearance will be held today during which he will be informed of the charges which have been brought against him," a tribunal statement said.

Delay fears

Khieu Samphan's arrest completes the initial round-up of suspects by the tribunal, which was established last year after decades of delay.

TRIBUNAL SUSPECTS

Prison chief Duch (or Kang Kek Ieu), charged in July with crimes against humanity

Khmer Rouge second-in-command Nuon Chea , charged in September with war crimes and crimes against humanity

Foreign Minister Ieng Sary , charged in November with war crimes and crimes against humanity

Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith , charged in November with crimes against humanity

Head of State Khieu Samphan , arrested in November, yet to be charged

Former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and wife Ieng Thirith, the social affairs minister, were arrested last week and charged with crimes against humanity.

Pol Pot's second-in command, Nuon Chea, and Kang Kek Ieu - known as Duch - the head of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, are also facing similar charges.

Their trials are expected to begin next year.

Under the Khmer Rouge, more than one million people died from starvation or overwork as leaders strove to create an agrarian utopia.

Hundreds of thousands of the educated middle-classes were tortured and executed in special centres.

Khmer Rouge founder Pol Pot died in 1998 and many fear that delays to the judicial process could mean that more of the regime's elderly leaders are never brought to justice.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7101154.stm

Published: 2007/11/19 09:08:43 GMT; © BBC MMVII

Delayed and denied

Oct 15th 2008

From Economist.com

(http://www.economist.com/world/asia/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=12411498)

(Comments: Another delay in the Khmer rouge Trial. As I said many times before, there no good reason for Hun Sen to bring the Khmer Trial into completion. On the contrary, there is a lot of reasons for Hun Sen to delay this trial. First, the Khmer rouge trial may reveal a lot of unwelcome and implicating information about Hun Sen and his senior CPP colleagues’ role during the Khmer Rouge regime.

It is safe to say that the Vietnamese invading army had suppressed all the implicating information on Hun Sen and his senior colleagues when they first entered Phnom Penh in 1978.

This suppression of the information of the role these senior CPP members allows Hun Sen to often say that he was only a simple soldier in the Khmer Rouge army; while in reality, many well-informed and well-respected scholars had mentioned that Hun Sen was a brigade commander in the Eastern zone, during the Khmer rouge regime. Delaying the Khmer Rouge trial also would allow the Khmer rouge leaders now under trial, such as Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Nuon Chea, sufficient time to die of natural causes, thus preventing them from revealing the truth about the role of Hun Sen, and his ex-Khmer Rouge friends and colleagues in the genocide against innocent Cambodian men, women, and children during the Khmer Rouge regime. Therefore, Justice continues to be delayed and denied to those Cambodians who were slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in the 1070’s. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. October 16, 2008)

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Trials of Khmer Rouge leaders are put off again

WILLIAM GLADSTONE's old saying that justice delayed is justice denied certainly applies to the trials of the ghastly Khmer Rouge regime, which terrorised Cambodia in from 1975 to 1979. The insane, communist-inspired party, led by Pol Pot, tried to eradicate the entire educated population and turn Cambodia back into a primitive agrarian society. Millions were slaughtered or died of starvation before Vietnam invaded and brought the regime down.

In 2003, after years of arguments at the United Nations, a special court was created to try the Khmer Rouge's leaders-although by then Pol Pot had died, at liberty. Since then, the tribunal's progress has been glacial. On October 9th, the first of its trials, which it had been promising would start this month, was again postponed indefinitely. Such delays could cause world powers to lose interest in a war-crimes tribunal that is no less important than those investigating tragedies in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia.

The latest arguments over legal niceties mean that months more will pass before Kaing Kek Iev, alias Duch, will be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Now aged 65, he ran the Tuol Sleng interrogation and torture centre in Phnom Penh, the capital. Nowadays it is a "genocide museum"-a ghoulish tourist attraction with rusting shackles still attached to the walls of tiny cells and display cabinets containing the skulls of some of the countless victims.

Duch was arrested in 1999, and another four former regime leaders, in their seventies and eighties, were detained last year. The five prisoners won the court's permission last month to speak to each other, despite worries that they might collude and jeopardise their trials.

The tribunal, based in the outskirts of the capital, is an unwieldy compromise. The original proposal was for it to be entirely under the UN's control, like the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. But China threatened to veto this, perhaps fearing that such an independent international body would unearth embarrassing evidence of its close support for the Khmer Rouge.

The Cambodian government, led by Hun Sen (a former Khmer Rouge officer, though not himself implicated in the regime's enormities), was also keen to ensure the UN did not have too much control over the tribunal. So what was agreed in the end was an "Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia", with a majority of local judges. The result has been constant tensions between the international and Cambodian staff.

Early last year allegations surfaced that Cambodian staff were being forced to give part of their salaries to their bosses. This is a common practice elsewhere in the country's corrupt and ramshackle public institutions, where workers are prepared to forfeit most of their meagre official pay in return for the opportunities for side-earnings that state jobs offer. A preliminary inquiry by the UN found the accusations credible, but it lacks formal investigative powers-and the government, which does have such powers, would rather hush it all up.

Despite the scandal, big foreign donors recently agreed to keep funding the court for now. Its costs, from its inauguration to its expected conclusion in 2010, have soared from an initial budget of $56.3m to $170m. America, Germany and Japan have just made fresh contributions but the Open Society Justice Initiative, one of George Soros's charities, which is monitoring the tribunal, reckons it is still short of $74.6m.

As with the countless other foreign-funded projects to help Cambodia, rich-world governments and charities are in a sticky situation. They pour in money and push for reforms to ensure that it is not wasted or stolen, while suffering the indignity of Mr Hun Sen thumbing his nose at them, knowing that whatever they threaten, they will not withdraw their funding.

The prime minister heaped special scorn on Yash Ghai, the UN's human-rights envoy to Cambodia until last month when he resigned, tired of being insulted by Mr Hun Sen-who has called him "deranged" and dismissed him as a "tourist"-and getting no back-up from the outside world. Mr Hun Sen has been promising a new anti-corruption law for years. Foreign diplomats and aid-agency chiefs in Phnom Penh know perfectly well that even if passed, it would make little difference. But it would at least look like progress, and would also give their bosses back home the cover for continuing to shower money on the country.

Having just increased his majority in an election marred with irregularities, Mr Hun Sen feels pretty safe in power. For all his flaws, his iron fist has at least pacified the country after the long civil war that followed the fall of the Khmer Rouge. Most Cambodians are too young to remember its horrors. For good or ill they, like their government, seem to have more pressing concerns than bringing the regime's elderly, surviving leaders to justice.

Chronology of Khmer Rouge Trial, an Update

(Comments: finally, the Khmer Rouge Trial is apparently off and running, as shown by the recent arrests and detentions of the some of the living senior leaders of that murderous regime (except those who are now in Hun Sen regime, such as Chea Sim, Hun Sen, and other senior CPP members).

It is time that the Cambodian people know the truth about that utopian and murderous regime which did not only murdered more than two millions innocent Cambodians and other nationalities.

But more deadly for Cambodia as a nation. Pol Pot and his cohorts had also killed any chance for Cambodia to survive the Vietnamese onslaught. The Khmer Rouge regime provided a perfect alabi for Vietnam to claim that it came and liberated Cambodia from the Cambodian scourge, when in reality it was the Vietnamese who is at the root cause for the creation of Cambodian Communism to be under thier control. Only, when Pol Pot became recalcitrant to Vietnam control did Vietnam invade Cambodia not to 'save' Cambodia but to bring Cambodia under their direct and full control, with the help of Hun Sen and Sihanouk alliance.

That is why I have often said that the Khmer Rouge did not only murder more than two million Cambodians and other nationals, but had murdered the whole nation of Cambodia. Unfortunately, there are still many Cambodians who still believe that Pol Pot did it because he was a patriot. This, in turn, makes the Cambodian case a very difficult job for those who want to defend those victims in the international arena. Naranhkiri Tith Ph. D. Washington DC. November 19, 2007)

Khmer Rouge Warden Asks to Be Freed
By SETH MYDANS
The New York times; Published: November 27, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/world/asia/28cambo.html?_r=1

(Comments: as I often have said that the KRT is just a "show" trial, and also added that once the Vietnamese and Hun Sen got what the wanted out of it throught "Duch" confessions, by "demoizing the demons," Hun Sen will let "Duch" go free or with hardly any jail term. as to the request by the international prosecutors to have more senior CPP members to come and testify at the tribunal, I would not dare to hold my breath on this.

Hun Sen will never let any of his friends and colleagues such as Chea Sim, Heng Samrin, Keat Chhon, appear at the Khmer Rouge tribunal. So much money and efforrts have been spent on this, for officially, the benefit of those whose fimily members or themselves were victims of the Khmer Rouge murderous regime, but, in practice, it is only for the benefit of Hun Sen and his bosses, the Vietnamese. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. November 27, 2009)

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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia The nine-month trial of a former prison chief for the communist Khmer Rouge ended Friday when the defendant unexpectedly asked to be set free despite his repeated admissions of guilt.

“I would ask the chambers to release me,” said the defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, 67, known as Duch, as he addressed the panel officially known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. “Thank you very much.”

The judges took no immediate action, and they are expected to render their verdict early next year.

The Khmer Rouge caused the deaths of 1.7 million people when it ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, and Duch is the first of five members of the regime to face trial. Because of the complex structure of the mixed Cambodian-United Nations tribunal, the trial of the other four defendants is not expected to open until 2011.

In a formal statement to the court on Wednesday, Duch said he was “deeply remorseful and profoundly affected by the destruction on such a mind-boggling scale.” He apologized to the dead, to their families and to all Cambodians.

Throughout the trial he has described in detail his role as the commandant of Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21, where at least 14,000 people were tortured and sent to their deaths. Almost no one who fell into his hands survived.

Duch faces a possible term of life in prison for crimes against humanity and other crimes, but the prosecution asked for a reduced sentence of 40 years because of his cooperation and the five years of unlawful detention he served earlier in a military jail.

There was disarray in the courtroom earlier in the week, when Duch’s two lawyers, in separate statements, took sharply diverging approaches. His Cambodian lawyer, Kar Savuth, broke from the defense strategy of admission and apology on Wednesday and asserted that his client was not guilty.

On the following day, Duch’s French lawyer, François Roux, explicitly disavowed that assertion. He emphasized Duch’s cooperation, including sometimes pedantic descriptions of his techniques of prison management and torture. But Mr. Roux sought to minimize his client’s significance, saying the Tuol Sleng deaths amounted to only 1 percent of the overall toll.

“As long as the prosecution’s submissions make this man a scapegoat, you will not advance the development of humankind one millimeter,” Mr. Roux said in his closing statement. “No, Duch does not have to bear the whole horror of the tragedy of Cambodia on his head.”

In his own statement, Duch said he was only following orders that came down from the Khmer Rouge chief, Pol Pot, who died in 1998 without ever facing trial.

“I could do nothing to help,” Duch said. “Pol Pot regarded these people as thorns in his eyes.”

Duch read his apology from a prepared statement, as he had with a similar apology after the start of the trial in February, and a prosecutor, William Smith, said his partial and qualified admissions throughout the process showed that he was “not facing up to who he was back in 1975 to 1979.”

Mr. Smith on Thursday asked the five-judge panel to “remember the victims” and to “send a clear message to the future of Cambodia.”

“We gave the accused that opportunity about two days ago to say to this court, to say to the people of Cambodia, ‘Yes, I committed these crimes. I committed them willingly,’ ”Mr. Smith said.

“But what he’s done,” Mr. Smith added, “he’s had his international counsel say he was a small cog in a machine.”

At a press conference following Duch’s request to be released, Mr. Smith said, “We, the co-prosecutors, have been taken by surprise. It’s still in my mind unclear whether there was agreement or disagreement between the national and international counsel.

“The fact that he entered a request for an acquittal reinforces in our mind that the remorse is limited.”

The completion of the case against Duch marked a moment of success in a process that has been surrounded by controversy since the earliest discussions about a tribunal in 1997 between Cambodia and the United Nations. There have been continuing concerns over possible political
interference, corruption and the quality of the jurisprudence.

But on Thursday, Mr. Roux declared: “How many cynics said it would never take place? And then the trial took place, with all the complexities we had to deal with and transcend. But here we are. We have done it.”

The tribunal is now scheduled to move to “Case 2,” what is likely to be a long and complicated proceeding for the other four defendants, who, unlike Duch, had held official senior positions in the Khmer Rouge leadership.

These defendants including 83-year-old Nuon Chea, “Brother No. 2” behind Pol Pot have denied their complicity, which is based on less concrete accusations of command responsibility.

Their lawyers have already filed many motions are were expected add to the complications in a case where legal maneuvering is likely to overshadow the kind of dramatic accounts provided by Duch and the witnesses who testified against him.

October 26, 2009

Dear Sunna:

Thank you for sending the article on Malcolm Caldwell and his Khmer Rouge friends. It is important to have this article because of the mentioning of those who also were supporters and defenders of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge murderers, such as Ben Kiernan, G Porter, and Noam Chomsky, to name only the most important ones who are now supporters of the Vietnamese and Hun Sen.

I am pasting below the passage that all those who are interested in learning more why Hun Sen is now vigorously defended by the same people who were supporters of Pol Pot.

The bottom line in this whole tragic story is that these so-called scholars like Ben Kiernan and Noam Chomsky are basically strong supporters of Communist Vietnam, and not really Pol Pot. that is why when Pol Pot turned himself against Vietnam, these so-called scholars turned themselves against Pol Pot and for Vietnam. I wish there were more Cambodians who would try harder to understand the depth of the whole tragic problems that are plaguing current day Cambodia by trying to make the difference between who are really Cambodia's friends who are the enemies.

But, I don' t expect it to happen anytime soon, because it requires a lot time, patience and efforts to reach and understand the depth of the real story underlying this unending Cambodian tragedy. Because, most Cambodians are too traumatized and having no patience nor habit for serious search for the truth. Sad but true.

Once again many thanks for sending this important article on Malcolm Caldwell and the Khmer Rouge by Michael Ezra.

Warm regards. N Tith

The telecoms tycoon: Dealings over two decades

By Don Pathan
The Nation
Published on October 23, 2009

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Thaksin-Hun-Sen-Buddies-countr-t308596.html

Bilateral ties at a new low, thanks to 'ruthless' PM and the 'trusty' Chavalit

(Comments: These two articles show how long and how close their relations between Hun Sen and Taksin Shanawatra have been. More, importantly they show that these two men are made of the same cloth. One is as corrupt as the other and both are only interested in promoting their personal interests and wealth, and not of their respective countries and societies. It is sad to see that there are so many so-called Cambodian ultra nationalists such as the Cambodian Australian, Monorom and his friends from the Khmerization web site who are all out to support Hun Sen without knowing that Hun Sen had used this Preah Vihear issue to make Vietnam a friend and defender of Cambodia, and Thailand the most mortal enemy of Cambodia.

Is Hun Se either a nationalist or a defender of Cambodia’s national interests? Those who believe in this utopia are either naïve or not too well informed. Poor Cambodia, with these ultra nationalists Cambodia can only go one way, that is down! Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. November 3, 2009)

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Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva hit back yesterday at controversial remarks by Cambodian PM Hun Sen. His comments - see the story below - are just the latest blip in years of rocky ties, in which ousted Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra has been a key player.
Relations between Thaksin and Hun Sen go back nearly two decades when the former was an up-and-coming businessman trying to align himself with important people.

It started with lucrative business contracts in the area of telecommunication with the Vietnamese-installed government in Phnom Penh at the time Hun Sen was top man on the hill.
And when it was time to lay a new foundation for the war-torn country through the UN-sponsored election in 1993, Thaksin was a supporter of Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP). Hun Sen lost to Prince Norodom Ranariddh's Funcinpec Party but was able to muscle his way in to become a "co-prime minister".

Ranariddh being PM meant the end of Thaksin's telecom and cable TV deal in the country, which he obtained through the help of the prime minister's half brother Prince Jakrapong before the 1993 election.
The cancellation was a set-back but it wasn't everything. Thaksin waited for his turn to reap whatever he could in Cambodia.

In mid-1994, bickering between Hun Sen and Jakrapong brought Thaksin back in the spotlight. There were allegations that Thaksin had financed a coup against Hun Sen. Jakrapong fled to Malaysia. A couple of Thai nationals working for Thaksin in Cambodia were detained but later released.

Thaksin denied meddling in Cambodia's internal affairs. No one knows if Hun Sen actually believed him. Perhaps for the sake of continuity, Hun Sen permitted the issue to pass by without really getting to the bottom of the allegation.

Noted Cambodia scholar Stephen Heder once described Hun Sen in stark terms: "He is both a competent political administrator and a ruthless political criminal."
Indeed, this former Khmer Rouge cadre has never been afraid of using force. In late 1995 he sent armed men in tanks to arrest Prince Sirivudh, King Sihanouk's half-brother, after hearing a rumour that the then secretary-general of Funcinpec had whispered that it may be easier to hire thugs to kill Hun Sen than put up with him.

No one ever believed the CPP-Funcinpec coalition would last. Four years after the UN-sponsored election that was supposed to end bloodshed, Hun Sen launched a bloody coup against Ranariddh. The prince's men were forced to flee as his military faction, led by General Nek Bunchhay, retreated to the border while Khmer Rouge cadre in Anlong Veng came to their aid.

In early 2001, Thaksin came to power in Thailand at a time Cambodia was trying to pick itself up after decades of war and look for ways to benefit from being part of Asean. But all this time, Hun Sen never forgot the people who helped his step to power in Phnom Penh - namely, Vietnam.

When Funcinpec was still around - in or out of power - Vietnam, because of its historical support for CPP, was always at the butt of Ranariddh's jokes and sarcasm. Thailand's escaping the talkative prince's verbal assault partly because Funcinpec heads tended to take refuge at Soi Suan Phlu whenever there was trouble in Phnom Penh.

Today, Thailand is effectively the butt of Hun Sen's sarcasm.
In 2003 Hun Sen gave legitimacy to an unconfirmed remark by a Thai celebrity about Angkor Wat and the end result was the torching of the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh and the looting of Thai businesses.

But the strongman managed to come out of this ahead. Hun Sen used the riot as a pretext to remove then Phnom Penh governor Chea Sophara from his post and install a CPP man from his faction.

Relations between Thailand and Cambodia took a nosedive but for a businessman like Thaksin, money could heal all wounds. Thaksin's investments in the country were taken care of, and it was eventually the same for other Thai-owned businesses. Things were back in sync until the border dispute over Preah Vihear.

The recent pronouncement by Hun Sen that the fugitive Thaksin was welcome to reside in Cambodia not only adds salt to the Thailand's wounds but has brought bilateral ties to a new low. And of all people, it was a veteran Thai politician, a man known for his lack of trustworthiness, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, who handed Hun Sen the ammunition.

On the trail of Thaksin in Cambodia

By Stephen Kurczy

Asia Times May 6, 2009

KOH KONG, Cambodia - Speculation runs hot and heavy that exiled former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra has secretly and repeatedly visited the remote Cambodian border province of Koh Kong to meet with his political allies and plan the next phase of his campaign to oust Thailand's government and restore himself to power.

People in sleepy Koh Kong, from celebrity lookalikes to airport officials watching over an unused gravel runway, have plenty of time to talk - and to keep a watchful lookout. They say property developers' once ambitious plans to transform this primitive coastal area into a world-class tourist destination stopped before they started. And many find it laughable and unlikely that Thailand's fugitive former premier would bother, or dare, to visit.

Thai intelligence surfaced in late April that the former telecom tycoon's private jet flew into the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh and then into Koh Kong, located on the nation's southwestern corner along its border with Thailand. Senior Cambodian officials have strongly denied that Thaksin visited, but many in Bangkok believe Thaksin leveraged his known personal ties and business links with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to secure special landing rights.

Thai authorities revoked Thaksin's passport last month after he urged his supporters through video call-ins from abroad to launch a "people's revolution" against Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's coalition government, leading to riot scenes on the streets of Bangkok. Thaksin is believed to have made his controversial addresses from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where Thai authorities are still brokering an extradition treaty. Thaksin has obtained travel documents from Nicaragua and Montenegro to avoid extradition, and was most recently sighted in Liberia.

A handful of Thaksin's key supporters went underground after Abhisit's government declared a state of emergency and arrested several protest leaders from the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), which is aligned with Thaksin. Those who eluded arrest, including protest co-leader Jakrapob Penkair, fled to Koh Kong, according to some Thai media accounts.

Jakrapob has since threatened from an unknown location to launch an underground armed insurgency against the Thai government. Quoting a top UDD source, Asia Times Online reported in April that Thaksin operatives have claimed to funnel guns through Cambodia to his supporters in Thailand's northeastern regions. The Thai government has taken those reports seriously, further straining relations with Cambodia. (See A battle won in Thailand's 'war', Asia Times Online, Apr 15, 2009)

Yet if Thaksin has recently traveled to Koh Kong, those who manage the island's rudimentary airport claim not to have seen him. A source at Societe Concessionnaire d'Aeroport, the French company that manages Cambodia's airports, said that no private jets flew into Phnom Penh during the period when Thaksin allegedly visited. Meanwhile Bou Phou, the deputy director of Koh Kong's Airport, said the last time a plane landed on Koh Kong's gravel airstrip was eight years ago.

He said the dilapidated airstrip could land a small aircraft like a Cessna or Antonov 24, but not Thaksin's private jet. Wildlife groups land helicopters there several times a month, he said, but that's the only aviation activity his facility sees. The airport terminal closed in 2000 and no plane has landed since, he said. "I have a lot of time to read books and newspapers," Bou Phou said.

Commercial interests

Thaksin-aligned business interests aimed to buy and renovate the Koh Kong Airport in 2003, but the Cambodian government had already given the rights to Société Concession l'Aéroport, Bou Phou claims. Those business interests in Koh Kong apparently extended beyond the airport, if press reports are accurate. The Bangkok Post reported a year ago that he planned to turn Koh Kong into a "second Hong Kong".

According to the same media report, Hun Sen supposedly agreed with Thaksin's plan to build Koh Kong's second casino and entertainment complex during a round of golf in April 2008. (Thaksin's former communications conglomerate had major interests in Cambodia's mobile telecom market.) "Prime Minister Hun Sen trusted and wanted Thaksin to advise on developing Koh Kong as a special economic zone," Cambodian Defense Minister Tea Banh said on May 15, 2008.

Later that same month, Hun Sen's spokesman confirmed to Agence France-Presse that Thaksin planned to build a modern satellite city in Koh Kong, complete with a financial district and shipping port. However local officials dismiss those reports as hearsay and speculation. They note that the town's existing special economic zone, despite its imposing entrance gate, remains after several years an empty undeveloped field.

"It's confusing," said Koh Kong province deputy governor Eng Kimleang. "Thaksin isn't developing Koh Kong - it's just a Chinese company ... It's just rumors and nothing formal," she said. Like others, she dismisses reports that Thaksin may have recently visited the area as inaccurate.

Sam, the owner of Fat Sam's bar and restaurant, said his well-informed Lexus-driving neighbor is positive Thaksin was not in Koh Kong. Otto, owner of the nearby Otto's Restaurant and Guest House, said the rumors are simply "bullshit".

Helicopters occasionally thunder overhead when Hun Sen or a provincial governor retreats to Koh Kong Resort, Otto said, but otherwise the most notable news in Koh Kong has been the increase in cars from two in 1999 to several hundred today. "It used to be like a town in the old west - shootouts, blood," he said, as a cloud of marijuana smoke wafts over his restaurant's porch. Now, "it's boring here. That's why I like it."

Koh Kong was until very recently known as Cambodia's Wild West. With the Cardamom mountains to the north, the Gulf of Thailand stretching south, and the Thai border 12 kilometers away, the town was until last May only accessible via a series of four ferries. That allowed illegal logging, hunting and smuggling operations to thrive in the lawless area.

Thai loans and engineers paved the way for a road and series of bridges that finally connected the 30,000-person town directly to Phnom Penh, creating a mild surge in law enforcement, investment and jobs. Local human-rights groups say sex trafficking is still a problem, but unlike a decade ago authorities now make attempts to crackdown on the trade.

A Chinese company is now constructing an 18-megawatt, US$326 million hydroelectric dam on one of the province's many rivers. The provincial tourism department registered a 25% increase in national visitors in 2008, rising to around 50,000. From April 14 to April 16 during the Khmer New Year, 14,000 nationals visited Koh Kong, up from 12,000 the previous year.

Many of those visitors stopped at the town's sole casino, the 521-room Koh Kong Resort, located about 50 meters from the Cham Yeam international border checkpoint with Thailand. That's where unconfirmed reports allege Thaksin has met with his political associates and other Thai fugitives from justice have lodged.

During a recent tour of the complex, manager Thiwason Thonsing showed Asia Times Online Hun Sen's $1,400-a-night presidential suite, which has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full kitchen, living room, dining room and expansive views of the Gulf of Thailand. "I've never seen Thaksin here before," Thiwason said. "I asked my staff and none of them say they saw him."

Koh Kong provincial tourism department chief-of-office Ly Vithavann insists that no recent visitors to the Koh Kong Resort were former prime ministers. "Thaksin never comes here," he said, offering an alternative explanation for the Thai intelligence reports: Another local resident, the provincial commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, looks exactly like the Sino-Thai Thaksin. "Yun Mean has the same face as Thaksin Shinawatra," he claimed.

When asked, Yun Mean agreed to some extent. "My subordinates tell me I look like Thaksin," he said with a chuckle. Inside his home near the town's central market, framed photos of him receiving medals from the Cambodian prime minister and defense minister decorate the walls. His fair skin and square jaw cut a profile similar to the former Thai prime minister. Could he have been the face apparently seen by Thai intelligence? Yun Mean doubts it.

"I never heard that media said Thaksin was in Koh Kong," he said, adding: "And Thaksin never did visit."

Stephen Kurczy is an Asia Times Online contributor based in Cambodia. He may be reached at kurczy@gmail.com. With additional reporting from Shawn W Crispin in Bangkok.

Malcolm Caldwell: Pol Pot’s Apologist

Michael Ezra

After his death, a memorial meeting attended by hundreds was held in his honour in London. [111] Numerous messages of condolences were sent. Labour Member of Parliament Joan Lestor wrote expressing her regret of the death of ‘a true fighter for socialism.’ [112] The Socialist Workers Party said that whilst they had differences with Caldwell, they mourned the death ‘of a courageous fighter against imperialism.’ [113] The Revolutionary Communist League of Britain said that Caldwell’s death was ‘a tragedy for all the peoples of Indo-China, and especially the Kampuchean people.’ [114]

The Cambodian specialists, Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua, wrote that ‘Malcolm’s scholarship and intellectual honesty, and his genuine enthusiasm and sacrifice for the poor and exploited will always be a constant source of inspiration to us.’ [115] Noam Chomsky wrote from the USA that ‘Malcolm Caldwell was a fine scholar, whose work was distinguished by integrity and passion.’ Chomsky added, ‘There can be no more fitting memorial to Malcolm ... than the willingness of others to take on the tasks that he confronted.’

[116]

A sympathetic obituary in the Guardian, noted that with Caldwell’s death, ‘Cambodia has lost one of the very few people in the West who were sympathetic to its revolution.’ John Gittings, who wrote the obituary, compared Caldwell to Noam Chomsky, ‘a lone heretic in the academic world of enormous personal charm who was respected internationally for views which many colleagues failed to understand.’ Gittings concluded that Caldwell’s work would ‘undoubtedly’ be ‘better appreciated after his death.’ [117]

The Daily Telegraph was more on the mark. In an editorial following Caldwell’s death, they noted he was ‘Intelligent and, by all accounts, charming’ but lamented that ‘he lent his energy and scholarship to the defence of one of the darkest totalitarian regimes of even this totalitarian century.’ They continued: ‘Few horrors of the new rulers of Cambodia seemed too vast for him either to deny that they were happening or to insist that they had all been exaggerated, or to imply that the victims had it coming to them anyway.’ They did not doubt his sincerity but noted ‘his activities were all the more appalling because of his sincerity.’ The editorial concluded, ‘no doubt his murderers thought his death necessary to their revolution.

Malcolm Caldwell’s life thus reaches a dreadfully appropriate apothesis.’ [118] Malcolm Caldwell was not the only one who whitewashed the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. As Sophal Ear commented, along with Caldwell, there was Laura Summers, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, George C. Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, | 171 | as well as Torben Retbøll who were counted among the writers that ‘romanticised the Khmer revolution.’ [119] David Hawk of the Cambodia Documentation Commission noted, the persistence of Caldwell, Chomsky and others who defended Pol Pot ‘diverted attention and refocused discussion from “how should Khmer Rouge bloodlust best be exposed and protested” to “whether or not the refugee accounts were exaggerated and were the accounts of largely politically motivated propaganda.”’ [120] ‘The Truth is,’ as Bernard Levin commented in The Times, ‘there is a Caldwell – or there are several Caldwell’s – for every tyrant, every murderer, every oppressor or torturer, who acts in the name of a political creed.’ [121] With the behaviour of those on the left who currently support genocidal organisations in the Middle East, Levin’s comment is as true today as when he wrote it over thirty years ago.

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Michael Ezra lives in London. His essay ‘The Eichmann Polemics: Hannah Arendt

and her Critics’ appeared in Democratiya 9 (Summer 2007).

Cambodia: Khmer Rouge Year Zero on Trial

Please, read the introductions to two exremely important, defining, and penetrating articles on the main factors why the current Khmer Rouge Trial is only a show and a real trial.

One of the articles titled "Cambodia_08_09_01_Year_Zero_on_Trial.doc" provides an encompassing views and reasoning on defects and the obstacles used by the ECCC (Extraodinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia) by only pointing figures at the few elderly Khmer Rouge leaders while left out those who are as deeply involved in this horrific crime such as the Vietnamese and their subordinates Hun Sen and his senior CPP members, and also the United States in the carpet bombing in the Eastern Zone of Cambodia in the late 1960's, and the invasion in 1970.

Te other article titled "No Redemption - The Failing Khmer Rouge Trial" also pointed out the defects and manipulations by those who (Hun Sen and the Veitnamese and some Western powers) initiated the current Khmer Rouge Trial with their hidden agenda, which is to "demonize the demons."

Please, read the introduction to both of these articles pasted below. To read the full articles please, click the underlined links in this text . Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. October 13, 2009)

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Cambodia: Year Zero on trial

The trial of a few surviving leaders of the notorious Khmer Rouge regime, which ruled Cambodia in the 1970s, is finally underway. But the court is a strange one, the outcome pre-determined. Lawyer Brooks Duncan dares to raise some of the questions the court will try to ignore.

By Brooks Duncan is a lawyer and anthropologist who works in the field of international legal development and human rights.

The ‘second edition’ of An Introduction to the Khmer Rouge Trials, a pamphlet in both English and Khmer, recently landed on my desk in Cambodia.¹ The foreign-financed booklet, promoted by the Cambodian Government and described as ‘educational’, says that the trials will set the historical record ‘straight’.

The trials are indeed seeking to rewrite history. But they are more likely to criminalize ideas and political ideologies than to outlaw the abuse of power. The countries funding the trials – including the US, Britain, Japan, Canada and India – have already determined what the history lesson is to be.

The trials seek to criminalize five aged Khmer Rouge political leaders, but none of their followers – and no similar killings by others. The killings by the Government of Prime Minister Hun Sen – a former Khmer Rouge soldier who has held virtually dictatorial powers since 1993, but is backed by the international community for his support of global trade – will be ignored. Hun Sen is believed to have killed dozens of opposition party demonstrators in a massacre in 1997. He regularly makes threats against other politicians and dismisses documented abuse of rights – offered annually by the UN – as well as charges of corruption. More than half of the national budget still comes from the same foreign donors who are supporting the trials.

The slaughter of as many as half a million people in bombings ordered by the Nixon Administration in the early 1970s will similarly go unpunished. Also erased is the role of the Chinese and Vietnamese in militarizing the conflict and looting resources. The role of the colonial French hasn’t a hope of being mentioned; their reign is referred to in the country’s history books as an era of progress.

The trials focus only on a specific period of time and specific actions, in what is described as reflecting ‘international standards of justice’ and the continuing government policy of ‘national reconciliation’. The focus on punishment – something that many of Cambodia’s Buddhists actually do not want – is said to be necessary to promote the ‘reconstruction’ of Cambodia.

There is little doubt that the defendants were engaged in a brutal civil war in which they ordered murder and destruction on a massive scale between 1975 and 1980, and that they sought to remake the country and start it again at what they called ‘Year Zero’. There is little doubt that they opposed urbanization and sought to turn the country back to an agrarian society.

Nevertheless, it is a virtual certainty that most of the real historical questions that are important to Cambodia’s understanding of its past will be suppressed. The historical record, for example, is already being set to present the most extreme interpretation: ‘over three million’ deaths under the Khmer Rouge, according to the booklet – more than the 0.75 to 1.8 million verified by most scholars, and more than the highest estimate of all, which is 3 million.²

Despite this, the trial will offer different views – if defence attorneys do their job – and open up many inconvenient truths, though they will probably not be widely reported. In order to prove its case, the prosecution will have to demonstrate a motive for the killings. Were the defendants’ beliefs and rationale reasonable? If so, is anything being done to change the circumstances that led to the choice of criminal acts, or is there potential for the same kinds of killings to occur in future? Further, are the trials just of criminal acts, or are they really attempts to outlaw beliefs, the new ‘thought crimes’ of globalism?

Below are some of the uncomfortable questions about Cambodia’s past and present that need to be answered and could be raised in the trial. (Please, go to the link posted below to read the full version of this article)

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No Redemption - The Failing Khmer Rouge Trial

By Allan Yang

Harvard International Review
2008

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/163/28940.html

Three decades after planning the genocide of 1.7 million Cambodians, the remaining leaders of the infamous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia are finally being brought to justice. Between July and November 2007, the five most prominent living former leaders of the radical communist group were arrested in anticipation of their appearance in an official tribunal, which is receiving backing from the United Nations and the international community. However, with the Cambodian government seemingly uneager to bring these ex-leaders to justice, the trials may only stir up bitter memories and expose the Cambodian government's flaws. (Please, go to the link posted below to read the full article)

_____________________________________________________

Please, click this link to download or read two important and penetrating articles mentioned earlier, by two international lawyers (Brooks Duncan and Allan Yang) on the main reasons why the current Khmer Rouge Trial will not deliver real justice for the Cambodian People. October 13, 2009, N. Tith

Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge Trial

Please, read a set of articles showing how Sihanouk after proclaiming loudly that he would go anywhere to testify at the Khmer Rouge Trial; now that the ECCC may call him to testify, Sihanouk is hiding behind Hun Sen' s pants to avoid giving testimonies to the Khmer Rouge tribunal being afraid that he may incriminate himself. This is why Sihanouk is giving his full support to Hun Sen at the expense of the national interests of Cambodia. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. october 10, 2009

THE KING FATHER AND DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEA.docx

Khmer Rouge court calls government witnesses
(AFP) October 7, 2009 8 hours ago

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gMxx8h_NwGyGJFtyWmhwKx_QWeHA

(Comments: At last. something close to “real justice” and not “practical justice” as Craig Etcheson and Theary Seng suggested is about to take place at the Khmer Rouge Trial. This call by the international judges for some senior CPP members to testify at the KRT is a big step forward towards “real justice”, and away from “practical justice.”

Of course, Hun Sen who had warned of civil war if those senior members of his CPP were to be asked to testify in the KRT, it is not yet a sure thing that this call for these senior members of the CPP to appear at the KRT, as so loudly stated by Khieu Kanharith, the spokesman for the Hun Sen, that those international judges who had issued the call for Heng Samrin, Chea Sim, Hor Nam Hong, Keat Chhon two otherCPP senators to appear at the KRT, can go home, because these senior members of the CPP will never show up at the KRT. That what Hun Sen and Craig Etcheson/Theary Seng’s “practical justice” is all about, a politically manipulated justice.Please, also read a companion article titled “KR Tribunal Summons Tops officials.”

Stay tune, more to come. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. October 8, 2009)

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PHNOM PENH Cambodia's UN-backed Khmer Rouge war crimes court has summoned
six top government and legislative officials as witnesses against leaders of the late 1970s regime, said documents released Wednesday.

In a move opposed by the Cambodian government, letters signed by the French investigating judge called on the officials to testify in the second case against former Khmer Rouge leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Current senate president Chea Sim, national assembly president Heng Samrin, foreign minister Hor Namhong, finance minister Keat Chhon and senators Sim Ka and Ouk Bunchhoeun were each "asked for a hearing as a witness," said the letters.

They will have to give testimony to an investigating judge of the tribunal, which was created in 2006 to try leading members of the regime.

"Except for individuals who volunteer to go, the government's position is no to this even if they are called as witnesses," government spokesman Khieu Kanharith told AFP Wednesday.

He said that foreign officials involved in the tribunal "can pack their clothes and return home" if they are not satisfied.

However Heather Ryan, court monitor for the Open Society Justice Initiative, said the move to release the court documents was an "important step" which might make members of government feel obliged to cooperate with the tribunal.

"The fact that the letters are public hopefully increases the chances they will comply with the summonses," Ryan said.

Critics of Cambodia's administration have previously alleged that it has interfered in the tribunal to protect former regime members now in government.

The court's second case is expected to try detained former Khmer Rouge ideologue Nuon Chea, head of state Khieu Samphan, foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife, minister of social affairs Ieng Thirith.

As the court has sought to investigate other suspects, Prime Minister Hun Sen has warned further prosecutions could plunge Cambodia back into civil war. But critics say there is no risk of more fighting after over a decade of peace.

Final arguments in the court's first trial of prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, known by the alias Duch, are scheduled for late next month.

He has used the proceedings to accept responsibility and apologise for overseeing the execution of more than 15,000 people at the main Khmer Rouge jail, known as Tuol Sleng.

Led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia's cities in a bid to forge a communist utopia, resulting in the deaths of up to two million people from starvation, overwork and torture.

KR tribunal summons top officials

The Phnm Penh Post; Thursday, 08 October 2009 15:04 Sam Rith and Sebastian Strangio

Intl judge seeks testimony from 6 government leaders.

SIX senior government officials, including the foreign and finance ministers, have been summoned to appear as witnesses by the Kingdom’s war crimes court in the upcoming case against former Khmer Rouge leaders, according to letters released Wednesday.

The letters, each dated September 25 and bearing the signature of International Co-Investigating Judge Marcel Lemonde, request that the officials – Senate President Chea Sim, National Assembly President Heng Samrin, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, Finance Minister Keat Chhon and two CPP senators – appear at the court to provide testimony “in the framework of the investigation under way against Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan and other leaders”.

The four regime figures face charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes at the hybrid court.

In his letter to Keat Chhon, Lemonde requests his appearance at the tribunal based on “previous public declarations”, including one made on December 13, 2006.

The letter does not give details about the particular statement, but at the time Voice of America radio reported Keat Chhon had said he took “full responsibility for his part” in the Khmer Rouge regime and was “willing to testify” should the tribunal summon him.

The minister had been responding at the time to allegations by opposition leader Sam Rainsy that he had played a “key role” in the regime and served as an adviser to Pol Pot.

The letters addressed to Chea Sim and Heng Samrin both summon them on the basis of “a request” from a group of unnamed lawyers, whereas Senators Sim Ka and Ouk Bunchhoeun are being called to court on the basis of unspecified comments they made during interviews on August 7 and August 14, 1990.

Tribunal observers were quick to point out that a summons to appear at the tribunal did not carry any suggestion the officials would face charges of their own.

“The fact that people are summonsed to provide testimony definitely does not indicate any culpability on their part,” said Heather Ryan, a trial monitor at the Open Society Justice Initiative.

“It only indicates the investigating judges believe they may have information relevant to the case.”

Anne Heindel, a legal adviser for the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, agreed but added that the six would not have been summoned if they were not able to provide insights into the case against the four former leaders.

“Generally, at international courts, people aren’t summoned just because they happened to be in the country at the time,” she said.

“There has to be some belief that they’ll be able to shed light on particular charges.”

She said that even though calling sitting government officials to give testimony had precedent in international law, it was generally used as a last resort after behind-the-scenes discussions with the officials in question.

“It’s obvious this is not going to be welcomed by the government,” she said.

Government officials were tight-lipped about the judge’s action when contacted on Wednesday.

Koy Kuong, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan both declined to comment, saying they had yet to see the letters.

Representatives for Heng Samrin, Chea Sim and Keat Chhon could not be reached. Senior CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap told the Post that he did not know the substance of the letter summoning Heng Samrin to court but that it was his “personal right to decide whether to go [to the court] or not”.

You Bun Leng, the court’s Cambodian Co-Investigating Judge, said he was too busy to comment.

Waiting for justice in Cambodia

After years of political sabotage and judicial quarrelling, trial of former

Khmer Rouge leaders scheduled to begin next month

Posted By DENIS D. GRAY, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

(http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1404662)

(Comments: This article is perhaps one of the most accurately written on the true story behind the Khmer Rouge Trial saga. It main contribution is to clearly shows that it is Hun Sen and his former Khmer Rouge senior cadre that did do all their best not to give justice to those survivors of the massacre innocent people under the murderous regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer rouge killers.

Brad Adams, Director Human Rights Watch (HRW) for Asia, is the most courageous among those who are supposed to defend human rights in Asia, He went out of his ways to expose how Hun Sen has been doing everything in his power, with the help of Sihanouk, to delay as long as possible so that there would not be any senior Khmer Rouge leaders left to testify against them.

I have been saying this for a long time, and finally I am glad to see Brad Adams has been taking the lead in exposing Hun Sen and his CPP diabolical scheme to undo the Khmer Rouge Trial Process, known as the Extraordinary Chambers in Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Thank you Brad Adams for your courageous act of courage in fighting the diabolical gang of traitors and murders under Hun Sen, masquerading as the saviors of the Cambodian society and people, while working under the imperialistic control of Vietnam. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington Dc. January 27, 2009)

--------------------------------------------------------------

Im Savoeun remembers how they clung to each other for the last time, sobbing, as life drained from her husband after a savage beating by the Khmer Rouge. The starving man's crime was stealing a potato.

"I could not help him. There was no medicine. The only thing I could give him were my tears," says the 64-year-old woman, who, like countless Cambodians, has spent half a lifetime grieving and waiting for justice.

In 2009, after years of political sabotage, judicial bickering, corruption allegations and funding shortages, the Khmer Rouge is likely to begin facing retribution for the crimes of its 1970s reign of terror.

A UN-backed tribunal announced recently it would put the first of five former Khmer Rouge leaders before a panel of Cambodian and international judges Feb. 17 on charges of crimes against humanity. The trials of the other four, all old and ailing, are unlikely to begin until 2010.

Stepping first into the 504-seat courtroom will be 65-year-old Kaing Guek Eav, who headed the Khmer Rouge's largest torture centre. The others are Khieu Samphan, the group's former head of state; Ieng Sary, its foreign minister; his wife Ieng Thirith, who was minister for social affairs; and Nuon Chea, the movement's chief ideologue. They face a maximum of life imprisonment.

The trials will place Cambodia among a half-dozen countries that have been caught up in international criminal trials for crimes against humanity in the past 15 years. But the Cambodian process has had a particularly stormy history, and it faces skepticism about its fairness and scope, and suspicions that some pretext or other will halt it altogether.

"Even if we condemn five or 10 at the tribunal, there will be no balance because they killed millions," says Im Savoeun, who lost four other family members. "My husband and son can never come back to me, but at least they will have received some justice."

Inflamed by an ultra-communist vision, the Khmer Rouge sought to eradicate traditional Cambodian society and begin again from "year zero." They turned the country into a vast slave labour camp, abolishing all freedoms. At least 1.7 million, some say more than two million, died of starvation, disease and executions during this primitive experiment in human engineering.

Despite the scale of atrocities, the Cambodian side at the tribunal, called the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia, has sought to strictly limit the court's reach. It recently refused a proposal by Robert Petit, the Canadian international co-prosecutor, to cast the net wider and try up to five more former Khmer Rouge figures.

Even this would not satisfy many critics and victims.

"You can't have two million people dead, try five or 10 cases and call it a day. That may be all they do, but we are not going to say that justice was done no matter how well that process goes," says Brad Adams of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

"The reason we want more than 10 is because there are dozens of people with thousands of deaths on their hands running around out there still. They deserve their day in court."

But Prime Minister Hun Sen's government is full of former Khmer Rouge higher-ups, himself included, and has little to gain from the trials. Already in 1998, he declared that Cambodians "should dig a hole and bury the past."

"There is fear among the Cambodian government. The former Khmer Rouge are asking: 'Who is next?' " says Youk Chhang, who heads The Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has collected some one million documents related to the Khmer Rouge terror.

Adams, an American who has monitored the court's progress since it was proposed 13 years ago, said, "There has been political interference that intentionally slowed the whole process down just to basically play out the clock on the possibility that some defendants would die."

He and others allege that Cambodian judges have received instructions from the Ministry of Interior on how to act. One judge, Ney Thol, has been particularly singled out. An army general and senior member of Hun Sen's party, he has drawn criticism from human rights groups for his rulings against Hun Sen's chief political rivals.

In an open admission that the trial has more to do with internal politics than standards of international justice, Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang recently argued that putting more than five figures on trial could endanger national stability.

While Japan's contribution this month of $21 million has at least temporarily allayed fears the court might run out of funding, an investigation into alleged corruption -- including the buying of positions on the court -- has still to be concluded.

Lawyers for Nuon Chea, the ideologue, say the alleged corruption "could undermine the fundamental right to a fair trial."

Petit isn't giving up. "There is still a fair chance that the tribunal will realize a limited measure of justice. It will help set the historical record once and for all and will help people understand and believe what happened here," he said in an interview.

But he added that "anything can always happen: money can run out, the government can ask us to go home or the internationals may decide to leave."

Despite their long wait and the death of many victims and their tormentors, nationwide surveys show that more than 80 per cent of Cambodians back the trials.

Those victims who had tried to put the horror behind them began reliving it when the prospect of trials arose, and to abort the process would cause huge frustration, says Pung Chhiv Kek, a human rights campaigner.

Kickback Claims Stain the KRT

By Cat Barton

Rumors of political interference have dogged the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) since its inception. Now, recent allegations that Cambodian staffers must provide a portion of their wages to government officials have highlighted the difficulties of introducing international legal standards to a country widely considered to be systemically corrupt.

"The kickbacks have been an open secret for months," said one person close to the trial, who requested anonymity. "The problem with this type of corruption is that it is woven into the fabric of society. The employees who are paying the kickbacks are benefiting. No one is inclined to talk on the record and lose their job. There is a very real fear of retaliation."

Reports concerning a lack of transparency in the hiring procedures of the ECCC began surfacing late in 2006, said the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in a statement released on February 20. This prompted the UNDP - which has provided $5 million to the tribunal - to commission an internal audit of the ECCC between January 29 and February 2. The results have not yet been made public.

On January 31, the Khmer-language paper Voice of Khmer Youth, now aligned with the Norodom Ranariddh Party, printed a story that claimed Cambodian ECCC officials - including judges - were paying 30 percent of the salaries to government officials to secure their positions. On February 14, the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) issued a statement calling for a comprehensive investigation into the allegations.

"The official line is that we are supporting OSJI's determination to ensure the ECCC is a transparent and independent court," said ECCC press officer Peter Foster.

Sean Visoth, the tribunal's administrative director, responded by banning OSJI officials from his offices, and writing a letter to the NGO in which he called the statement "offensive and destructive." He announced he no longer wished to cooperate with OSJI.

"The disconnect between the official line and Visoth's response is understandable," said Theary Seng, director of the Center for Social Development. "Because the ECCC is also a court of public opinion, appearances must be maintained. Part of it is to obscure, part of it is misguided hopefulness, part of it is to buy time, part of it is to shape public perception."

One UN official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed "grave concern" that Helen Jarvis, head of the ECCC press office, "speaks at the behest of the Cambodian government and not for the tribunal as a whole."

Jarvis told the Post on February 22, "It is impossible to respond to anonymous blanket slander. I am carrying out the job for which I have been appointed."

The press office has maintained a positive stance on the discussions over the court's draft internal rules. But people close to the court have said the judges are divided along Cambodian and international lines. One observer described it as a "clash of legal cultures."

"Public statements that the negotiations are going well, when they are not, compromise and even sabotage the negotiations," said Chantal Beaubien, legal adviser for ADHOC's KRT program. "Such statements imply that the international judges will not pull out of the negotiations and abandon the

ECCC if international standards are not being met. This weakens the position of the international judges."

Unlike some other hybrid tribunals, the ECCC does not have a separate press office for the administrative and judicial components of the trial. There are no specific plans to create one, Foster said. International judges have chosen to express their thoughts on the progress of discussions over the court's internal rules to the press directly.

"It's part of our job to explain what's going on in this court," Marcel Lemonde, international investigating judge, told the Post on February 21. "People have been awaiting this trial for 30 years, they wonder why the judicial process appears to be delayed and I believe it would be absurd for judicial officers to

refuse to give information at all."

According to Beaubien, international judges bypassing the press office and making statements about their positions directly to the local and international media, means there is a lack of coherence between the position of the judges and that of the press office.

"The channeling of information and statements through the press office is no longer functioning correctly," she said.

ECCC officials are using the media to raise their concerns and communicate their stance on key issues both to the general public and to their colleagues, Seng said.

"There are cultural, linguistic, and political divides between the Khmer and international ECCC officials," she said. "They are using the media as a medium of communicating to their other colleagues. For example, Khmer officials do not believe the UN will pull out of the ECCC."

The international judges have maintained that they cannot participate in a trial that would not be a fair trial, before an independent and impartial court, Lemonde said.

"This is a non-negotiable issue and, if these conditions were not met, the judges would just have no choice but require the UN to withdraw," he said. "This is not a threat or, worse, bluff - it's just the reality."

It may be tempting to employ threats of a pullout in the heat of the talks, but it would be premature to walk at this stage, said David Scheffer, the United States Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues from 1997 to 2001.

"An enormous amount is now invested in this process of accountability for the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime," he said by email. "Everyone must keep the victims and the larger purpose in focus - justice for the atrocity crimes that devastated Cambodia."

Direct communication and compromise will prove key to resolving the current division over the IRs, Scheffer said.

"Achieving agreement here is not 'mission impossible,' and everyone surely understands how historically significant their decisions will be in the weeks ahead," he said. "Failure now will never be forgiven by the families of the victims or by historians, regardless of what excuses are given."

As the judges seek consensus over the internal rules, and the administrative office deals with allegations of corruption, accurate information, not excuses, is what the public requires, Beaubien said.

"If press office statements are whitewashing the discussions by failing to disclose that they are going badly, the public is no longer properly informed," she said.

Regardless of the problems the trial may encounter - be it audits, allegations, or

arguments over the IRs - it is imperative that they are honestly and openly addressed that the trial might go on, Scheffer said.

"If the ECCC fails to become operational and hold trials then I believe that Cambodian society will be taking an enormous risk," he said. "Without the accountability and historical record that ECCC trials can establish, however partial, for the atrocity crimes of the Pol Pot regime,

Cambodian society will never fully recognize the significance of what occurred and of the nation's responsibility to prevent such crimes in the future."

Phnom Penh Post, Issue 16 / 04, February 23 - March 8, 2007

For permission to publish any part of this publication, contact Michael Hayes, Editor

Exchange of letters between Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D. and Pen Sovann,

(former Prime Minister of Cambodia under Vietnamese occupation.)

February 2, 2001

By Professor Naranhkiri Tith

Posted Online

Dear Mr. Pen Sovann:

I came across your web site through Radio Cambodia International. I also just read your declaration on the anniversary of the so-called Vietnamese "liberation" of Cambodia on the 7th of January 1979, as well as your interview in the most recent edition of the Phnom Penh Post on that anniversary celebration by the CPP.

Before going any further, let me introduce myself and tell you what I am doing with the information that I hope you will be able to provide me on your background and role in the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia until you were removed from the power by the Vietnamese Political Bureau after your trip to Moscow in the early 1980s.

I am presently a professor of International Economics and Asian Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, here in Washington, DC.

I have never belonged any political parties. I am very much involved in trying to bring democracy, society and real freedom to the Cambodian people by working very closely with the US Congress, the academic community, and the NGOs, local and international.

I am 67 years old, and a citizen of the United States of America. I have no political ambition except to see real freedom, peace, justice, and moral and material decency for all Cambodians. I am not a Vietnamese hater, nor am I naive and expedient to thank Vietnam for the so-called 'liberation.' I sincerely think that Vietnam has been committing genocide against the Cambodian people, especially against Khmer Krom people, as they did against the Chams a few centuries ago.

I also read a recent book written entitled "Following Ho Chi Minh' by Colonel Bui Tin, former editor of the Nhan Dan Newspaper of the Vietnamese army. From these readings,I would like to ask you the following questions:

(1) Acceding to Bui Tin you were serving with the Vietnamese army with the rank of major until you were appointed to be the defense minister, Secretary General of the Cambodian Communist Party, and Prime Minister, after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.

(2) What motivated you to be member of the Vietnamese Communist Party and a member of the Vietnamese army?

(3) Did you know that Vietnam has always been using Cambodian kings and other traitors to take over Cambodia's land and committing genocidal acts against the Cambodian people, and the Chams before that?

(4) Did you really believe that the Vietnamese were sincere in coming to "liberate" Cambodia without conditions attached?

(5) Who else were with your group that came with the Vietnamese tanks to invade Cambodia, besides Chan Si, and Say Pouthong?

(6) Do you believe that Hun Sen, Sar Kheng, and Chea Sim are still serving Vietnamese national interests at the expense of Cambodian interests? Please, tell me why did they do that, if you agree with this assessment?

(7) You still seem to praise Vietnam as the liberator of the Cambodian people, but you only objected to their insincerity. How do you justify your position in this regard?

(8) What is your judgment on King Sihanouk's role during the Khmer Rouge regime?

During the Vietnamese occupation? And since the 1997 coup d' état by Hun Sen? Is he guilty at all in all these activities with all these events in Cambodia? Is he the God father of the Khmer Rouge and Hun Sen?

Please, elaborate for the so - Kov5 Plan? What is it how was it organized? who led it?

And what were the objectives of that plan? What kind and extent of damage did the plan cause the Cambodian people and where?

(9) What is your strategy and policy to reverse the tragic course history that you personally brought about to make the Vietnamese master of Cambodia's destiny?

Thank you in advance for your cooperation and kind answers. With best regards.

Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D.

The School of Advanced International Studies,

The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC.

************

Dear Mr. N. Tith,

I am very happy that you have asked me nine questions, dated Feb. 2, 2001. I am Pen Sovann and my answers to your questions are the following:

ANSWER

(1) I was sent by the Khmer People¹s Revolutionary Party to continue my study in Vietnam from 1955 to 1970. I studied at the "Modern Infantry Institute". I did not belong to any Vietnamese army, but I participated in the hand-on training requirements given through the Vietnamese armed forces to build my technical military experiences so that I could eventually use it to serve my own country.

(2) I have never been a member of the Vietnamese Communist Party nor was I ever a soldier of any Vietnamese armed forces. I was just a Cambodian designated to go and fulfill my study in a foreign country with the intention of returning to serve my country.

(3) According to history, I knew that Vietnam had used Cambodian kings and other group of traitors as a mean to seize Cambodian territories and to implement their genocidal policy to swallow Cambodian land. Kampuchea Krom, was another example of what they implemented to absorb the territories belonging to Champa.

(4) I have clearly expressed in my statement as of Jan. 1, 2001, regarding the cooperation to free Cambodia from the genocidal regime but the party of Vietnam violated the cooperative contract and instead jailed me for over ten years when I rebelled and chose to serve the interests of my own country.

(5) There were indeed a lot of people that I am not able to explain everything, but you will soon see everything in my book to be published in the near future.

(6) It is true that they still serve the interests of Vietnam as they receive perks, power, and protection in return. Because of these benefits they never acted on problems such as illegal Vietnamese immigrants or border encroachments, etc.

(7) Yes, as for me and other Cambodians who survived the massacre, it is appropriate to say that Vietnam timely saved Cambodians from the genocidal regime. Contrary to this, Vietnam held intentions to inappropriately colonize Cambodia. They illegally sent their people into Cambodia in order to seize Cambodian land.

(8) As for this question, let's not judge it yet as there are many angles that we cannot address. And as for the KOR 5 PLAN, you will see and understand it when my history book is published in the near future.

(9) My strategies and policies are to destroy dictatorship, family and clan interests by using nonviolent means based on real democratic principles.

Sincerely,

Pen Sovann

Phnom Penh, Feb. 8, 2001

Major Barrier to Khmer Rouge Trial is removed

Reuters

San Diego, California

(http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070312-0340-cambodia-rouge.html)

3:40 a.m. March 12, 2007

(A word of caution: This is another well-known trick from Hun Sen, as a diplomat in this article has warned, to manipulate the KRT, as he has been doing for the last ten years.)

PHNOM PENH – The Cambodian Bar Association said on Monday it had lifted its ban on foreign lawyers at planned trials of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, lifting a significant barrier to getting them started.

'We are making a lot of compromises, and that means foreign lawyers can join us in the defence section of the Khmer Rouge,' association president Ky Tech told Reuters after the first day of talks with the London-based International Bar Association.

'We are working on how to assign volunteer lawyers to represent the victims of the Khmer Rouge and defend the regime's leaders,' he said.

The association's ban on the participation of foreign lawyers in United Nations-supported trials expected to last three years and cost $56.3 million had cast doubts on whether they would go ahead.

Some diplomats had seen the ban as a way of delaying trials of senior Khmer Rouge figures now in their 70s and 80s and amplified doubts about whether the government, despite its public proclamations of support, really wanted them to happen. But Ky Tech said only details had to be worked out now.

'We are meeting and working together because we do not want to obstruct Khmer Rouge trials. I am optimistic we can work together,' he said.

The agreement, however, does not clear the way to opening the trials of figures such as 'Brother Number Two' Nuon Chea, deputy to the late Pol Pot, the architect of the Khmer Rouge's 'Year Zero' revolution in which an estimated 1.7 million people died.

Foreign and Cambodian judges, who will have to work together under a complex formula designed to ensure judgments have the support of both, are half way through two weeks of talks on agreeing on the nuts and bolts of how the trials will be run.

Tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said they had made substantial progress in their third attempt to agree, but refused to provide any details.

'Discussions are still going on and we cannot provide details,' he said. 'But what we can tell you is that a lot of progress has been made over the past few days.'

Disagreements ranged from the admissibility of evidence to witness protection, even to the height of the judges' chairs, and the trials cannot begin until they are ironed out.

Other aged of the country's population was executed or died of hunger or disease leaders due to face trial are former head of state Khieu Samphan and ex-foreign minister Ieng Sary.

They are living free. The most senior Khmer Rouge in detention is Duch, head of the notorious Tuol Sleng interrogation centre in Phnom Penh where at least 14,000 people are thought to have been tortured and executed.

Closure for Cambodia?

By Erika Kinetz

Newsweek International

Nearly 10 years after the Cambodian government first asked for help setting up a court to try leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, it has yet to hold a single hearing. Washington refuses to fund the court on the ground that it's not up to international standards, and its ambassador, Joseph Mussomeli, says, "no trial would be better than a trial that will be a farce.

" The court's foreign and Cambodian judges are deadlocked over procedure, and the foreign judges have threatened to walk out rather than participate in what they fear could become an exercise in politics over justice.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Since the Nuremberg tribunal after World War II, trials of brutal leaders have slowly become more common and established a moderately positive record. U.N. courts have convicted numerous individuals for the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide. A hybrid court under local and international auspices is slowly getting off the ground in Sierra Leone. But the Cambodia tribunal, also an experimental local-international hybrid, has gone nowhere—denying justice to the almost 2 million victims of one of the 20th century's worst acts of mass slaughter. Court insiders, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, now give the tribunal a 50-50 chance of

collapsing.

Part of the problem is that, unlike the U.N. courts, Cambodia's tribunal is, at the government's insistence, mainly a national affair staffed mostly with Cambodian judges (though they are supposed to be guided by international principles). Hans Corell, who led the U.N.'s effort to help establish the court, says that he is "not at all convinced that this represents a good solution" to the problem of achieving justice in a local context. There's a certain emotional logic to prosecuting Cambodiancrimes in Cambodia, and optimists hope a televised exercise in real justice will help break the cycle of violence and impunity that haunts the nation.

But that outcome looks unlikely. Hun Sen's government seems interested in the trial only to the extent it will vindicate its own anti-Khmer Rouge credentials—without dredging up awkward facts, such as current officials' own Khmer Rouge ties or the support that China, now a close ally, gave to the genocidal regime. The are other worrisome signs: one of the court's Cambodian judges has admitted taking bribes,and another once sent an opposition politician to prison after a one-day trial. An American watchdog group, the Open Society Justice Initiative, recently alleged that employees of the court were being forced to pay kickbacks to government officials (a charge Phnom Penh denies), and the U.N. is auditing the court's hiring of local staff. Sara Colm of Human Rights Watch says the Cambodian government "got cold feet" when it realized that working with foreign partners meant "it might not be able to control" the judicial process.

The government does look willing to let the trial proceed, albeit in a limited fashion.

Part of Hun Sen's legitimacy comes from the fact that his Vietnam-backed government held the Khmer Rouge at bay during the 1980s even as the West backed remnants of the murderous regime. "Twenty years ago we fought the Khmer Rouge, and no one supported us except a few friends," says Prak Sokhon, the cabinet secretary. "Now the tribunal will show that [we were] right."

Even if it does move forward, however, it's unclear which kind of justice the court can deliver. The key suspects are old and, like Pol Pot, rapidly dying off. And though surveys show most Cambodians support the tribunal, what they really want to know is what happened to their spouses and children. Moreover, traditional Cambodian justice usually involves simple retribution, using lynch mobs or cash compensation.

The court's Canadian co-prosecutor, Robert Petit, maintains that no court can hope to deliver justice equal to the suffering of victims in such cases. But if Cambodia's court is transparent, he says, it could establish an "incontrovertible record about what happened."

Ideal or not, most agree that Cambodia's hybrid court is the country's last chance to exorcise its demons—and that time is fast running out. French judge Marcel Lemonde says that if procedures aren't adopted by this spring, it may, regrettably, be time to call it quits. International staffers are nearing their wits' end: "Nobody came here to move paper around," says Petit. But that's as close to justice as Cambodia is getting these days.

With Joe Cochrane

For whom the bell tolls Unsolved murders under Hun Sen’s dictatorship

[Piseth Pelika, center, shot at Psar O'Russey on July 6, 1999.]

(Comments: How anybody with a minimum of conscience expect that Hun Sen and his CPP would allow the Khmer Rouge Trial to be completed soon and according to international standard of justice, when all these high-profile crimes are still unresolved?)

Grenade Attack, March 30, 1997

At least 12 people were killed and countless more wounded when four grenades were thrown at he Sam-Rainsy-led Khmer National Party demonstration in the park oppositethe National Assembly.

The grenades were hurled into the crowd of demonstrators. A unit of armed soldiers were standing nearby, but the soldiers made no attempt to prevent the assailants from fleeing the scene of the crime. Nearly 10 years later, the perpetrators have yet to be apprehended and brought to justice.

Piseth Pelika, July 13, 1999 (Shot July 6)

In July 6, 1999 Piseth Pelika, a much-loved Cambodian singer, dancer and actor, was singled out from a crowd at Phnom Penh's O'Russei Market and gunned down in broad daylight. She suffered mltiple bullet wounds to the spine, and died seven days later, aged 34, in Calmette Hospital.

Pelika, whose successful career had seen her make over 60 film appearances, was also a strong promoter of traditional Cambodian culture. Her work in this fieldhelped ensure that Cambodia was awarded the top spot at the 1997 Ramayana Festival in Bangkok. Police have not charged anyone with her murder, and the circumstances surrounding her death remain a mystery even now, seven years after the event.

Sam Bunthoeurn, February 8, 2003 (Shot Feb 6)

On February 6, monk Sam Bunthoeurn was shot three times in the chest by a pair of gunmen while he was standing in front of Wat Lanka, Phnom Penh. He died two days later as a result of his injuries, while receiving treatment at Calmette Hospital.

A well-respected Buddhist leader, Bunthoeurn is best remembered for advocating Buddhist voting rights.

Immediately after the event, police said the assassination was the result of a dispute between Buntheourn and a layman. They subsequently suggested that they had information which linked a suspect to the slaying. Four years later, Bunthoeurn's killer has yet to be apprehended.

Bunthoeurn's body has been preserved and is now displayed to the public from a converted supermarket freezer at Oudong's Buddhist center.

Om Radsady, February 18, 2003

Five months before the general election, Om Radsady, senior adviser to Funcinpec leader Norodom Ranariddh, was shot in the thigh by two men while leaving a restaurant in the Daun Penh district.

He died later that day in Calmette hospital. Witnesses reported seeing the assassins flee on a blue Honda AX-1 motorbike. An initial statement by the Ministry of Interior (MoL) claimed Radsady had been murdered for his mobile phone, but it later said there could have been a political motive for the assassination.

Radsady, a senior adviser to Funcinpec leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh, was a well-liked former MP and popular public figure.

Mom Sophann, a rank and file member of parachute regiment 911, and his brother, were both arrested and charged with the Radsady's murder. They said their motive was robbery.

Chea Vichea, January 22, 2004

Chea Vichea, an outspoken trade union activist and Sam Rainsy party supporter, was shot in the head, chest and left wrist while reading a newspaper at a stand next to Wat Lanka. In a contract -style drive-by hit, Vichea was shot repeatedly at close range by an unmasked assailant who then fled on a motorbike driven by an accomplice.

Police arrested Sok Samoeun and Bourn Samnang, who were then convicted of Vichea's murder, but the pair have vigorously asserted their innocence. The Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee (CHRAC) is campaigning to have the men set free. The campaign has earned the support of Va Sothy, a witness to the crime, King Father Norodom Sihanouk, and Chea Mony, Vichea's brother. Many people have linked the assassination to a threatening text-message received by Vichea shortly before his death.

Phnom Penh Post, Issue 16 / 05, March 9 - 22, 2007

For permission to publish any part of this publication, contact Michael Hayes,

-in-Chief http://www.PhnomPenhPost.com - Any comments on the website to Webmaster

Political culture plus the culture of dependence may doom Cambodia

chance of survival

Dependence on Foreign Patrons

From David Chandler; The Burden of Cambodia's past (The Asia Society)

Another reason for pessimism about Cambodia's future is the perennial dependence of its leaders, until very recently, on foreign powers. Some of the protection imposed by Thailand, Vietnam, and France between the 1790s and 1953 was sought by Cambodia's kings; some of it was thrust upon them. When Cambodia emerged from its colonial cocoon, its leaders, emboldened by what they thought was independence, embarked on a series of relationships with less responsive patrons.

The process of patron seeking began under Sihanouk in 1955, after he abdicated and became a private citizen. Fearful of his neighbors, unsympathetic to the United States, flattered by foreign statesmen, and egged on by his advisers, the prince chose the Soviet bloc and China as Cambodia's new patrons while prudently retaining friendly ties with France and accepting aid from the United States.4 Helped by these faraway powers he hoped to outwit so-called U.S. imperialism, meet Cambodia's financial obligations, finesse the Vietnam War, and remove the menace of socialism at home.

The game worked for ten years or so, but it was dangerous to play. It contained

elements of tragedy, too, for Sihanouk seems to have been aware, as Lon Nol and Pol Pot were not, that patrons make the rules. In all three cases, as throughout Cambodia's history, no patron was willing to jeopardize national interests on Cambodia's behalf. In 1970, despite Lon Nol's expressions of neutrality, Cambodia was flung head first into the Vietnam War. From then on Sihanouk's patrons dropped away. China plotted to set up a Maoist regime in his place; the Soviet bloc offered him nothing; and France merely proposed political asylum. The Vietnamese communists, supposedly his allies in 1970, soon reneged on the agreements they had made with the prince to honor Cambodia's borders. The behavior of patrons in duress should have been a warning to Lon Nol and later to Pol Pot.

It is worth asking in hindsight, however, what else the beleaguered ruler could have done. An alliance with his anti—communist neighbors in the 1960s would have brought Cambodia into the Vietnam War almost at once. A full-blown alliance with the United States would have had the same effect, and one with North Vietnam probably would have provoked a South Vietnamese invasion.

Sihanouk's "neutral" policies, which stemmed from patriotism, vanity, wishful thinking,and wariness, were not as far-fetched or as mercurial as many cold warriors depicted them at the time. The Thais gave the prince no reason to trust them; neither did the warring governments of Vietnam. The United States was unwilling to berate or discourage the anti—Sihanouk policies of its anti—communist allies. Frightened of genuine independence when he was militarily so weak, Sihanouk established networks of dependence through which Cambodia hoped to gain some freedom to maneuver. He compromised his country's sovereignty but did not surrender it. He undermined his neutrality but avoided bloodshed for a while. By 1968, if not sooner,he had run out of room to maneuver.

Dependence also had compromised those who resisted the Sihanouk regime. Those who took a conservative, nationalist perspective, like Sam Sary, Dap Chhuon, and Son Ngoc Thanh, were soon entangled in demeaning alliances with Cambodia's neighbors. Those who hoped to install a socialist regime and eventually did so were held in check by Sihanouk's police and by their indifferent patrons in Hanoi.

When the hapless Lon Nol, came to power in 1970, he was even more dependent. He had an almost mystical faith in the man he called his "personal friend," Richard Nixon, who had written him a few cautiously worded letters of support. Lon Nol believed that Nixon personally could remove the threat of the Vietnamese who he saw as non-Buddhist "unbelievers" and thereby save the Cambodian "race." He also counted on open-ended U.S. military support. In the process he failed to notice that his so-called personal friends were disengaging from the region, never to return, even as they promised their heartfelt, continuing assistance.5

Dependency on China dogged the Khmer Rouge leaders after they seized power in April 1975 and sought to escape the party's long-standing subordination to Vietnam. The interplay between communism and nationalism as well as their relation to foreign patronage are such enduring features of Cambodian politics, even today, that the background is worth examining.

In 1954, after the Geneva Peace Conference several thousand resistance fighters and ICP members were evacuated to North Vietnam, pending what their patrons told them would be the collapse of the pro—Western regimes throughout Indochina. Most of the evacuees remained in North Vietnam until 1970. Some stayed even longer.

During this time they were nominally led by a veteran Cambodian revolutionary, Son Ngoc Minh, but were not encouraged to develop national policies. Many took Vietnamese revolutionary names, married Vietnamese women, and were seconded to the Vietnamese army.

During the First Indochina War (1946-1954), Vietnamese patronage seemed naturaland rewarding to most of these Khmer revolutionaries, and those who took up residence in North Vietnam did so willingly enough. The ones who stayed behind to carry out the political struggle, led by Tou Samouth, were not particularly antagonistic toward Hanoi. For a time, they were optimistic about seizing power.

In 1954—55 the collapse of the pro-Western regimes that had just been established in Indochina seemed a distinct possibility to these experienced fighters. The collapse was delayed by U.S. intervention in Laos and Vietnam and by Sihanouk's dexterity, popular appeal, and security apparatus in Cambodia. By 1956 radicals in Cambodia were on the defensive, cut off from their patrons in Hanoi and harassed by Sihanouk's

police.

It was at this point that the movement received an infusion of new members returning from university study in France. Several of these men and women--including Saloth Sar (alias Pol Pot), Ieng Sary, and Son Sen--had been drawn toward communism and joined the French Communist Party. When they came home, most of them took up careers in teaching or the civil service and joined the clandestine communist movement.

As well-educated, patriotic revolutionaries, they were unwilling to await developments in Indochina or to take guidance from abroad. Political struggle as enjoined by Hanoi offered these ambitious men and women the unpalatable alternatives of inactivity, compromise with Sihanouk's "feudal" regime, or arrest. At the same time, because they lacked weapons, armed struggle was out of the question.6

When Tou Samouth died under mysterious circumstances in 1962, Saloth Sar became the leader of Cambodia's small, underground Communist Party. Soon afterward he went into hiding with a handful of colleagues, including Son Sen and Ieng Sary, in "Office l00," a Vietnamese communist military base that shifted back and forth across the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. In the camp, where he lingered for nearly two years, Saloth Sar and several other Khmer Rouge luminaries first encountered hands—on Vietnamese patronage and protection.

Summoned to Hanoi for consultations in mid-1965, Saloth Sar was told when he got there--after a four-month trek up the Ho Chi Minh Trail--that his party's agenda was irrelevant, amateurish, and chauvinistic. The Vietnamese document reporting the event noted that Saloth Sar "said nothing" in reply. After lingering for several months in Hanoi, Sar proceeded to Beijing where he was warmly welcomed by party spokesmen who were about to embark on the Cultural Revolution. His appreciative new patrons told him that his notions of independent revolution were more authentic than the wait-and-see policies suggested by Vietnam.

Back in Cambodia Sar secretly maneuvered his followers into a Maoist political position. He was careful to keep his fences mended with Hanoi, knowing that when the time came to embark on armed struggle, his party would need Vietnam's assistance. The opportunity came in 1970 when Sihanouk fell from power. Vietnamese help was crucial in arming the Cambodian communists, training their forces, and destroying Lon Nol's army, but at the end of 1972 the Vietnamese withdrew their troops as part of their peace agreement with the United States.

Sar and his colleagues, who refused to join the cease—fire, felt abandoned and betrayed. By this time, if not before, they shared Lon Nol's racist antipathy toward Vietnam. Instead of attacking Vietnam directly, however, they secretly purged over a thousand "Hanoi Khmer" who had come from Vietnam in 1970 to help them.

The cease-fire meant, in the words of CIA Director William Colby, that Cambodia wasnow "the only game in town." For the first nine months of 1973 the country was subjected to intense U.S. aerial bombardment. The bombing had the intended effect of digging a trench around the capital and thus postponed a Khmer Rouge victory. (It took the Khmer Rouge two more years to win the war.) But it also inflicted thousands of civilian casualties, intensified the fervor of Khmer Rouge soldiers, and some have argued, hastened the ascent of Sar's faction within the Cambodian Communist Party. Only the last of these effects is subject to debate.7 After dropping half a million tons of bombs in a campaign where American lives were not endangered, the U.S. Congress called it off.

In spite of choosing "independence" and "self-mastery" as their mottoes, the Khmer Rouge, when they came to power, could not stand on their own feet--especially after 1977, when Sar, now going by the name Pol Pot, chose to wage war against Vietnam. Once the Khmer Rouge attacks had been launched, the regime needed open-ended Chinese assistance to survive. As previous Cambodian rulers had discovered to their detriment, however, the patronage turned out to be limited and contingent. Pol Pot's regime collapsed when his patrons in Beijing found that the risks of supporting him militarily had become too high. Luckily for the Khmer Rouge,however, China's patronage continued after 1979, with Beijing letting go of its clients only in 1990, in the run-up to the Paris Peace Accords.

In early 1979, in the wake of Vietnam's invasion, Hanoi established a protectorate over Cambodia that shared many characteristics with the French protectorate, including a somewhat altered "civilizing mission" whereby the deserving but "childlike" Cambodians were trained to honor and respect the Vietnamese. Once again, however, foreign patronage proved costly for the patrons, and in 1989 the Vietnamese withdrew. After a transitional period (1990—92) in which Hun Sen rose to power, the Paris Peace Accords ended the era of foreign patronage for Cambodia, but a final flurry of protection--a sort of encore after two centuries of dependency--occurred in 1992—93 under the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

In 1993, in the aftermath of the UNTAC-brokered elections, the newly established Cambodian government found itself without a political patron for the first time in centuries, although substantial aid from a range of donors continued to pour into the country. In the mid-1990s the economic dependence of Cambodia's political elites on selected foreign powers, including Thailand, Taiwan, and Malaysia, seems to have replaced political dependence, but the national and political aspects of patronage have become less important. From an ecological and economic point of view, however, the exploitation of Cambodia by outsiders shows no signs of letting up.

Political Culture

Cambodia's political future also might be impaired by its enduring political culture. For hundreds of years absolute rulers have confronted factional opponents, and factions have confronted one another, scrambling to serve their own interests in a volatile, high-stakes game. A winner-takes-all political culture based on endemic distrust has impeded the development of a civil society, stifled free expression, encouraged cronyism and violence, and exacerbated people's tendency to distrust and fear thosein power. Seen in this light, Cambodia's strong man, Hun Sen, despite his modern trappings, remains very much a traditional political leader.

In classical Cambodia power was thought of as a finite, expendable commodity.

The verb "to govern" was the same as the verb "to consume." There were no legal constraints on the conduct of those at the top. Similarly, there was no recourse other than flight or rebellion for people who were exploited. The Cambodian legal code, such as it was, was designed to protect the rich and powerful, particularly the king, against crimes of lèse-majesté.

Under the protectorate, the French froze Cambodia's institutions, including the potentially absolute monarchy, in place and did little to develop the rule of law.

When Sihanouk took power in 1955, he paid little attention to laws that impeded his power and rode roughshod over Cambodia's constitution. Political prisoners,held without trial, were frequently executed. None of Sihanouk's successors (nor any of their opponents, for that matter) have felt that they owed much to the electorate or that power was something to be shared or balanced in the interests of the country. Instead Lon Nol, Pol Pot, Hun Sen, and Prince Ranariddh have tended to identify the welfare of the nation with themselves and have seen dissent as

tantamount to treason.

Over the years most Cambodian politicians and officeholders have focused their attention on neutralizing their enemies. In modern times none has gone so far along these lines as the Khmer Rouge. Following a Maoist model Pol Pot and his colleagues allowed political warfare to direct Cambodian life. The colossal costs of this fiery experiment are still being measured. One of its very few benefits was to make Cambodians aware that politics was something that impinged on their daily lives and demanded participation. Most Khmer had traditionally associated politics with rich people, corruption, and exploitation; they had not had a voice in political decisions or any power over the nation's political life. The depredations of the Khmer Rouge, for one thing, made it easier for people in the 1990s to conceptualize tyranny, lawlessness, and human rights.9

Very few Cambodian leaders (Sihanouk in his heyday was an exception) have thought it necessary to be popular, flexible, or responsive. By and large, injustice and government have gone hand in hand. The people's loyalty is supposed to be unquestioning; power is its own reward. No ruler allowed himself to be doubted. Very few have listened to advice, and none before Pol Pot questioned the distribution of power among haves and have-nots. Pol Pot's response to these imbalances was to kill the haves and empower the have-nots while divesting everyone of possessions. That he felt himself uniquely endowed to do so placed him firmly within Cambodian political culture.

The inequities and corruption in Cambodian society under Sihanouk and Lon Nol, combined with the buffeting Cambodia took from the cold war, were enough to draw thousands of Cambodians--especially intellectuals and young, poor peasants--into the ranks of the communist movement, which, when it took power, swiftly became the least responsive, most unaccountable, and least transparent regime in Cambodia's history.

Similarly widespread resentment against government abuses in the early 1990s, rather than the vague and nostalgic programs offered by the opposition, led millions f voters in 1993 to vote against an armed, incumbent regime for the first time in Cambodian history. Ironically the election produced a form of government (i.e., a coalition), which, while ineffective in many instances and inimical to Cambodia's political culture, postponed the outbreak of civil war, made the losing party somewhat more responsive to people's material needs than it had been, and for a time provided a facade of stability sufficient to placate most donor nations. Since the July 1997 coup these positive aspects of coalition government have all but disappeared, and the two most prominent factions have embarked on a confrontation aimed to eliminate the other. Cambodian history seems intent on perpetually repeating itself as a tragicomic farce.

There seems to be a contrast in many Cambodians' minds between politics as practiced and an imagined form of government based on pure-mindedness, detachment, and justice. In pre-colonial times, the savior was someone thought to be endowed with merit and magical powers. More recently the ideal government leader has usually been construed as someone personable, detached, and incorruptible. In the 1960s Khieu Samphan's reputation for incorruptibility and responsiveness was a major contributor to his sub-rosa popularity among students, intellectuals, and some of the rural poor. During the same period Pol Pot was admired by his students and colleagues--and, if defectors can be believed, was still admired in the 1990s--for his smoothness, patriotism, and kindly manner, which contrasted sharply to the relentless egotism of Cambodians then in power.

Conclusion: Future Prospects

Hun Sen's July 1997 coup d'état averted the possibility of civil war but also may have foreclosed the possibilities for pluralism in Cambodian political life. Given the power equation in Cambodia today, there seems little likelihood of increased harmony and compromise on the part of those in power or increased freedom of expression and association for ordinary people. The prospects for a genuinely free and fair election in 1998 are as dim as the prospect that the current regime will feel it necessary to reform to gain the voters' trust. In fact, as the country drifts toward elections, and as it loses the favored position it enjoyed with many donor nations, it seems likely that violent incidents like the March 1997 grenade attack will occur whenever anyone in power, especially Hun Sen, feels threatened. Outbursts of violence against the Vietnamese minority cannot be ruled out, although this is less likely than in the recent past. Finally while it is also possible that the armed forces of the former coalition partners will engage in a full-scale conflict--using surrogates enrolled from the ranks of defecting Khmer Rouge--scattered confrontations are more likely than a full-scale civil war.

Are there any countervailing forces in sight? It is possible that modernization, which is impacting so unevenly on Cambodia today, will provide moderating effects through increased access to information, education, and income for larger segments of the population.

There are also signs of restiveness, courage, and resiliency among journalists, workers, and nongovernmental organizations pressing for change in, among others, the fields of human rights, industrial relations, and the rights of women.

So far the government's response to these pressures has lurched between violence and indifference, but in spite or because of this nongovernmental organizations, their allies, and the causes they work for are increasingly gaining respect.

Perhaps changes will come about as a result of pressure, discreetly applied, from donor nations, although it is impossible to predict what form this pressure might take,the conditions under which it might be applied, or how Hun Sen and Prince Ranariddh might respond.

There are also grounds for some optimism about Cambodia's future, but not much, in what appears to be the disappearance of the Khmer Rouge as a political or military threat.

As this is written, the effects of the Khmer Rouge implosion are impossible to predict, but the disappearance of Pol Pot from the nation's psyche may be that baleful figure's first act of kindness to the Cambodian people.

In the short term, however, it is difficult to see how the men and (much more rarely) women who have profited enormously from Cambodia's violent and autocratic political culture so far, and who cling so tenaciously to power, would be willing to see the culture altered.

Still such alterations are urgent from the point of view of delivering equity to the Cambodian people, who are, as so often in the past, poorly governed but stubbornly refuse to be "consumed."

=================================

Notes

1. See Eva Mysliwiec, Punishing the Poor: The International Isolation of Kampuchea (Oxford: Oxfam, 1988), and Michael Vickery, Kampuchea: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1986). Hun Sen, Cambodia's second prime minister,

gained power in this period. He is fluent in Vietnamese.

2. For a discussion of this period, see David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, 2d ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 118—32.

3. Author's interviews in Phnom Penh (January—February 1997) with five Cambodians who joined the ICP and spent the period 1954—70 in North Vietnam.

4. For discussions of Cambodia in this period, see Roger Smith, Cambodia's Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1965), and David Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History (New Haven: Yale University, 1991).

5. For a perceptive political history of the Lon Nol period, see Justin Corfield, Khmers

Stand Up! (Clayton, Australia: Monash University, 1995). The best discussion of U.S. policy in that aera remains William Shawcross's Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979).

6. For a persuasive study of Vietnamese-Cambodian relations between 1946 and 1975, and documentary support for this part of the essay, see Thomas Englebert and Christopher Goscha, Falling Out of Touch (Clayton, Australia: Monash University, 1994).

See also Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power (London: Verso, 1985).

7. See William Shawcross, Sideshow, and Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime (New Haven: Yale University, 1996).

8. For an interesting discussion, see Benedict Anderson, "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture," in Language and Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1990), pp.

17—77.

9. For a discussion of political culture in the UNTAC era, see Steve Heder and Judy Ledgerwood, eds., Propaganda, Politics, and Violence in Cambodia (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), especially pp. 114—83.

Cambodian Bar Association accuses foreign judges of hindering

Khmer Rouge tribunal

Is Khmer Rouge Trial one step closer to collapse?

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) _ The Cambodian Bar Association said Monday foreign judges for the Khmer Rouge genocide trials were behaving like children and finding excuses to delay the long-awaited tribunal.

"This is a childish game the international judges with international reputations should not be playing," said bar association president Ky Tech.

The tribunal's four international judges have threatened to boycott preparations for the tribunal over the bar association's decision to impose fees on foreign lawyers wishing to participate in the trials.

Many fear that internal disputes could delay efforts to bring the Khmer Rouge's few surviving leaders to trial for crimes against humanity for the deaths of about 1.7 million people during the group's 1975-79 rule. The U.N.-backed tribunal, led by Cambodian and international judges, was expected to begin this year.

The bar association wants foreign lawyers to pay a US$500 (euro375) membership application fee. If chosen to work with a client, they must pay an additional US$2,000 (euro1,500) and a US$200 (euro150) monthly fee, Ky Tech said.

The international judges have said the fees severely limit the rights of the accused and of victims to select counsel of their choice. They said they will boycott a meeting next month on internal rules governing the proceedings if the fee issue is not resolved.

"This is evidence that they are the ones who are hindering the tribunal, not the bar association, not the Cambodian government," Ky Tech told reporters.

The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission said in a statement Friday the bar association "must be condemned for their action in imposition (of) exorbitant fees, which has no doubt brought more delays and may even be the reason why the trial proceedings collapse altogether."

The move "is immoral and reprehensible" and "must be looked at as an inhuman act," the commission said.

3/26/01

ISSUED AT THE REQUEST OF THE NATIONAL JUDGES OF THE ECCC

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia Chambres Extraordinaires au sein des

Tribunaux Cambodgiens

PRESS RELEASE

(Comments: What Communists are good at is to blame others for the mistake they make. It is exactly the case of Hun Sen and his playing yo yo with the Khmer Rouge Trial. The crucial question here regarding the dignity and the sanctity of interational justice, is how long can the internaitonal jusdges and other members of the internaitonational community afford to continue to play this deadly game with Hun Sen. Those of us Cambodians who are victims of the Khmer Rouge's slaughter,is the hope that the international community would soon realize that by continuing to deal with Hun Sen, not only did they loose their respectability, but, they also insult the memory of those victims of the Khmer Rouge of which Hun Sen is an integral part. Naranhkiri Tith)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The national judges appointed to the ECCC consider that the international judges’decision not to participate in the plenary session planned at the end this month would further delay the process of the court.

On 4 April, 2007, all fifteen national judges of the ECCC present a letter in response to their international colleagues’ letter of 3 April, in which the latter announced that they would not participate in the plenary session scheduled for 30 April to adopt the draft Internal Rules of the ECCC which would enable the trial to move ahead conforming to the expectation of all victims.

In response to the proposal to exclude the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia (BAKC) from the ECCC process, the national judges consider the

such a move is not consistent with the substance and spirit of the Agreement between the Royal Government of Cambodia and the United Nations (especially article 21.3), Law on the etablishment of the ECCC as well the original intend in establishing the court.

The national judges note that both national and international members of the Review Committee resolved all technical legal issues. The national judges point out that the Bar Association registration fees are not a matter covered by the Internal Rules and therefore should not be a reason to delay their adoption as argued by the international judges in their 3 April letter.

The national judges also regret the international judges’ decision to set an ultimatum to the BAKC, despite the national judges’ repeated advices that such action would not contribute to a positive resolution of the issue.

Furthermore, the national judges criticise the Defence Support Section of the ECCC for not being active in discussing and negotiating with the BAKC to reach a mutually acceptable arrangement.

The national judges conclude their letter with the hope that the international judges will reconsider their decision and participate in the planned plenary session. They emphasize that the task given by the United Nations and the Royal Government of Cambodia to both the national and international judges is to make the ECCC a historic success and not a failure.

Phnom Penh, 5 April, 2007

Khmer Rouge trials a step closer

By Guy De Launey

BBC News, Pnomh Penh

Trials for the former leaders of the Khmer Rouge have moved a step closer. Cambodia's Bar Association has dropped a demand that foreign lawyers taking part in the process should pay thousands of dollars in fees.

It was the main sticking point which had prevented local and UN-appointed legal officials agreeing on the ground rules for the trials.

After almost a year of wrangling, the way is nearly clear for the special courts to start work in earnest.

Divisions exposed

More than a million people died under Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia in the 1970s.

The bar association will now ask for a US$500 (£250) payment from each foreign lawyer hoping to represent clients and the ground rules for the trials may finally be approved.

The international judges had refused to move forward unless the bar association backed down.

They said the fees might deprive defendants or witnesses of the counsel of their choice - and leave the whole process vulnerable to legal challenges.

The international side may have achieved their goal - but the argument exposed the extent of the divisions between local and UN-appointed staff at the courts.

As the row rumbled on, the two sides exchanged strong words in press releases fromthe courts' public affairs office.

The future of the trials may depend on whether those relationships can be repaired.

The next step is to call a meeting to approve the ground rules. But agreement cannot be taken for granted. A similar meeting last year ended in disarray.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6602785.stm

Published: 2007/04/28 09:35:35 GMT

Statement from Rupert Skilbeck; Head of the Defence Support Section

The adoption of the Internal Rules of the ECCC is a great achievement and an important step to ensure fair trials.

The Judges have managed to create a framework to administer highly complex criminal trials.

They have successfully merged international criminal law with Cambodian law and drafted the Internal Rules in three languages. Judges from many different legal backgrounds are now ready to hold trials which have the potential to bring justice for the victims whilst ensuring fair trials

for the accused.

Fundamental Rights

The Internal Rules guarantee a number of fundamental rights that will help ensure fair trials for the accused. For example:

· The Rules guarantee the right of the accused to an effective team of Co-Lawyers, one Cambodian and one foreign, matching the Co-Prosecutors.

· The Rules guarantee the right of the accused to remain silent, if he chooses to do so.

· The Rules make clear that the burden is on the prosecution to prove the case against the accused, and to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Potential problems

In some areas the protections given to the accused in the Rules are not as progressive as the protections given in other tribunals. Indeed, there are concerns that certain rules may not fully comply with international standards of fair trial. It is envisaged that defence teams may raise these concerns with the court during the proceedings.

The Defence Support Section

The Internal Rules also create the legal framework for the Defence Support Section and outline the tasks it will perform.

The List

The DSS is required to manage a list of lawyers who can appear before the ECCC and is responsible for presenting that list to suspects and assist them in choosing a legal team.

The DSS will also prepare applications to be forwarded to the Bar Association, although it will be for individual lawyers to pay the $500 fee directly.

The List will be opened as soon as the Internal Rules come into force, and the application forms will be available either on the websites of the Court or by contacting the DSS.

We have already had considerable interest from foreign lawyers in Australia, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States who are keen to be included in the List.

Legal Assistance Scheme

The DSS will pay the fees of lawyers where the accused does not have the means to pay.

The DSS fee scheme builds on the lessons of other international and hybrid tribunals in order to create a system that is fair, free of corruption, and provides for an effective defence.

Cambodian lawyers will be paid at the same rate as Cambodian prosecutors and foreign lawyers will be paid the same as the foreign prosecutors.

Legal Support and Training

The DSS is required to provide legal support through research and analysis to defence teams.

We currently have a team of eight experienced lawyers and law students who are able to provide that support to defence teams as soon as an arrest is made. The Rules make clear that in giving this support the DSS is independent from the Office of Administration, and we will act in the best interests of the client.

Rule 11 requires the DSS to organise training for lawyers, in co-operation with the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia. This will allow us to build on the very successful training on International Criminal Law that was held earlier this year and we have already started planning the next training events.

It is disappointing that the ECCC will not follow the practice adopted at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Sarajevo War Crimes Chamber in Bosnia and the International Criminal Court and allow lawyers from the Defence Support Section to appear in court on a ‘stand-in’ basis. Using DSS lawyers in court for short hearings rather than having to wait for foreign lawyers to fly in would have saved considerable time and money. It will have to be seen to what extent this decision will cause further delays at the ECCC.

The ECCC can only bring justice to the people of Cambodia if the trials that are heard in this court room are fair, impartial and open. The defence will be vigilant to ensure that that is done.

13th June 2007

ECCC Plenary Session Unanimously Adopts Internal Rules

JOINT STATEMENT BY JUDICIAL OFFICERS

13 June 2007

ECCC Plenary Session Unanimously Adopts Internal Rules

On 12 June 2007 the Plenary Session of national and international judicial officers unanimously adopted the Internal Rules for the ECCC, concluding a two-week session in Phnom Penh. These Rules enable us to hold fair, transparent trials before an independent and impartial court.

The process of drafting the Internal Rules has been a complex one. The ECCC is a unique exercise in international justice. For the first time a hybrid court, taking as its foundation the national law of the country in which it is operating, has incorporated the work of Co-Investigating Judges into its process. We have had no precedents as we worked to integrate Cambodian law and procedure and the particular characteristics and structure of this court, while ensuring that international standards are upheld.

Over the past eleven months of discussions, judges from different countries with differing legal systems, including from common law systems, have found mutually acceptable solutions whilst ensuring fair trial.

We have resolved all of the matters that we indicated needed further discussion last November. One such complex issue has been how to ensure the rights and involvement of victims. While a familiar element of Cambodian law, this was not spelled out in detail in the ECCC Law and Agreement. We interpreted this to mean that victims have the right to join as civil parties. However, due to the specific character of the ECCC, we have decided that only collective, non-financial reparation is possible.

Given all these complexities, and after intensive work and consultation we are pleased to have finalised the Rules in a reasonable time. It has been a worthwhile process, and it has been essential to take time to prepare this draft. In less than a year the ECCC has not only adopted its Internal Rules but also has begun the preparations necessary for the court to become fully operational.

Now that the Rules have been adopted we can move forward. We understand that the Co-Prosecutors will shortly file their first Introductory Submission. The Co-Investigating Judges can then begin the judicial process. Later today the ECCC will hold its first session when the Pre-Trial Chamber meets to swear in the court’s investigators.

The ECCC judges are acutely aware that the Cambodian people have waited a long time for this process to get under way. We are all committed to completing these trials in a timely manner while ensuring the highest standards of justice are upheld.

Source: DCCam.

ECCC PRESS RELEASE; Project Board Meeting Held

26 June 2007

The first meeting of the Project Board for "Special Support of the Cambodian Side of the Budget for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia" (ECCC) was held at the ECCC premises on Friday, 22 June 2007. The project is implemented by the ECCC and contributes to the Cambodian side of the ECCC budget.

The funds administered by UNDP under this project consist of multi-donor contributions of US$5.3 million from a UN Trust Fund that is transferred by UNDESA, and €1million (US$1.3 million) from the European Commission. The Project Board has the responsibility to provide overall oversight, review progress on the implementation of activities, and propose necessary recommendations to adjust project activities as required.

The Project Board is composed of the ECCC, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and the European Commission, with the Director of the Office of Administration, representing the ECCC, as the chair. The Board was created within the framework of a technical assistance project between the Royal Government of Cambodia, UNDP and the United Nations, signed on 14 June 2006.

At Friday morning’s meeting the Annual Work Plan and Budget for 2007 was approved, following a review of progress made since the commencement of the project. In addition, the Project Board considered recommendations made by UNDP's Office of Audit and Performance Review in its final audit report, issued in June 2007, following two visits in February and March 2007, on the strengthening of the capacity of the institution to ensure the quality and integrity of human resource practices.

The Cambodian side of the ECCC has accepted all of those recommendations addressed to its side, and has already commenced implementation. Full discussion was held on follow-up actions to be taken in the coming months.

Background

Under the terms of Agreement between the United Nations and the Royal Government of Cambodia, the mandate of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) is to bring to trial senior leaders of Democratic Kampuchea and those most responsible for the crimes and serious violations of Cambodian penal law, international humanitarian law and custom, and international conventions recognized by Cambodia, that were committed during the period from 17 April 1975 to 6 January 1979. The ECCC is a hybrid court composed of national and international judicial officers and applies national and international law.

Assessing the ”Evil” of Democratic Kampuchea through the Origins of its Ideologies

Isaac Tabor

(Comments: this article is a must read for all patriotic Cambodians, and is perhaps one of the most important ones to better understand the fundamental role and the relationship between Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge.

Vietnam is not the innocent by-stander as they and their supporters have so often claimed. Vietnam, according to this article, is the creator and the controller of the Khmer Rouge. Vietnam intervened in Cambodia, only when they realized that they can no longer control the Khmer Rouge. They also knew of the massacre of the Cambodian people and others, from the beginning (Also according to Russian sources) but did not intervene, in order to weaken Cambodia and to facilitate for their own imperialist design, later on.

So, I am thankful to this young scholar, Isasac Tabor, for revealing this piece information about the truth in this very fabricated chapter of Cambodian history by Vietnam and Hun Sen, with the support of Sihanouk. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. August 3, 2007)

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The debate over who is to blame for the atrocities committed during the Cambodian genocide is one that has been taking place for several decades now. As many foreign influences and interventions came into play during Cambodia’s complex history, it remains unclear as to why such “evil” – from forced labor to starvation to executions – was inflicted on the Cambodian people.

By studying the ideologies of the Khmer Rouge, it is possible to gain an understanding of the theoretical impetus behind their operations and how this “evil” was justified in the eyes of the regime’s leading officials. The origins of these ideologies, however, are sometimes overlooked. Because the harrowing events of Democratic Kampuchea capture the imaginations of historians and general readers alike, many thus focus on the 1975-1979 period in which the Khmer Rouge held power over the country. But looking further back to the workings and ideologies of the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party and studying its development and adoption of policies, it is possible to gain insight into the underpinnings of the Khmer Rouge’s Democratic Kampuchea. Many of the ideological influences on the Khmer Rouge stem from their deep-rooted history of association with Indochinese and European communism.

Some scholars believe that the ideologies of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and earlier, the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party, were created by their neighbors to the east, the Vietnamese. As Vietnamese communists showed increasing interest in expanding their networks into Laos and Cambodia, they began to view their revolution as “an Indochinese revolution as part of a larger Southeast Asian socialist movement.”[1][1] This meant that alongside installing military strongholds, their Cambodian supporters were taught the communist ideologies of the Vietnamese. As Goscha noted, “strategy and ideology were linked in Indochinese terms” (p. 347). This strategic reorientation into Laos and Cambodia occurred partly because Thailand closed its Western Front, at which point the Vietnamese pushed their Thai-based networks into eastern Laos and Cambodia.

In 1948 the Indochinese Communist Party began dispatching Vietnamese cadres to build revolutionary parties in Cambodia. Beginning in 1950, however, the Vietnamese boosted their efforts in hopes of sustaining their Indochinese revolution. Their plans were set in motion by large numbers of Vietnamese cadres building economic and military structures in Cambodia. The man chosen to lead the revolutionary movement in Cambodia was Son Ngoc Minh, a Cambodian-born communist who was fluent in Vietnamese and highly informed in Vietnamese communist ideologies through his work at a radical publishing house in Saigon.

How much of the Khmer Rouge’s ideology stemmed from their encounters with Vietnamese communism? Historians have conflicting opinions on this point, with some arguing that Khmer Rouge ideology was instilled by its leaders, most of whom received communist training from the French, not the Vietnamese. Others, however, find that many of the early officials of the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party were trained in Vietnamese communism, which likely had an influence on their ideological thought.

It is interesting to note that Son Ngoc Minh, along with a dozen or so other members of the Party, was instructed at the Truong Chinh Institute, a northern Vietnamese ideological school for cadres of the Indochinese Communist Party. Furthermore, by 1951 all Cambodian revolutionary directives went through Vietnam, which is an indicator of the influence of the Vietnamese on Cambodian radicalism. According to Goscha, “most Khmer radicals got their first real taste of communism via [the] Vietnamese-run Southeast Asian revolutionary networks from Thailand to Rach Gia – not via Moscow or Paris” (p. 341).

To sum up the case of Vietnamese influence on Cambodian communism, it is worth mentioning Son Ngoc Minh’s relations with Mao Tse-Tung’s government. Relations with the Chinese must be mentioned as they were a key influence to Indochinese communist ideology. It was the Vietnamese, however, who introduced Cambodia to these ideologies. On July 3, 1953, Radio Peking published an editorial to commemorate the third anniversary of Cambodia’s independence. It declared that “under the guidance of Son Ngoc Minh, the resistance has made great progress.” As this relationship stems to the 1950s’ opening of revolutionary networks in eastern Laos and Cambodia by the Indochinese Communist Party, Pol Pot and others belonging to the “second group” of radical leaders in Cambodia were clearly not the first to come into contact with Mao and his ideologies.

This “second group” can be described as Khmer radicals educated in Paris. Thus, some scholars argue that they adopted the French interpretation of the Marxist ideologies. This includes two men who held the highest positions in the Khmer Rouge: Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, both of whom attended universities in Paris. The connection between scholarships to France and the Khmer radicals goes back to King Sisowath’s state visit to France in 1906, at a point when Cambodia’s relations with France were settled. King Sisowath authorized a high school in Phnom Penh, called Lycee Sisowath, at which students were educated according to the French pattern. Many of the radical Paris-trained Khmers graduated from this high school, including Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary. Khieu Samphan wrote his doctoral thesis on the Cambodian economy at the Sorbonne, which scholars regard as an idealistic document much related to Cambodian radicalism.

Many historians believe that the ideologies executed during Democratic Kampuchea stem from France, as they were set in action by high officials, many of whom had studied in Paris on scholarships. The Paris-trained radicals gained when the underground communist leader Tou Samouth was mysteriously killed in 1962, most probably by Sihanouk’s police force. Pol Pot (who then went by his birth name Saloth Sar), Ieng Sary and Son Sen, all of whom had studied in Paris, took over the demobilized Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party with a new political line to reorganize the Party. As Kiernan puts it, “the party’s veteran leadership, largely from rural and Buddhist backgrounds, pro-Vietnamese though relatively moderate, was replaced by younger, urban, French-educated, anti-Vietnamese extremists.”[2][2]

In fact, the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party underwent several drastic changes in the 1950s that may have influenced its ideological stance. In 1954 the Vietnamese left Cambodia and over 1,000 cadres (approximately half of Cambodia’s communists) took up exile in Hanoi. Those who stayed faced life underground, and for the following five years many Party cadres were tracked down and executed by Lon Nol’s forces. This severely damaged the Party, as “according to Pol Pot, from 1955 to 1959, about 90% of the KPRP’s members were arrested and killed.”[3][3] In the aftermath of this purge, the Party was demobilized, weak and had little leadership. When its leader Tou Samouth was killed in 1962, Pol Pot and other Paris-trained communists (such as Ieng Sary and Son Sen) were able to instill new political and ideologies lines into the Party.

Overall, it remains unclear as to how many of the ideologies originally installed by the Vietnamese were used in Democratic Kampuchea. Further research into the ideologies the Khmer Rouge employed and a comparative study with ideologies present in northern Vietnam (and Paris) should give an indication. However, there is little doubt that the Vietnamese had a major influence on Cambodian communism, as their installation of military and ideological units in Cambodia went hand in hand. The question then is how much of this ideology remained in use throughout the transformation of the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party in the late-1950s. We must ask ourselves how much the Paris-trained Khmer radicals influenced the ideological stance of the Party. Once these questions are answered, we will have more of an indication of what lay behind the “evil” of Democratic Kampuchea and its justification of acts that amounted to genocide. Perhaps this “evil’ is best explained by the playwright Vespierre, a particular hero of Pol Pot, who said that “virtue is terror, and terror virtue.”[4][4]

Isaac Tabor is studying for a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Liverpool, UK. He is also a volunteer at DC-Cam, assisting on the Magazine Project.

[1][1] C. Goscha, Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution, 1885-1954, p. 314.

[1][2] B. Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came To Power, p. xxi.

[2][3] Khamboly Dy, A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1975), p. 8.

[3][4] Please see the Italian documentary istemi D'immagine for more information on this period.

Ten Years of Independently Searching for the Truth: 1997-2007

Freedom Information Law (FoI), why is Hun Sen pushing for it?

Kiri and Milton,

I thought you both might be interested to see this article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald by Rick Snell.
See http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/lesson-for-canberra-in-neighbours-attitude/2007/08/22/1187462353856.html

He is an academic (Law) at the Uni. Of Tasmania and one of the leading authorities on Freedom of Information issues. He has completed the first part of a consultancy with USAID to develop a draft FOI policy for Cambodia. The gory details of his 6 weeks in Cambodia are at http://informationandaccess.blogspot.com/

Ii had a discussion with him before he went and certainly raised my eyebrows at the prospect of getting acceptance for open government principles in Cambodia. I included a brief comment recently on my own blog at http://foi-privacy.blogspot.com/2007/07/aussie-academic-promotes-freedom-of.html

I was going to put Rick’s article (which is mainly about prodding our own government to do much better) on the blog but thought you might like to provide a brief observation which I would be also happy to post. ON the other hand you may want to simply let Rick’s optimism stand on it’s own.

Hope you are both are in good shape.

Let me know what you think.
Phone: (02) 8356 9622
Fax: (02) 8356 9971
email: timminsp@ozemail.com.au
blog: www.foi-privacy.blogspot.com

August 3, 2007

Dear Peter:

It is nice to hear from you both. Peter, thank you for your email on your friend Rick Snell's work on the FoI in Cambodia. I just finished reading the article by him on this subject in the Sidney Morning Herald. What struck me as being naive and superficial in his observation about the real situation in Cambodia. is this sentence;

"I worked with the drafting team, which included two generals and several secretaries of state, for two months in Phnom Penh. In meetings and consultations with the ministers of information and national defence and leading public servants I was struck by the contrast between their willingness to accept FoI and the Australian Government's dismal record.

The upper echelons of the Cambodian Government were willing to consider endorsing very progressive FoI laws despite the obvious discomfort that greater transparency and accountability will bring to their monopoly on power and patronage."

If Rick Snell's knowledge about the real economic, political, and social situation he probably would not have said what I quoted in the previous paragraph, namely; that he 'was struck by the willingness to accept FoI, and the Australian Government's dismal record.,' at all.

The question is why the Hun Sen and his CPP, which is not known for transparency in anything they do including freedom of information, appears to accept so easily the proposed FoI. The answer is very simple. As we all know that Cambodia has all the laws (including the constitution) in the book which look very good, yet they are not all implemented in the way they should be. Because everything is politicized, in Hun Sen controlled-Cambodia. Only those laws that appear good and can be beneficial to them (attracting foreign investment or foreign aid) are allowed to be passed but not necessary implemented.

Having a law in the book does not necessary meant it will be implemented. This is what I see as the main flaw in rick Snell's optimism regarding the FoI in Cambodia, not to mention the his totally out of the context comparing the Australian government to that of Hun Sen in this context.

As you know, I don't like the present Australian government of Howard, but to belittling it to the point of making it worst than Hun Sen's murderous and corrupt regime, is a little bit to far fetched, and ridiculous.

The next observation is the fact that since Hun Sen controls everything in Cambodia, even this law of FoI is passed, he can always not allow it not to be implemented if and when he chooses to do so, to suit his personal interest and his extended family to preserve his grip on the power in Cambodia, as long as he can.

I am attaching a copy of an interesting article on the hypocrisy of the big powers, especially the USA, regarding the Khmer Rouge trial and how Hun Sen is manipulating the Khmer Rouge Trial process by demonizing the demons (Khmer Rouge) to make himself look better and more acceptable to the international community. What Rick Snell has written on this FoI law should be viewed in the broader context, such as the one contained in the attached article, discribing what Cambodia really is. .

That what I have to say about Mr. Snell's piece on FoI law in Cambodia.

I do hope you and Sue are well and so is the rest of great family. Pat is now in Scituate, our family's summer house near Cape Cod. We are going to Venice and Padova (or Purdua) next month, for about a week. We hope to see you some time soon this year, here in Washington or inAustralia. Warm regards. Kiri Tith

UN envoys slam Cambodia over genocide judge's transfer

The Associated Press

Published: August 23, 2007

(Comments: those who were so opptimistic about tthe Khmer Rouge trial should think again and revise their appraisal of Hun Sen's role as a leadr or as US Ambassador J mussomeli had immorally recently said that Hun Sen is not a dictator. As you can see in this article, that Hun Sen continues to be able to delay the Khmer rouge Trial. As I said elsehwere in this and other web sites of mine, that Hun Sen wants to delay as long as possible the KRT so that he will continue to reap benefit from the comparison to the most heinous regime on earth, the Khmer Rouge. Because only by comparing hs dictaturial, corrupt, and brutal regime to the worst ones in the world, can Hun Sen look good.

The surprising thing in this macabre story, is the fact the international community, at the front of which is the United States, with a few of exception, such as the brave Mr.Yash Gai, the UN envoy to Cambodia on Human right issues, appear to have gone along with Hun Sen's dictatorial behavior, as the current US ambassador to Phnom Penh, Joseph Mussomeli did, in a recent praise for Hun Sen as a good leader, and not a dictator. He even went so far as to endorsing Vietnam's centuries old hegemonistic design on Cambodia, by saying that it is normal that a larger country would behave that imperialistically towards a smaller neighbor.

If Cambodia-Americans are smart, they should send a petition asking for Mussomely to be removed from Cambodia as an ambassador. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. August 24, 2007)

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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Two U.N. envoys accused the Cambodian government on Thursday of interfering with the judiciary by transferring a top judge from the Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal, which they said was a violation of the Constitution.

Yash Ghai, the U.N. secretary general's special representative for human rights in Cambodia, and Leandro Despouy, special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, made their criticism in a joint statement.

They said the government's move to appoint You Bun Leng, one of two investigating judges at the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal, to head the Appeals Court is casting doubt on judicial independence in Cambodia.

Their criticism came amid mounting concern that You Bun Leng's transfer could also further delay efforts to convene the genocide trial. You Bun Leng has said he will not take up his new post right away to allow for a smooth transition.

The government has said that the new appointment is part of its agenda to reform the judiciary, and is separate from the tribunal.

The U.N. envoys agreed that reform is crucial for Cambodia.

"But it should not be undertaken at the expense of the essential protections ... that enable judges to administer, and be seen to administer, justice efficiently, impartially and fairly, free of political interference," they said.

They charged that the appointment violated the Cambodian Constitution, which states that all judicial appointments, transfers, promotions, suspensions or disciplinary actions are decided by the Supreme Council of Magistracy, the body that oversees conduct of judges.

But the council never met to decide on the appointment, which was approved instead by a royal decree. King Norodom Sihamoni signed the royal decree at the request of Prime Minister Hun Sen, the envoys said.

According to the U.N. officials, that meant that You Bun Leng's appointment "was done at the request of the executive branch of government in contravention of the separation of executive and judicial powers specified in the Constitution."

Chief government spokesman Khieu Kanharith could not be reached for comment.

The envoys' statement followed a recent appeal from the U.N. to the government to reconsider the judge's transfer, saying it could disrupt efforts to convene the long-awaited genocide trials.

After numerous delays, You Bun Leng and Marcel Lemonde, a U.N.-appointed judge, only recently began investigations of former Khmer Rouge leaders accused of crimes against humanity, genocide and other atrocities that resulted in the deaths of some 1.7 million people in the late 1970s.

The judges have so far indicted one of five suspects. Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, headed the former Khmer Rouge S-21 prison. The other four have not been publicly named and remain free in Cambodia.

UN urges Cambodia to reconsider judge's transfer from genocide tribunal

The Associated Press Published: August 22, 2007

(http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/22/asia/AS-GEN-Cambodia-Khmer-Rouge.php)

(Comments: the macabre dance plaid by Hun Sen and his CPP to confound and trick the world resulting in a further delay in the Khmer Rouge Trial continues with the recent removal of judges from the KRT under the pretext to fight corruption elsewhere. In doing so, Hun Sen wants to score points on two fronts. Fist, is the fact that he, at least in appearance, wants to show that he is fighting against corruption, and second, he has against succeeded in postsponing further the KRT.

But, don't think that Hun Sen is that smart. The credit must be given to the Vietnamese who had already thought out all these strategic maneuvering to help postponing the KHR for their own interests. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. August 22, 2007)

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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: The U.N. urged Cambodia to reconsider its decision to transfer a judge from the Khmer Rouge tribunal, saying the move could disrupt efforts to convene the long-awaited genocide trials, a spokesman said Wednesday.

You Bun Leng, one of two investigating judges at the U.N.-backed tribunal, was recently appointed by the Cambodian government to head the country's Appeals Court.

After numerous delays, he and Marcel Lemonde, the U.N.-appointed judge, only recently began investigations of former Khmer Rouge leaders accused of crimes against humanity, genocide and other atrocities that caused the deaths of some 1.7 million people in the late 1970s.

The world body has urged Cambodia "to consider keeping Judge You Bun Leng in his current function as co-investigative judge" of the tribunal, said Peter Foster, a U.N.-appointed tribunal spokesman, in a statement Wednesday.

He said the U.N. officially delivered a note of concern to the Cambodian permanent representative in New York last Thursday, and was now awaiting a response.

"Both sides are working on this issue to ensure that justice is moving forward," said Reach Sambath, a spokesman from the Cambodian side of the tribunal.

The tribunal was established last year following years of negotiations between Cambodia and the United Nations. Disagreements about tribunal rules kept the judges' investigations from starting until last month.

Genocide tourism: Tragedy becomes a destination

http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-genocide_rc_pmaug05,0,7887461.story
The Chicago Tribune
Sunday, Aug 5, 2007

By Steve Silva
Special to the Tribune

(Comments: Cambodia is a country of total constrast in Human behavior. Here genocide has become a center of attraction for tourism. That is why, Cambodia has been having the problem to jsut survive as a nation and a society. The bad becomes to good, and the good becomes the bad, especially for the choice of leaders. In fact, Cambodia does not have any leaders, as can be found in anormal country. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. August 6, 2007)

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Julie Dermansky is a genocide tourist. Since visiting the former Nazi death camp at Dachau in 1997, Dermansky, a 40-year-old from Santa Monica, Calif., has seen the killing fields in Cambodia, walked through mass grave sites in Bosnia and stood among human remains in Rwanda. She is, in her own words, obsessed.

"Why go to Club Med," Dermansky, a photographer, asks, "when you can witness this kind of history?"

She is not alone. An increasing number of tourists are traveling to places of horrific human catastrophe. In Rwanda, Bosnia and Armenia, travelers pay their respects to victims of genocide at popular memorials
and cemeteries. Even Kurdistan in Iraq, scene of an ethic cleansing campaign during the 1980s, is tromoting its horrible past with a genocide museum. Tragedy has become a destination.

Nearly a million tourists visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in 2005, up from half that the year before. Other former death camps have seen a
similar increase in recent years.

Lately at Auschwitz, the growth in tourism has made for some odd juxtapositions. Visitors dine in a newly renovated cafeteria built within the large room where thousands of Nazi victims were processed upon arrival
at the camp. This blending of modern tourist convenience and the apparatus of organized death disturbed Dermansky.

"It's a tourist jungle," she says.

While they are perhaps the best known, the concentration camps scattered across Germany and Eastern Europe are not the only genocide sites seeing
an increase in visitors.

To accommodate the swelling tourist trade, the Cambodian government last year hired a Japanese firm to build a visitors center and hotel adjacent to the Choeung Ek killing field near Phnom Penh. When the visitors center opens next year, the new company will charge a $3 admission fee rather than the current 50 cents. The town of Anlong Veng in northwest Cambodia is building a genocide museum in the renovated houses of former Khmer Rouge officials to attract tourists.

Tourism Cambodia, a private travel company based in Phnom Penh, offers an assortment of tours specifically geared to genocide tourists. In addition to Choeung Ek, the company highlights excursions to the Tuol Sleng Museum, a school-turned-prison where some 17,000 people were killed between 1977 and 1979; the Kamping Puoy Reservoir, a Khmer Rouge work project made famous by the late Haing S. Ngor in his book "Survival in Cambodia's Killing Fields"; and the civil war museum in Siem Reap. The Tourism Cambodia Web site warns that these sites are "not for the squeamish."

Bosnia on the list

Sarajevo, Bosnia, is another center for genocide tourism. According to the Bosnia-Herzegovina Tourism Board, visits to the country were up 25 percent in 2005 from the previous year and are running nearly 20 percent ahead this year.

"We've come to terms that there are places in our country that attract tourists because of war history," Arna Ugljen, the tourism board's director of public relations, said.

Teri-Lynn Spiteri is one such visitor. She was deeply moved by the plight of Bosnians during the war in the 1990s, especially the massacre of 8,000 civilians at Srebrenica in 1995. Watching the news at the time, Spiteri, who has been to the former Nazi death camp at Dachau twice, was reminded of the Holocaust.

"I recalled hearing over and over during history class in high school how 'nothing like this will ever happen again' and 'those who forget the past are bound to repeat it,'" she says.

Spurred by the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica and compelled to see for herself the impact of the events she'd witnessed on television, Spiteri, 42, traveled to Sarajevo in 2005. Her friends and family didn't understand why she needed to go. And although Spiteri regularly traveled alone, they were also concerned for her safety. Seeing the anniversary coverage on the news, Spiteri's mother was convinced that the war was ongoing and tried daily to talk her into staying home.

"Once I left," she says, "I had to call every day, and if I missed a day I paid dearly for it on my next call home."

While she did not get to Srebrenica on that trip -- NATO peacekeepers she met in Sarajevo warned her that something was "brewing" in the area -- Spiteri did encounter a Serbian general being interviewed by Italian
television. Speaking through an interpreter, the general expressed his surprise that she was a tourist.

A need for reflecting

For Spiteri, the trip to Bosnia was the culmination of a decade of fascination with the struggle and recovery of the local people. She says she worries that other travelers bent on visiting genocide sites might not be so reflective.

"If you are going just for thrill seeking, hoping to find 'remains,' or perhaps get a kick out of others' misery, I'm disgusted by that," she says.

Not everyone is sanguine about the development of genocide tourism. Tessa Somerville of the Kurdistan Development Corporation, a private commercial investment firm working with the Kurdish government, is repelled by the idea of dark tourism.

"How can people vacation when mothers are giving birth to babies who are affected by the chemicals which rained down during Saddam's Anfal Campaign and there are many people still searching for loved ones who have disappeared?" she asks.

Some in the travel industry are ambivalent about the spread of genocide tourism.

"To each their own," says travel agent Steve Murphy of Kumuka Worldwide in New York. "I guess people wouldn't offer it if there wasn't a market for it, whatever your own decision on it."

Murphy is afraid that genocide tourism exploits the local population while enriching a few tour operators.

'He cried like a baby'

Rajan Tiwari, director of Kiboko Tours & Travel in Kilgali, Rwanda, shares some of Murphy's feelings about genocide tourism and prefers to point out more conventionally uplifting attractions -- like a temperate climate and endangered gorillas.

"The genocide was and still is painful," he says, "Personally I feel it is quite important that visitors visit to understand the Rwandans better, and they do."

Tiwari remembers an American accountant who while at the genocide site in Ntaramta broke down and collapsed in Tiwari's arms. "He cried like a baby," he recalls.

For Tiwari the genocide exists in two worlds -- a heartbreaking past that lingers each day and a future that holds the promise of understanding and recovery.

Standing in a church in Rwanda where Hutus murdered 5,000 ethnic Tutsis in 1994, Dermansky faced a similar quandary. As she surveyed a scene of horror -- disintegrating clothing and shoes scattered among bones
and other scraps of human remains -- she thought about the visitors who would come after her.

If the local authorities cleaned up -- or "sanitized," in her words -- this place, would future visitors feel the same sense of horror that she felt? Was she being selfish in her desire to witness such devastation?

Dermansky is already planning her next trip. It's simply a matter of where to go next.

"Nowhere has a monopoly on injustice," she says.

End.

DCCAM; Ten Years of Independently Searching for the Truth: 1997-2007

Khmer Rouge Official to Reveal Crimes

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/08/01/AR2007080100829.html

By KER MUNTHIT

The Associated Press

Wednesday, August 1, 2007; 10:36 AM

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The former chief of a Khmer Rouge prison is willing to testify about the communist regime's atrocities that led to an estimated

1.7 million deaths in the 1970s, Cambodia's genocide tribunal announced

Wednesday.

Duch, 64, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, on Tuesday became the first top Khmer Rouge figure to be indicted for offenses committed when the Khmer Rouge held power from 1975-79. He was charged and detained by order of the U.N.-backed international tribunal's foreign and Cambodian judges.

Duch headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, where some 16,000 suspected enemies of the regime were tortured before being taken out and executed on

what later became known as the "killing fields" near the city. Only about a dozen prisoners are thought to have survived. The site is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

The judges' detention order, posted on the tribunal's Web site Wednesday, said Duch had acknowledged that he headed S-21 and was "ready to reveal the

crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge."

It also cited prosecutors' allegations that he presided over abuses against civilians including "arbitrary detention, torture and other inhumane acts, (and) mass executions."

"He is implicated by many documents and several witnesses," the detention order said.

The tribunal also announced that one of the two lawyers expected to defend Duch is Francois Roux, a human rights activist from France best known for

being on the defense team of Zacarias Moussaoui, a Moroccan-born Frenchman convicted in the U.S. of conspiring to commit terrorism and kill Americans

in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Roux also defended four cases of genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Duch, who said he could not afford to pay for legal representation, selected Roux and a Cambodian lawyer, Kar Savuth, from a list compiled by the tribunal. Kar Savuth has represented Duch for the past eight years while he was detained at a Phnom Penh military prison on separate war crimes charges.

The tribunal, officially known as Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, is expected to start conducting trials early next year.

Cambodia's holocaust saw as many as one-fifth of the country's citizens die as a result of the radical policies of the Khmer Rouge and their leader, Pol Pot.

Pol Pot died in 1998, but three of his senior-level colleagues are living freely in Cambodia, though in declining health: Nuon Chea, the movement's

chief ideologue; Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister; and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state.

Prosecutors have recommended that five Khmer Rouge leaders be indicted, and all three are widely believed to be on their list, although no names besides Duch's have been released.

According to a transcript of a 1999 government interview obtained by The Associated Press, Duch said "Nuon Chea (also) had direct command over S-21."

"I was under other people's command, and I would have died if I disobeyed it. I did it without any pleasure, and any fault should be blamed on the (Khmer Rouge leadership), not me," he told the government interviewer soon after his arrest in May 1999. Prior to that he had spent decades under an assumed name.

Nuon Chea, the right-hand man to Pol Pot, has consistently denied any responsibility for the mass brutality.

"I was president of the National Assembly and had nothing to do with the operation of the government," he told the AP in an interview last month. "Sometimes I didn't know what they were doing because I was in the

assembly."

"I will go to the court and don't care if people believe me or not," he said.

The judges' detention order for Duch cited prosecutors' allegations that "under his authority, countless abuses were allegedly committed against the civilian population."

The abuses included "arbitrary detention, torture and other inhumane acts, mass executions, which occurred within a political context of widespread or systematic abuses and constitute crimes against humanity," it said.

It said one of Duch's lawyers had challenged the detention on the basis "that the other suspects remain at liberty," and requested his client be released on bail.

The judges denied the request, saying granting him freedom could provoke public anger.

Duch's current provisional detention will last up to one year and can be extended for another year if the investigating judges uncover new crimes in which he was implicated, said tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath.

According to tribunal rules, the maximum penalty for conviction of crimes is life imprisonment.

PHOTO

In this photo from the Cambodian Documentation Center shows Kaing Khek Iev, left, also know as Duch, and his aid Sok in Phnom Penh in 1976. Duch,

who ordered the torture and killing of at least 14,000 men, women and children, in the late 1970's has been take to the Cambodian genocide tribunal headquarters Tuesday, July 31, 2007, to be questioned by judges. On July 18, 2007, prosecutors submitted to the investigating judges the cases of five former Khmer Rouge leaders recommended to stand trial. The names of the five suspects have not been revealed. (AP Photo/Documentation Center, File) (AP)

On the Net:

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia:

http://www.eccc.gov.kh/

Cambodian government heeds call to keep judge at genocide tribunal

The Associated Press; Published: August 24, 2007

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A key Cambodian judge investigating cases against former leaders of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime will not leave his current job in the U.N-backed tribunal, the government said Friday.

The announcement was apparently intended to allay fears that the government's recent appointment of You Bun Leng, one of the tribunal's two co-investigating judges, as head of the country's Appeals Court would disrupt efforts to convene long-awaited trials.

The United Nations had appealed to the government on Wednesday not to transfer You Bun Leng away from the trial.

On Friday, the government said You Bun Len's new job was only an additional title and that he would not leave the tribunal.

You Bun Leng's "role and duty as a judge at the Khmer Rouge tribunal should remain as before and ... nothing should obstruct the process of the trial at all," a statement quoted Prime Minister Hun Sen as saying.

After numerous delays, You Bun Leng and his U.N.-appointed counterpart, Marcel Lemonde, recently began investigations of former Khmer Rouge leaders accused of crimes against humanity that caused the deaths of some 1.7 million people in the late 1970s.

The judges have so far indicted one of five suspects, Duch_ or Kaing Guek Eav_ who was the head of the Khmer Rouge's S-21 prison and torture center. The other four have not been publicly named and still remain free in Cambodia.

Describing the government's announcement as "excellent news," Theary Seng, executive director of the nonprofit Cambodian group Center for Social Development, said it "eases concerns about a delay" in the trials if You Bun Leng were to be transferred to the new job.

But Youk Chhang, director of Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group researching the Khmer Rouge crimes, said the affair reflected negatively on the supposed independence of the judiciary and shows the government still wields influence on it.

"You Bun Leng should have decided on his own (about the appointment) and set a good example as a judge instead of waiting to be told what to do," Youk Chhang said.

On Thursday, Yash Ghai, a U.N. human rights expert, and Leandro Despouy, a U.N. specialist on the judiciary, said the executive branch of government had usurped the duty of the judiciary in making the appointment, violating the constitution.

However, chief government spokesman Khieu Kanharith dismissed the criticism and accused the U.N. envoys of making a mockery of King Norodom Sihamoni, who approved the appointment.

Key Khmer Rouge figures charged

Cambodian authorities have arrested two leading figures from the notorious 1970s Khmer Rouge regime and charged them with crimes against humanity.

Former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, were taken into custody in the capital, Phnom Penh.

The pair, who deny any wrongdoing, are due to appear at a UN-backed genocide tribunal on Wednesday.

The brutal Maoist regime, which ruled between 1975 and 1979, is blamed for more than one million deaths.

A tribunal was established last year to bring surviving leaders to the dock.

"Today Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith have been arrested in execution of an arrest warrant... for crimes against humanity and war crimes as regards Ieng Sary and for crimes against humanity concerning Ieng Thirith," a statement from the tribunal said.

Purge of intellectuals

Police surrounded the couple's Phnom Penh house early in the morning.

WHO WERE THE KHMER ROUGE?

Maoist regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979

Founded and led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998

Abolished religion, schools and currency in a bid to create agrarian utopia

Brutal regime that did not tolerate dissent

More than a million people thought to have died from starvation, overwork or execution

They searched the house for three hours and then drove Ieng Sary and his wife to the tribunal in a convoy of vehicles.

The couple, who have been living freely in the Cambodian capital for more than 10 years, were key members of the Khmer Rouge leadership.

Ieng Sary was Pol Pot's brother-in-law - his wife's sister was married to the Khmer Rouge founder. His wife, Ieng Thirith, was the Khmer Rouge's social affairs minister.

As foreign minister, he was often the only point of contact between Cambodia's rulers and the outside world.

He was responsible for convincing many educated Cambodians who had fled the Khmer Rouge to return to help rebuild the country.

Many were then tortured and executed as part of the purge of intellectuals, some of them diplomats from his own office.

Prosecutors for the tribunal have said there is evidence of Ieng Sary's participation in crimes, including planning, directing and co-ordinating forced labour and unlawful killings.

Ieng Sary has repeatedly denied any crime. In 1996 he became the first senior leader from the Maoist regime to defect and as a result was granted a royal pardon.

But analysts say the validity of that agreement looks set to be tested with his arrest by the court.

Ageing leaders

Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith are the third and fourth people to be targeted by the tribunal.

KHMER ROUGE TRIBUNAL

Will try cases of genocide and crimes against humanity

Five judges (three Cambodian) sit in trial court

Cases decided by majority

Maximum penalty is life imprisonment

Budget of $56.3m

In September, Pol Pot's second-in command, 82-year-old Nuon Chea, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Two months before that, Kang Kek Ieu - or Duch - the head of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, was charged with crimes against humanity.

Their trials, before a team of Cambodian and international judges, are expected to start in 2008.

Other top leaders are already dead. Pol Pot died in 1998 and Ta Mok - the regime's military commander and one of his most ruthless henchmen - died in July 2006.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7090052.stm

Published: 2007/11/12 12:11:57 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Key figures in the Khmer Rouge

A United Nations-backed genocide tribunal has been set up in Cambodia, to seek justice for the Khmer Rouge's hundreds of thousands of victims.

It could see surviving leaders of the brutal regime brought to the dock, but the man most wanted for crimes against humanity in Cambodia will never be brought to justice.

Pol Pot, the founder and leader of the Khmer Rouge, died in a camp along the border with Thailand in 1998.

Other key figures have also died. Ta Mok - the regime's military commander and one of Pol Pot's most ruthless henchmen - died in July 2006.

As time goes on, some people are beginning to question whether it is too late to achieve a proper sense of justice for the Cambodian people.

But there are several surviving figures who have been implicated in the genocide that took place during the Khmer Rouge's four-year regime.

Judges at the tribunal started questioning their first suspect - Kang Kek Ieu, more commonly known as Duch - on 31 July, to decide whether he should stand trial.

Duch was the boss of Phnom Penh's notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where thousands of people were killed during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Now aged 65, he is the youngest surviving member of the movement's leadership.

Duch, who has since become a born-again Christian, has been in custody since 1999. He is said to be eager for his chance to go to trial to tell his version of events.

Defectors

Nuon Chea, known as 'Brother Number Two" as he was second in command to Pol Pot, was arrested on 19 September and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He defected from the Khmer Rouge in 1998 and was granted a pardon by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

In December 2002 he was called to testify on behalf of the former Khmer Rouge general Sam Bith, who was sentenced to life in prison for ordering the kidnap and murder of three Western backpackers in 1994.

So far he has denied being involved in the atrocities that went on during the Khmer Rouge regime, but critics suggest that at the very least he was fully informed of what was happening.

Ieng Sary, also known as "Brother Number Three", was the third person to be arrested by the tribunal on 12 November.

The Khmer Rouge's minister of foreign affairs, Ieng Sary was also Pol Pot's brother-in-law. His wife, Ieng Thirith, was the regime's social affairs minister. She was also taken to appear before the tribunal.

Ieng Sary became the first senior leader to defect in 1996 - and as a result was granted a royal pardon.

The United Nations says such a pardon cannot protect someone from prosecution, but Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has previously warned that going after Ieng Sary could re-ignite civil unrest in Cambodia.

The former minister is said to be ill with a heart condition, and has been travelling to Bangkok regularly for treatment.

His arrest was followed by that of Khieu Samphan, the Khmer Rouge's official head of state, on 19 November. He was the public face of the Khmer Rouge, who defected at the same time as Nuon Chea.

Until his arrest, the 73-year-old was said to spend most of his time at his home in Pailin, once the movement's jungle headquarters, reading, listening to music or gardening.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/2856771.stm

Published: 2007/11/19 08:58:53 GMT

© BBC MMVII

UN envoys slam Cambodia over genocide judge's transfer

The Khmer Rouge Trial (KRT) and the Destiny of the Cambodian People.

This site was built: to honor those Cambodians and others who were slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge; to seek real and lasting justice for those who have survived but traumatized and; to give them a better chance for a normal life. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D

No Redemption - The Failing Khmer Rouge Trial

By Allan Yang