As the UN-backed war crimes court in Cambodia prepares to open its trial this week of top leaders of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, tension and criticisms are mounting in its handling of two pretrial investigations. The cases potentially cover tens of thousands of deaths during the ultra-Maoist government in the late 70s -- which in total, killed an estimated 1.7 million people.

Press TV

The office of United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon has defended the embattled investigating judges at the Khmer Rouge tribunal in a statement that drew criticism from local observers and lawyers at the court.

The judges have come under fire in recent weeks from victims, civil society groups and even their own staff for their apparent failure to investigate the tribunal’s third case properly. The likely dismissal of the case reflects the viewpoint of the Cambodian government, which opposes prosecutions beyond the upcoming Case 002, leading many to charge that Case 003 has been sabotaged for political expediency.

In a statement released in New York on Tuesday, Ban’s office rejected “media speculation” that the UN had directed the judges to shutter Case 003 and denied that any political interference had occurred in the case. A “closing order” – indictments or dismissals in the case – will be available to public scrutiny at a later date, the statement added.

“The judges and prosecutors at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) must be allowed to function free from external interference by the Royal Government of Cambodia, the United Nations, donor States and civil society,” the statement read, adding: “Speculating on the content of the Closing Order at this stage does not assist the independent judicial process.”

However, local observers said the statement was in fact cause for greater concern about the tribunal, as the UN refused to acknowledge the abundance of evidence that the Case 003 investigation has been mismanaged.

Co-investigating judges Siegfried Blunk of Germany and You Bunleng of Cambodia announced the conclusion of their Case 003 investigation in April, though without taking a number of seemingly basic steps including the questioning of the suspects involved and the examination of a number of alleged crime sites.

Staff from the judges’ office have since begun resigning in protest; in a resignation letter to Blunk last month, noted Khmer Rouge-era historian Stephen Heder, formerly a consultant to the investigating judges, spoke of the “toxic atmosphere” within their office, saying it had become “professionally dysfunctional”. He added that the judges had closed Case 003 “effectively without investigating it”.

The judges last week rejected a series of requests from international co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley calling for them to investigate the case further, a decision Cayley has appealed.

In the statement Tuesday, Ban’s office cited the confidentiality of the investigation and said the investigating judges “are not under an obligation to provide reasons for their actions at this stage of the investigation in Case 003”.

But Anne Heindel, a legal adviser at the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, called this an erroneous reading of court rules and said the UN was “hiding behind a cloak of confidentiality”.

“As an institution, the UN is trying to protect the integrity of the court by denying that there are any problems, and it’s too late for that,” she said. “They need to acknowledge that action needs to be taken to save this investigation or it could undermine the entire work of the court.”

Clair Duffy, a trial monitor with the Open Society Justice Initiative, said UN officials were “ignoring all of the evidence they now have before them, including from people inside the court with knowledge of what’s going on”.

“To pretend that this is a matter of speculation at this point ignores the wealth of available evidence that no serious investigative action was ever undertaken in relation to the 003 suspects,” she said.

The suspects in Case 003 remain officially confidential, though court documents reveal them as former KR navy commander Meas Mut and air force commander Sou Met.

Lawyers for former Khmer Rouge Brother No 2 Nuon Chea, set to stand trial later this month in the court’s second case, also took issue with the UN statement, which referred to their client as one of “the four remaining leaders of the Khmer Rouge”.

This statement, the defence team said, presupposes both Nuon Chea’s guilt and the fact that he and the other Case 002 suspects “are the only ‘leaders’ of the Khmer Rouge still alive”.

Whether the Case 003 suspects also fall into this category “is a matter which is currently the subject of litigation before the ECCC”, the defence team said.

Phnom Penh Post

A consultant to the investigating judges at the Khmer Rouge tribunal spoke of the “toxic atmosphere” within the “professionally dysfunctional” office in resigning in protest last month over the handling of the court’s controversial third case.

The news follows a public statement issued by the investigating judges on Sunday acknowledging that multiple staffers from their office had left amid disagreements over the Case 003 investigation, which was closed in April and appears to have been scuttled amid opposition from the Cambodian government. In a resignation letter dated May 5 and addressed to German co-investigating judge Siegfried Blunk, Stephen Heder, a noted historian of the Khmer Rouge period, said he and others in the office had become increasingly disillusioned with the judges’ action in the case.

“In view of the judges’ decision to close the investigation into Case File 003 effectively without investigating it, which I, like others, believe was unreasonable; in view of the UN staff’s evidently growing lack of confidence in your leadership, which I share; and in view of the toxic atmosphere of mutual mistrust generated by your management of what is now a professionally dysfunctional office, I have concluded that no good use can or will be made of my consultancy services,” Heder wrote. He declined to comment yesterday beyond the resignation letter.

In response to the resignations of Heder and at least three foreign staff members from the office, Blunk and his Cambodian counterpart, You Bunleng, said on Sunday that they “welcome the departure of all staff members who ignore the sole responsibility of the [co-investigating judges]” over Case 003.

The suspects in this case remain officially confidential, though court documents reveal them as former KR navy commander Meas Mut and air force commander Sou Met, men thought to be responsible for thousands of deaths.

Blunk and You Bunleng have evinced a siege mentality in their public statements in recent weeks, lashing out at those who have questioned their professional behaviour.

Last month, the judges ordered international co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley to retract a statement he had made outlining further investigative steps he planned to request in Case 003, as he is permitted to do under court rules.

The judges accused Cayley of breaching the court’s confidentiality rules in an order that Cayley has appealed. They have since rejected his investigative requests.

Yesterday, the tribunal’s Pre-Trial Chamber ruled in a unanimous decision that this retraction order, which Blunk and You Bunleng had stipulated be carried out within three days, be suspended pending a final decision on Cayley’s appeal.

In their decision, the Pre-Trial Chamber judges noted that “the information the Co-Investigating Judges ask the International Co-Prosecutor to retract is quoted in the Order issued by the Co-Investigating Judges”.

“As such, the information will remain in the public domain even if it is ‘retracted’ by the Co-Prosecutors,” the Pre-Trial Chamber said.

The Pre-Trial Chamber judges have historically split in ruling on matters related to cases 003 and 004, with the Cambodian judges opposing the cases and the international judges in favour. Clair Duffy, a trial monitor with the Open Society Justice Initiative, said “reason has prevailed” with yesterday’s decision, though she cautioned that it was still too early to say whether the chamber will reverse Blunk and You Bunleng’s rejection of the requests for additional investigation in Case 003. 

Phnom Penh Post

An increasing number of Cambodians in an ongoing survey say they have more faith in the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal, according to new data released Thursday.

According to the authors of a survey by the Human Rights Center of the University of California Berkeley, respondents showed a “positive trend” in their belief in the tribunal.

The UN-backed tribunal, which is heading toward its second trial, of four Khmer Rouge leaders, was designed in part to bring national healing to the trauma of the regime.

But the court has come under increased criticism of political interference and a lack of funding.

However, the Human Rights Center survey, conducted in December 2010 across 125 communes nationwide, found that an increasing number of Cambodians have confidence in the court.

The authors noted that in 2008, in its first survey, only about 2 percent of respondents said they believed the court would provide any justice to Khmer Rouge leaders. After the court’s first successful trial, of torture chief Duch, that number rose to 37 percent.

About 25 percent said the process will help relieve the pain and suffering of victims, compared to 9 percent who disagreed.

“Trust seems to be increasing,” although with some caveats, said Patrick Vinck, a researcher for the Human Rights Center, said Wednesday.

“It’s still, kind of, ‘Well, I trust them, but I do think they take bribes,’” he added, summarizing the findings of the survey. “But the trend is a positive trend.”

VOA News

CHOEUNG EK, Cambodia - Tearful Cambodians attended a re-enactment of a massacre by the Khmer Rouge at a "Day of Anger" ceremony Friday and demanded long jail terms for ex-regime leaders facing trial.

Thousands of people, including monks and children, watched black-clad students mime raping, bludgeoning and shooting victims near the mass graves of thousands of prisoners at a former killing field outside Phnom Penh.

"I am speechless about my suffering under the Khmer Rouge. It was more than 30 years ago now, but I still remember my pain," said Tim Pho, 75, who lost 15 family members during the communist movement's 1975-79 rule.

The annual "Day of Anger" ceremony comes just weeks before the start of a high-profile genocide trial involving the movement's four most senior surviving leaders, including "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea.

"I want the four Khmer Rouge leaders to get very serious sentences so that they will be in jail for life," Tim Pho told AFP.

Led by "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Marxist regime emptied cities and abolished money and schools in a bid to create an agrarian utopia.

Up to two million people were executed or died from starvation, overwork or torture during the brutal reign.

Former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, was sentenced to 30 years in jail last July for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He was the first person to face justice at Cambodia's UN-backed court. The case is now under appeal.

AFP

For Thi Mary Le Evans, the memories are vague: she remembers the heat, the sounds and feel of the night jungle, and being told not to talk. She was 2 ½ years old when her family walked from Phnom Penh in Cambodia to the Thai border.

“We were told Thailand was not taking Cambodian refugees so we were disguised as Vietnamese,” says Evans. “My parents took only a jug of water and us … their three children.” The jungle they traversed in the dark of night was full of snakes, cobras and landmines.

On May 15, Evans, now 27, a married mother of three, received her master’s from the School of Management and Labor Relations  (SMLR)—and presented the convocation speech.

For Evans, the route to academic achievement has involved not only challenging courses and hard work, but also refugee camps, hunger, and uncertainty. She was born after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge, a regime notorious for social engineering policies that led to the genocide marked by the chilling phrase “killing fields”. Her parents each spent a decade in labor camps, their own families having been wiped out. Her father survived only because by chance he was studying away from home when the soldiers came through.

These dark facts were a constant background to growing up, says Evans: “The history was ingrained in us. We talked about how intellectuals, the educated and literate, were killed. We understood why we had no grandparents, aunts or uncles. The only way to know where you come from is to talk about it.”

After their jungle trek, the family spent a few years in a Thai refugee camp. “I remember dirt everywhere. We had a bamboo hut and banana leaf roof, with walls of plastic to keep out the rain,” she says. “But not until I was an adult did I understand the deprivation. I was a child and everything was enchanted for me. At school, occasionally there would be lunch given and it was a piece of stale bread. I remember being told by my mom and dad: ‘Bring it home.’ That was food for the family. That’s what we ate, with rock salt.”

The family was later moved to a refugee camp in the Philippines, where they stayed for more than two years, and then followed a sponsorship from a church in Maryland, which brought them to the United States.

Upon arriving in the US, Evans’s mother learned she had a sister in New York City and the family moved to the Bronx, where they remained for 10years. The neighborhood was riddled with drugs and violence, but Evans found a haven in her grammar school, Immaculate Conception School, and its associated convent. An all girls’ Catholic high school brought her to Manhattan and provided job placements, which gave Evans her first glimpse into the work world.

When her parents expressed reluctance to let her travel even on a full scholarship for college, Evans took courses at Middlesex County College—until the disruption of September 11 meant she needed to focus on earning a living. Once she could zero in on academics, she enrolled at Rutgers, where she was originally a pre-med student, but took a variety of subjects that interested her.

By happenstance, she took a class on labor relations with Professor Paula Voos and a class with Professor Jeff Keefe. “[The subjects] clicked with me—they were multidisciplinary and can be directly applied, taking everything I was currently seeing and experiencing while providing me with a toolbox of new ideas and possible solutions,” she says. “It related to how policies and relationships between people developed in the world and how I was affected by it.”

What Evans treasures in Rutgers is that “people are huge resources, full of ideas, and there are so many associations and connections constantly around us,” she says. “In SMLR at Rutgers, students have full access to professors. It’s very student-centered.”

Evans is interested in pursuing international labor relations, planning, and policy and expects to go on to get a Ph.D. J.D. For now, she’s taking a break from school and working to establish a nonprofit to promote access to education and basic necessities in Cambodia.

In her career, Evans hopes to use her knowledge of labor relations to find solutions to international problems. “In Cambodia, there are classrooms filled with students where professors are not teaching their classes because they make more money driving tourists then they would if they taught,” she says.

Evans recognizes the challenge of convincing poor families whose children work in factories that education is worth the loss of family income.

“If you take out the incentive for the need of child labor as a source of contribution to family income and put the incentive toward education, then it changes things, ” she says.

Rutgers News

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — An internal debate over the targets of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal turned into a public dispute Wednesday, when judges ordered a prosecutor to retract his call for further investigations.

The fight at the United Nations-backed tribunal added to mounting fears that prosecutions are being quashed for political reasons.

The two investigating judges, from Germany and Cambodia, on Wednesday ordered British co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley to withdraw a statement he issued last week citing specific crimes that deserved further investigation. They said the statement violated tribunal rules and must be retracted within three days, without specifying the punishment for failure to comply.

Critics fear the judges ended their investigations prematurely into what the court calls Case 003, bowing to Prime Minister Hun Sen's demands that the trial's focus be kept narrowly on the one suspect convicted last year and four set for trial next month.

About 1.7 million people died of starvation, exhaustion, lack of medical care or torture during the communist Khmer Rouge's reign of terror in the 1970s.

Cayley's statement was issued just a few days after co-investigating judges Siegfried Blunk and You Bunleng announced that all investigations into Case 003 had been concluded.

The tribunal follows French-style law, which mandates that investigating judges collect evidence that is then forwarded to prosecutors who decide whether to go to trial. There are parallel sets of Cambodian and international judges and prosecutors working together.

Legal observers and victims advocates complained that the investigations into the new cases were cut short without even the most basic effort being made, such as summoning the suspects for questioning.

"They've basically done a desk study, and it appears that that desk study was a sham," Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said in an interview last week in Bangkok. "It was a political decision, it appears, to shut down this case."

Cayley's statement called the investigation inadequate and detailed previously unreleased information about the yet-to-be-prosecuted cases, including information about mass graves and other alleged crime sites.

The judges' order said that Cayley violated court confidentiality rules and ordered him to publicly retract his statement within three days.

Cayley was traveling and could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But his deputy, Bill Smith, told The Associated Press that Cayley had not decided yet whether to appeal the judges' order. He said Cayley was justified in releasing the information under court rules.

Source: Associate Press

This one-on-one interview with a former Khmer Rouge party secretary explores his tenure as director of two prisons specializing in what we now call “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Best viewed as a companion piece to his 2002 documentary, S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, Cambodian auteur Rithy Panh once again delves into his homeland’s bloody historical record in Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell. This one-on-one interview with a former Khmer Rouge party secretary explores his tenure as director of two prisons specializing in what we now call “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Composed mostly of talking heads and archive footage, doc’s best bet is fests, public TV and a few specialty distribs following its Cannes premiere.

More formally conventional than S21– which featured a handful of ex-torturers reenacting their crimes within the abandoned secret prison located in Phnom Pneh – Duch consists of a lengthy conversation with Kaing Guek Eav (nicknamed “Duch” for unknown reasons), a loyal follower of the Khmer Rouge who supervised torture procedures in the M13 and S21 facilities, and is currently a serving a 35-year sentence for crimes against humanity.

Giving Duch free reign to narrate his rise to power within the party, spout Marxist ideology and recite French poetry at will, Panh provides what is likely one of the most elaborate discussions with someone responsible for mass genocide, which in this case saw the depths of nearly 2 million people between 1975 and 1979. At once didactic and dismissive, Duch explains that he “had to do the job in the party’s interest, in my own interest of survival,” but denies having tortured the victims himself. When confronted with conflicting testimony from several underlings, he just laughs it off, and then claims that he’s “doing his best to forget.”

Not unlike Hannah Arendt’s classic study of Eichmann, Duch describes a highly bureaucratic apparatus of death, where testimonies culled from tortured prisoners are scrutinized, corrected, and then sent to party headquarters to be examined by defense minister Son Sen and, occasionally, by Pol Pot himself. 

Although a few convict photos are glimpsed briefly at intervals, the film is most telling when Duch holds up copies of his own handwritten lists of slaughtered prisoners, revealing how an entire life was reduced by the Khmer regime into a single stroke of ink.

Mixing the interviews with black and white archive images of Cambodian labor camps, Panh mostly spares us the grittier footage of mass graves and human remains, allowing Duch’s own accounts of abuse and execution to sink in even deeper.

The Hollywood Reporter

This used to be a school.

Then the Khmer Rouge communist regime took over. From 1975 to 1979, this institute of higher learning was turned into a torture chamber, Security Prison 21. An estimated 20,000 people were beaten, maimed, tortured and killed in the converted Phnom Penh high school. Some of them were soldiers for the opposition. Others were simply intellectuals, academics, doctors, teachers, monks and students.

Now the buildings form a memorial site called Tuol Sleng, which translates to “Strychnine Hill.”

These are some of the people who died there. Their faces haunt me.

On the right you can see photos of the prisoners as they looked when they arrived at S-21.

The corresponding photo on the left side is how they looked before they perished.

Many of the classrooms still have blood-stained tiles underneath rusty beds and shackles.

The building facade is shrouded in barbed netting. The desperate prisoners who tried to commit suicide off the buildings were instead wounded by razor-laced wire.

When the guards ran out of burial space near the school, the prisoners were taken outside of town to Choeung Ek extermination center, a place better known as the Killing Fields.

Already-weak inmates were beaten with iron bars, axes and bamboo sticks until they were tossed into mass graves. Then chemicals were poured over the bodies to kill those who were buried alive.

I have a difficult time coming up with any words to talk about this. It's why I still haven't written about my experiences visiting the genocide memorials in Rwanda. It's such a deep dark confusing pit of emotion, I don't even know where to begin.

It's heinous, yes. Confronting such evil makes me doubt my belief that people are inherently good.

It forces me to question God. It makes me want to cry out in horror.

But it goes beyond that too.

As I travel, I realize how much of the existence I enjoy is pure luck. It is only by chance that I came into this world in a humid Georgia hospital instead of a humid Cambodian town.

It is only a fluke that I have an easy life, one I never had to fight for. It's a sheer accident that I didn't witness the slaughter of my family in 1994 Rwanda. Instead I was getting shoes dyed to match my prom dress.

It could have been me. It could have been you.

It could have been all of us.

Sometimes the horrible incidents that we see on the news feel so far away.

Phnom Penh – “I believe that if we do not learn from mistakes, the same mistakes will happen again,” wrote a young Cambodian woman, Kunty Seng, in a letter published on phnompenhpost.com. For her, Cambodians must study the “marvellous period” of the Angkor era as well as the genocidal “reign of horror” under Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge acolytes. In the meantime, human rights groups are sounding the alarm because the United Nations tribunal currently trying former Khmer Rouge leaders, including former deputy prime minister and “Brother Number Three” Ieng Sary, could close before it finishes its work. Likewise, many are concerned that prosecutors are not conducting investigations properly, which could compromise future prosecutions.

Cambodia still bears the scars of the four years of Khmer Rouge rule (1975-1979), which killed almost two million people (about a quarter of the population), including the country’s elites (intellectuals, doctors, teachers and artists)

Sociologists and Catholic leaders have told AsiaNews several times that Cambodians are not much inclined towards in-depth self-analysis and historical introspection. Largely, “money and economics”, not the past, are what counts. Still, there are some signs that something is changing.

In her letter, Kunty Seng wrote that some of her friends “say we should not talk about it because it is painful to be reminded of such a horrible time in our history.” They “view the Khmer Rouge tribunal as being useless because it can never bring all of the Khmer Rouge cadres to justice. They say: ‘The tribunal is a fake symbol; it is for a political gain only’.”

“I have a different view. I think that one needs to talk about what happened during the Khmer Rouge regime. I know that Cambodian leaders made a big mistake and future leaders must not make the same mistake again. I believe that if we do not learn from mistakes, the same mistakes will happen again.”

“Since my childhood, I have been taught about Cambodia, the Land of Sovann Phumi or ‘Golden Land’,” about “the marvellous period of Angkor era”, a place with beautiful temples that are now part of the world’s heritage.

However, “I have learned very little in school about what happened during the reign of horror of the Khmer Rouge,” she wrote. “What I have learned I have learned from my parents and other survivors.”

“I believe that [the] younger generation should be taught both the good things about Cambodia” during the “Angkor era” and “the terrible history of the Khmer Rouge.”

Meanwhile, legal and human rights activists are concerned that Cambodia's UN- backed genocide tribunal might shut down before the main accused, Ieng Sary, Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and Ieng Thirith, are tried, undermining any future trial against other former Pol Pot officials.

Defence lawyers have in fact demanded the release of their aged clients, who are on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Last week the co-investigating judges, a Cambodian and a German, officially informed the court that their investigation for Case No. 3 was complete. The names of those being probed have been kept secret, but they are believed to include at least five second-tier Khmer Rouge officials.

Critics including Human Rights Watch say the co-investigating judges have done an incomplete probe in an effort to scuttle future prosecutions.

So far, the only accused that was convicted is Kaing Guev Eav, better known as Comrade Duch, who ran the notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh.

He admitted his guilt, saying he followed orders, and for this was sentenced to 35 years in jail.

His lawyers have appealed the sentence.

A feeble Ieng Sary appeared before Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal yesterday to challenge his provisional detention ahead of his looming trial alongside three other senior Khmer Rouge leaders.

Lawyers for the former KR foreign minister argued that judges had not rendered a sufficiently reasoned decision on the defence appeal of last year’s indictment within the window during which the court could still compel their client’s detention. The maximum time limit for pre-trial detention since Ieng Sary’s 2007 arrest has therefore now lapsed, the defence said.

The challenge follows appeals earlier this year on similar grounds by the other three defendants set to be tried in the court’s second case: former KR head of state Khieu Samphan, Brother No 2 Nuon Chea and Social Action Minister Ieng Thirith. These appeals have been rejected.

Despite this precedent, defence lawyer Ang Udom told the court yesterday that there was no legal basis to continue Ieng Sary’s detention.

“Mr Ieng Sary has the presumption of innocence and has not been convicted of any crime,” Ang Udom said.

“The most suitable remedy is to release Mr Ieng Sary on bail immediately.”

The defence recommended that Ieng Sary be released from the court’s detention facility and placed under house arrest at his expansive home in Phnom Penh.

“Brother No 3” himself, now 85 years old, managed less than an hour in court yesterday before asking to leave due to fatigue. His lawyers have requested that the court conduct his upcoming trial in half-day sessions in view of his health concerns.

Donning the loose-fitting button-down shirt of the style he has worn in previous hearings, he appeared fatigued and at one point seemed to doze off as his lawyers spoke in front of him. Early in the session, the defence asked that he be given leave for a bathroom break.

Much of the argument yesterday followed the template of previous hearings on pre-trial detention. At one point, however, defence lawyer Michael Karnavas provided a sample of the debate over Cambodia’s complicated history with the West that is sure to come at greater length in the upcoming trial.

Responding to comments from deputy prosecutor Veng Huot, who noted in passing statements of support for the tribunal from United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon and American secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Karnavas said the UN was not “in any position to be lecturing”, given its support for the Khmer Rouge for years following their 1979 overthrow.

“I do believe that we should be entitled to talk about the carpet bombing, by the United States, of Cambodia. We should be able to talk about the UN’s involvement after 1979,” Karnavas said, accusing UN officials of limiting the court’s jurisdiction to events between 1975 and 1979 “to ensure that those issues were not properly vented out”.

Phnom Penh Post