Cambodians Told Khmer Rouge Security Camps Designed to Kill

By Luke Hunt
Voice of America
Phnom Penh
23 April 2009

In Cambodia, the trial of one of Pol Pot's surviving henchmen has been told how security camps designed by the Khmer Rouge and operating as early as 1971 were designed from the outset to torture and kill.

More than 200 villagers who lived around camp M13 attended the court to hear evidence from Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, on how their district was used as a prototype for death camps that would later be constructed by the Khmer Rouge.
MI3 was built in a communist-controlled area in 1971 while the Khmer Rouge were still fighting the U.S.-backed Lon Nol government. Four years later Pol Pot and his ultra-Maosists came to power and established 196 death camps across the country, including the dreaded S21.

Duch initially ran M13, and is on trial for crimes against humanity after overseeing the extermination of more than 16,000 people while at the helm of S21 between 1975 and 1979.

Seventy-year-old Khai Sorn lived near M13, but as a result life was tough and her days on the family farm were numbered.

She says during the Pol Pot regime life was very hard because the people were not allowed to stay at home and she was forced to live in the jungle.

Duch described the camps as a security office. He said each one, including S21 and M13 had a duty to detain, to torture, to interrogate, and finally to smash and kill.

Tribunal spokesperson Helen Jarvis said the villagers were trucked in as part of broader attempts to open the legal process to the public and the victims of Khmer Rouge regime. But she says they may have gotten more than they bargained for.

"... that has to be shocking for anybody," Jarvis said. "Indeed, I think the villagers probably did not expect they would hear something quite that straight forward when they arrived here today."

About two million people, or a third of Cambodia's population, died under the Khmer Rouge. But ongoing conflicts and international politics meant efforts to find some kind of justice were delayed until earlier this year.

Duch is the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to face trial. He is the only one of five in custody to acknowledge responsibility for his actions. The others are likely to be tried in the next year or two.

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Cambodians Told Khmer Rouge Security Camps Designed to Kill

By Luke Hunt
Voice of America
Phnom Penh
23 April 2009

In Cambodia, the trial of one of Pol Pot's surviving henchmen has been told how security camps designed by the Khmer Rouge and operating as early as 1971 were designed from the outset to torture and kill.

More than 200 villagers who lived around camp M13 attended the court to hear evidence from Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, on how their district was used as a prototype for death camps that would later be constructed by the Khmer Rouge.
MI3 was built in a communist-controlled area in 1971 while the Khmer Rouge were still fighting the U.S.-backed Lon Nol government. Four years later Pol Pot and his ultra-Maosists came to power and established 196 death camps across the country, including the dreaded S21.

Duch initially ran M13, and is on trial for crimes against humanity after overseeing the extermination of more than 16,000 people while at the helm of S21 between 1975 and 1979.

Seventy-year-old Khai Sorn lived near M13, but as a result life was tough and her days on the family farm were numbered.

She says during the Pol Pot regime life was very hard because the people were not allowed to stay at home and she was forced to live in the jungle.

Duch described the camps as a security office. He said each one, including S21 and M13 had a duty to detain, to torture, to interrogate, and finally to smash and kill.

Tribunal spokesperson Helen Jarvis said the villagers were trucked in as part of broader attempts to open the legal process to the public and the victims of Khmer Rouge regime. But she says they may have gotten more than they bargained for.

"... that has to be shocking for anybody," Jarvis said. "Indeed, I think the villagers probably did not expect they would hear something quite that straight forward when they arrived here today."

About two million people, or a third of Cambodia's population, died under the Khmer Rouge. But ongoing conflicts and international politics meant efforts to find some kind of justice were delayed until earlier this year.

Duch is the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to face trial. He is the only one of five in custody to acknowledge responsibility for his actions. The others are likely to be tried in the next year or two.

Read more!

Duch Outlines Role at Tuol Sleng

By Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
23 April 2009

In response to Khmer Rouge tribunal judges Thursday, jailed prison chief Duch outlined his role at Tuol Sleng, the chief torture center for the regime, claiming he was in charge of verifying confessions of inmates and investigating enemies of Angkar, the Organization, based on the confessions.
“As I was director, I had an important role, and in this hierarchy was deeply rooted in criminality” compared to other prisons, he said.

Prosecutors say more than 12,000 Cambodians were forced into confessions through torture before being sent to their deaths at Tuol Sleng.

Duch’s testimony on Thursday highlighted his other roles at the prison, giving a picture of how the regime turned in on itself and became a killing machine.

“And then, the records of confession that I submitted to [superiors] would have to have links with several people” not yet arrested, or allow for the arrests of new people, he said. “We made links to people who had been in liberty.”

“All reports and confessions of victims obtained through torture, I underlined and submitted to my chief,” he said, referring to Son Sen, the head of the Khmer Rouge secret police.

Duch, 66, who is facing atrocity crimes charges for his role as chief of Tuol Sleng, known to the Khmer Rouge as S-21, was appointed in March 1976 to run the site.

He told judges he was also in charge of training young cadre in the interrogation of prisoners.

“My men who had the proper mind, we educated them and made them decisive in torturing and decisive in interrogation,” he said. “This was my job.”

All Khmer Rouge prisons had a role to detain, torture, interrogate and “to destroy” people, he said.

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Tribunal Breakdown Puts Onus on Donors: UN

By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
23 April 2009

The failure between UN and Cambodian negotiators to find a method to address corruption at the Khmer Rouge tribunal will mean funding decisions are left up to donors, a senior UN official told VOA Khmer.

The breakdown, after four months of talks, over whether complainants had a real choice to submit complaints, has put further funding for the cash-strapped Cambodian side of the court on uncertain ground.
The UN has argued that anonymity is essential to ensure allegations come to light. The Cambodian side has said complainants should be named, to ensure fairness and legitimacy.

But speaking to VOA Khmer in an exclusive interview, UN negotiator Peter Taksoe-Jensen, who is the Assistant Secretary-General of Legal Affairs, said the final decision over fairness was now in the hands of the donors.

“This is an issue for the donors,” he said. “I know they have been looking to the UN and the government of Cambodia to agree on a mechanism that could put the issue of corruption, or the allegations of corruption, behind us. And now we didn’t succeed in doing that, and therefore the UN has tried to address the issue unilaterally.”

Taksoe-Jensen traveled to Cambodia three times seeking to put to rest concerns over corruption that have made some donors balk at funding the Cambodian side of the court, which is now facing a budget crisis.

Prior to leaving Cambodia earlier this month, having failed to reach an agreement with his counterpart, Council Minister Sok An, Taksoe-Jensen said in a statement the UN would continue to handle complaints, through its own offices.

The UN had sought what it considered a transparent, credible method for addressing kickback allegations—which tribunal officials have repeatedly dismissed—but the Cambodian side argued that the UN sought to undermine national sovereignty.

“There was one outstanding issue that we couldn’t agree on, which was the question of what I have called ‘freedom of choice’ for all staff members of court… where they maintain freedom of choice to complain to whom they want to complain to,” Taksoe-Jensen told VOA Khmer Thursday.

Each side now understood the other’s position, he said. “So we have done a lot of good work, and there is only a little issue that separates us now,” he said. “And I hope and believe that can be dealt with. So we can agree very soon.”

Cambodian officials have said the two sides need not agree further than a February arrangement of a “parallel” system of complaints, where those on the UN side of the hybrid court complain through UN channels, and those on the national side complain through government channels.

Cambodian negotiators argue that this method will be satisfactory for donors.

However, some questions over donor funding remain. Earlier this week, the UNDP declined to release $456,000 in Australian funding for the Cambodian side of the court, saying in a statement it would not do so until questions of corruption were properly addressed.

So the Cambodian side of the court, which could only pay staff salaries in March with an emergency, bilateral infusion from Japan, remains under-funded, even as the tribunal’s first trial, of prison chief Duch, got fully underway.

In fact, neither side wants full transparency, said Peter Maguire, a US professor of law and war, and the only real pressure for full disclosure is coming from the non-governmental sector.

Following staff allegations of kickbacks last year, the UN investigated, but the results of that investigation have never been made public.

None of that bodes well for future trials, Maguire said.

“I think that basically the Cambodian government would like this trial to end after Duch’s case, and I think that everything is sort of leading in that direction,” he said. “I don’t know that they could successfully try other defendants in their lifetimes.”

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