The latest evidence at Cambodia’s landmark
trial offers some grisly insights into how the Khmer Rouge operated during Pol
Pot’s reign.
Cambodia
is enduring a controversial period. The recent murder of Chhut Vuthy, a
high-profile environmentalist, has rattled the country and diverted attention
from issues the government would prefer its bureaucrats to focus on, including
Cambodia taking over as annual hosts of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations and a diplomatic plan to win Cambodia a seat as a non-permanent member
of the U.N. Security Council.
But on
the outskirts of Phnom Penh, at the Extraordinary Chambers for the Courts in
Cambodia (ECCC), this country’s main event has motored along at a steady, if
grisly, pace and has now gone into recess after another marathon session of
sensational revelations of atrocities committed by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge
between April 1975 and January 1979.
Critical
for the prosecution was how the regime, blamed for the deaths of up to two
million people, had turned on itself and linked the surviving leaders of the
Standing Committee – Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan – to the atrocities
committed by the ultra Maoists.
All
threedeny charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Among
the most startling evidence was testimony that Nuon Chea, once second in charge
of the Khmer Rouge, had condemned members of his own family. He sent two nieces
– Lach Vary and Lach Dara, both Chinese trained doctors who worked for the
regime’s health ministry – their husbands and another two nephews to the
dreaded S-21 at Toul Sleng to meet their end.
Pol Pot
had also dispatched a sister-in-law of his to a security center where she
perished.
Much of
the evidence was produced by the prosecution’s star witness, Kang Guek Eav,
also known as Duch, who has already been jailed for life after being convicted
of committing crimes against humanity for the deaths of about 12,000 people at
Toul Sleng. However, the final S-21 death toll has been estimated as much
higher, up to 24,000 people. Nuon Chea has denied any involvement and denies
that he was Duch’s boss. Duch testified he met regularly with Nuon Chea or Son
Sen to give them updates on the prisoner “confessions” and camp operations.
Typically,
10-minute meetings were held every three to five days.
“I
reported to him about the confessions, and he instructed and advised,” Duch
said. “All the power was concentrated in the hands of the secretariat of the
communist party, Pol Pot and Nuon Chea.”
Duch
said Nuon Chea replaced Son Sen in 1977 as head of Santebal – the Khmer Rouge
secret police. Son Sen remained in favor but was eventually killed along with
his family amid a factional split in 1997 on the orders of Pol Pot.
“When
Pol Pot was absent, Nuon Chea replaced him, and when Pol Pot issued an order, Nuon
Chea followed up on how it was applied,” Duch told the court.
Favoritism
wasn’t allowed and Nuon Chea sought to prove his purity among the hierarchy of
the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) by dispatching his own kin to the
Killing Fields. This ruthless culture was corroborated by Saloth Ban, now 67,
who was secretary general of the regime’s foreign ministry and Pol Pot’s
nephew.
He told
the court that despite his family connections he was always terrified for his
own life and the lives of his immediate family. He added that Ieng Sary – his
chief and the former foreign minister – had also lived in fear of the regime he
helped rule.
“I had
such fear, and I think others had bigger fear than me,” he said, adding that no
one was safe and that Pol Pot’s oldest sister-in-law, Khieu Thirath, was killed
in a Khmer Rouge security center. Thirath’s sister, Ponnary, was the first
Cambodian woman to receive a baccalaureate degree and had married Pol Pot in
1956 but suffered chronic schizophrenia as the regime began to assert control
over the country.
A third
sister, Tirith, married Ieng Sary, became the minister for social affairs and
is widely regarded as the first lady of the Khmer Rouge. She’s also facing
charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, but the tribunal has ruled her
mentally unfit to stand trial.
Under
examination by deputy co-prosecutor William Smith, Duch revealed Nuon Chea had
“ordered the executions of the remaining prisoners of S-21 in January 1979, as
the Khmer Rouge were getting ready to evacuate Phnom Penh before the invading
Vietnamese arrived.”
Asked
how many prisoners there were when the order was given, Duch replied: “There
were more than 100 prisoners, even over 500, I feel.”
He said
the assignment was completed within three days.
Duch’s
testimony in the current case, 002, adds to the findings in his own trial, case
001, with his incriminations of former superiors in the executions of foreign
nationals captured off the southern coast in 1977.
“After
the interrogations, there would be a decision to smash. The smashing was to be
conducted in a form of burning to ash,” Duch said of the treatment meted out to
four Westerners, an American, a New Zealander, an Australian and a Briton. “I
was following the order from Nuon Chea, and I implemented the order.”
The
court had earlier heard how one of the Westerners was burned alive.Duch said
their corpses were burned to remove any evidence.
The
former mathematics teacher and born again Christian also clarified how the
decision-making process worked within the CPK, government, the Standing
Committee and, in particular, the relationship between the top two men in the
Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot and Nuon Chea.
“The
decision to arrest was made by the Standing Committee in a broad sense, but in
a more practical sense it was Brother Pol who made the decision and in some
cases Brother Nuon was the one who made such decisions,” he said.
Following
the Vietnamese invasion, the leadership of the CPK retreated west into the
remote countryside. Duch then informed Nuon Chea he had been forced to leave
the S-21 documents behind, which included hundreds of confessions and
photographs of tortured prisoners that would eventually be used to secure the
convictions against him.
At the
time, this prompted a sharp rebuke from Brother No. 2.
“On my
side, we destroyed them all, you were very bad that you could not manage this,”
Duch recounted Nuon Chea as saying. Nuon Chea has more recently referred to
Duch as “rotten wood.” They aren’t on good terms, but share the same holding
facilities which back onto the ECCC.
The
tribunal has again been dogged by resignations and accusations of impropriety
among the local and international component of the ECCC. There have also been
calls for the resignation of New Zealand judge Silvia Cartwright after she
wrote an email meant for prosecutor Andre Cayley but she mistakenly sent to
entire court staff.
Cartwright
and Cayley had previously been warned by the U.N.-backed court’s highest body
that their trial management meetings may have created the appearance that they
had privileged access to each other and the email revealed the pair have
continued to share a close association.
Michael
Karnavas, defense lawyer for Ieng Sary, has filed a motion to have Cartwright
disqualified saying: “The nature of Judge Cartwright's association with
international co-prosecutor Cayley shows actual bias or, at a minimum, the
appearance of bias.”
The
trial resumes on May 17.
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