Senior Khmer Rouge Leaders Found Guilty Of Crimes Against Humanity

[Captain Obvious]

But their invitation to the O'bama's 'Monster Ball' is still good.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...ainst-humanity

Two senior Khmer Rouge leaders were found guilty of crimes against humanity in Cambodia on Thursday.

[PolWatch]

guess we ain't the slowest nation in the world for justice.... wonder how long their appeals will take

[waltky]

Khmer Rouge trials at an impasse...

Khmer Rouge Tribunal Cases Stuck as Deadline Looms
March 23, 2016 — Almost a year after charging former mid-ranking regime official Ao An with crimes against humanity, the Phnom Penh-based Khmer Rouge Tribunal last week expanded its case against the 83-year-old suspect, bringing new charges of genocide, torture and other serious crimes.

The decision by International Co-Investigating Judge Michael Bohlander appeared to indicate that the case against Ao An — former deputy secretary of the Central Zone of Democratic Kampuchea, who is better known by his regime alias, Ta An — is making progress. But observers question whether case 004, one of two currently on the hybrid United Nations-Cambodian court docket, will actually make it to trial.

Ao An (also know as Ta An) is a former Secretary of Sector 41 and Deputy Chief of Central Zone of Democratic Kampuchea, shown in 2011

In order for that to happen, Bohlander must complete preliminary investigations by June. Yet the political barriers that have seen a string of international judges quit the tribunal in frustration remain firmly in place. Cambodian judges on the tribunal possess significant powers of obstruction, and government officials have shown unwillingness to carry out arrests on behalf of investigating judges. A further hindrance: Prime Minister Hun Sen has warned that Ao An should be spared prosecution at risk of reigniting civil war.

Government recalcitrance

By law, if the tribunal's pre-trial chamber can't find a reason to object to a case, it will move forward. But the question remains: Will Cambodian officials enforce the court's authority by compelling people to respond to pre-trial investigations? Authorities can threaten arrest if people refuse to participate, but according to court spokesman Neth Pheaktra, that should not be necessary as long as suspects cooperate and show up when summoned. "Based on the law and internal rules of this implementation, and according to the national law, the additional charge against anyone does not need to always arrest them all," Pheaktra told VOA Khmer. "We see there is cooperation from the suspects. They appeared in the court following the summons of the international judge."

At left, Yim Tith (known as Ta Tith), the former acting chief of the Northwest Zone, has been charged with crimes against humanity, Jan. 22, 2011.

Of the four suspects charged in the government-opposed cases, Ao An is one of three mid-ranking officials. Facing the same charges are Yim Tith, also known as Ta Tith, who was acting chief of the Northwest Zone, and Im Chaem, former district chief of Preah Neth Preah. In the other outstanding case, 003, only Meas Muth, the regime's navy chief, has been similarly charged with crimes against humanity and murder. None are currently detained. But even if they were, national judges — who generally adjudicate in accordance with Hun Sen's wishes regarding the two cases — hold majorities at each level of the court, and can therefore significantly slow the process by disputing which of the suspects are "most responsible" for the regime's crimes, a criterion written into the court's remit.

A political deal?

[waltky]

Facing the killing fields legacy...

Confronting darkness in Khmer Rouge stronghold
Tue, May 03, 2016 - Standing next to cages that once housed political prisoners, former Khmer Rouge foot soldier Tho Lon gets a surprisingly sympathetic hearing from a clutch of students, despite his work for a regime that wiped out one-quarter of Cambodia’s population.

“All my life, I’ve been cheated by politicians,” he told them in Anlong Veng, a dirt poor town where Pol Pot and his henchmen are still venerated. “My heart is pained, but I pretend not to be hurt,” he added. That his complaints get an airing might jar with many Cambodians in a country still piecing together the horrors of the past. However, his testimony is part of a pioneering reconciliation scheme introducing students to former fighters. Until now, historians, officials and civil society groups helping Cambodia have struggled to decide on how to approach Anlong Veng, which lies on Cambodia’s remote northern border with Thailand. It was there and among the surrounding Dangrek Mountains that Pol Pot and senior Khmer Rouge leaders lived on long after their murderous regime was toppled by Vietnam in 1979.

Hidden deep in the jungle, they launched two decades of guerilla attacks that only ended with the region’s final defeat in 1998. As the students listened intently, Tho Lon explained why he kept on fighting. “We were living in the mountains,” he said. “We had lost all contact with others, so we believed what we were told, that the Vietnamese would behead us [if we stopped].” Tho Lon, 57, paid for his loyalty. He lost his sight in one eye and his right arm below the elbow in a mine blast fighting for a Marxist agrarian utopia that never materialized.

A glass case containing 5,000 human skulls belonging to Khmer Rouge victims is pictured at the Choeung Ek memorial as people gather to mark the 41st anniversary of the start of the regime in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

The country paid a bigger price — a grisly legacy for Cambodia’s younger generations. Along Veng also hosts the dilapidated grave of Pol Pot, the regime’s “Brother No. 1,” who died about two decades after the Khmer Rouge fell. “I feel a mixture of excitement and pity,” said Sang Thong, a 25-year-old student from the town of Battambang, as classmates snapped pictures of the grave on their phones. Some of his relatives died under Pol Pot, he said. “But I don’t come here to take revenge against him, I come here to learn more and understand more deeply about his regime,” he said. Ly Sok-Kheang, head of the Anlong Veng Peace Program, part of the Documentation Center of Cambodia that researches the country’s genocide, said the meetings “promote historical empathy and understanding.” However, he admitted it was no easy sell.

When Cambodia’s long civil war finally ended with the fall of Anlong Veng, he said, most of the reconciliation work understandably centered on commemorating the Khmer Rouge’s victims. The country’s killing fields and notorious detention camps like Tuol Seng have become focal points for those efforts, while Anlong Veng has remained an impoverished backwater. However, Ly Sok-Kheang said the town should also be remembered, precisely because it was the place where Cambodia finally managed to end decades of violence. “I think Anlong Veng is the perfect place when we talk about peace in Cambodia,” he said. Ignoring it, some say, has fed the festering support for Khmer Rouge in the region. Tho Lon gave his lecture in the grounds of a tumble-down, but once grand villa that was owned by Ta Mok, a senior Khmer Rouge leader nicknamed “The Butcher” for the massacres he perpetrated.

MORE

[waltky]

The more things change, the more they remain the same...

Khmer Rouge Prison Chief: I Was Ordered to Exterminate Everybody
June 09, 2016 — The head of an infamous Khmer Rouge security center and execution site says he was ordered to destroy the prison and kill all remaining internees on the eve of the Vietnamese military's arrival in Phnom Penh in January 1979.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, said Wednesday in his second day of testimony at the Khmer Rouge tribunal that he also was ordered by Pol Pot's second-in-command, Nuon Chea, to kill families of those held by the internal security department. The nine-day testimonial process is focused on Duch's role as head of the S-21 security center in Phnom Penh, as part of case 002/02 of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia — the full name of the Khmer Rouge tribunal.

“Uncle Nuon ordered [me] to destroy everything before the arrival of Vietnamese forces, but at the time, I begged to keep four people [alive],” Duch, clad in white, his head shaved, told international prosecutors. Duch, 74, who oversaw the deaths of more than 12,000 people at S-21, claims he was following party orders to exterminate “the whole family of the enemy” as part of a "cleansing" that coincided with the regime's approaching collapse. “At the end, when Uncle Nuon ordered me to destroy all human beings from S-21, I was very shocked and could not do anything," he said, adding that each time he departed for S-21, his wife feared he would not return. "I was sick the day that the Vietnamese arrived. I was very scared.”

Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, who ran a prison where up to 16,000 people were tortured before being killed, comes before the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

By that time, he said, he was acting to keep his own family from suffering the same fate of his victims. Chum Mey, one of a small number of S-21 survivors, testified that he believed Duch was following orders of party leadership, as junior officers at S-21 in turn followed the orders of Duch on pain of torture or death. Nuon Chea has repeatedly denied all responsibility for the crimes committed at S-21, also known as Toul Sleng, including final orders to exterminate all remaining prisoners. He has not attended the recent proceedings on health grounds, instead watching courtroom proceedings via closed-circuit television from a separate room in the facility.

In 2012, Duch was the first senior Khmer Rouge official to be sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity and violating the Geneva Conventions. So far, he is the only senior regime official to have been sentenced, while other defendants died before their trials ended. Only Chea and the regime’s head of state, Khieu Samphan, remain alive. The Khmer Rouge oversaw the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.

http://www.voanews.com/content/khmer...y/3369651.html

See also:

Global Protests to Target Jailing of Rights Workers in Cambodia
June 09, 2016 - Cambodian expatriates in several countries are preparing for Friday and Saturday protests to demand the release of several human rights workers and opposition supporters.

The demonstrations are being staged simultaneously in Canada and several U.S. states that are home to large Cambodian expatriate communities, including California and Massachusetts. Touch Vibol, president of the Cambodian American Alliance, said he would lead a demonstration to the U.S. Capitol to call on the government to impose sanctions against long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government, over what he called a stifling of dissent that has seen numerous opposition members and supporters and even rights workers jailed on spurious charges. “Our purpose is to push for economic and diplomatic sanctions on the current government,” he said. “This is because the human rights situation in Cambodia is worsening. Therefore, to avoid a civil war and plunging the country deeper into crisis, [we must] apply a sanction so that the government can come back on the right track.”

Four Phnom Penh human rights defenders from the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, along with an election official, are currently in jail on charges of bribing a witness in a sex scandal involving opposition party deputy leader Kem Sokha. At least 10 opposition activists and politicians, including two U.S. citizens, have been sentenced in connection with a violent protest following the 2013 election. “People are suffering from what is happening in Cambodia nowadays,” said Navan Cheth, a protest organizer in Long Beach, California. “They cannot accept this injustice, so they will come out to support this protest.”

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen speaks at the United Nations, Sept. 26, 2015. Expatriates are urging sanctions against his government for suppression of dissent and the jailing of opposition members and rights workers.

Protests will also be held Saturday in France and Australia. “We condemn the violation of the constitution by arresting civilians and opposition politicians, including lawmakers,” said Ham Bunchhay, a protest organizer in France.

The protesters also will urge the U.S. to lead a campaign to mobilize a "Cambodia Contact Group,” which will consist of the U.S., France, Japan, Indonesia, Australia and Britain. “The ‘Cambodia Contact Group’ will play a crucial role in ensuring that the election will be conducted free and fair as per the spirit of the 1991 Paris peace agreement,” said Vibol. “We see that the U.S. was a signatory country to the agreement and has a responsibility to monitor the implementation of democracy and human rights in Cambodia.”

http://www.voanews.com/content/globa...a/3369665.html

[donttread]

guess we ain't the slowest nation in the world for justice.... wonder how long their appeals will take

Jesus how old are these guys?

[waltky]

Granny says fry him...

Ex-security Officer Testifies to Immolating 4 Westerners at Khmer Rouge Jail
June 30, 2016 — The head of an infamous Khmer Rouge security center and execution site confessed earlier this month to overseeing the fatal burning of four Western inmates in the 1970s.

During his second day of testimony at the Khmer Rouge tribunal on June 9, Kaing Kek Eav, the S-21 security center chief better known as Duch, said four Western prisoners of a group of nine were burned alive on order of his superiors. The former prison chief, now 74, is currently serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity handed down in a separate phase of the ongoing case. “I can say that they were interrogated and later on they were smashed, per the instructions — and the smashing here means they were burned with tires, car tires,” Duch said.

Former Khmer Rouge S-21 prison chief Duch (C) greets the court during his appeal hearing at the Court Room of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) on the outskirts of Phnom Penn

While historians say an estimated 50 to 60 foreigners were killed at S-21 — many of them wayward fisherman hailing from Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam — the four that Duch immolated were part of a group of nine Westerners apprehended along coastal Cambodian waters in 1978. All appear to have been tourists who sailed off course or had the misfortune of randomly encountering Khmer Rouge rebels. “They were arrested on charges of trespassing on the territories of Kampuchea in order to obtain information,” Duch said, explaining that the Americans, of whom there were four, were intercepted by navy forces along what is modern-day Preah Sihanouk province. "Later on they were sent to Phnom Penh … [where] the Central Committee sent them to S-21 to be interrogated and later on smashed,” he added.

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, said nine Westerners jailed at S-21 included Americans James William Clark, Lance McNamara, Michael Scott Deeds, and Christopher Delance and Canadian Stuart Glass. He said others included Australians Keith Dean and David Lloyd Scott, New Zealander Kerry George Hamill and Briton John Dewhirst. “The loss of the four foreigners who were burned under Duch’s command in Tuol Sleng, it is the same kind of suffering as millions of Cambodian families who also lost their loved ones," Chhang said. "It is clearly genocide and a crime against humanity. It does not prejudice or discriminate. They were against anybody; it doesn’t matter if you were foreigners or you were Cambodian.”

Journalists take photographs of a television screen showing the trial of Duch, former chief of the S-21 prison, at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) on the outskirts of Phnom Penn

Although Duch never clarified which of the nine individual Westerners he burned, Chum Mey, one of the few survivors of the security center, said when the foreign prisoners arrived “none of them could escape.” “They killed all of them,” he said, referring to any foreigners incarcerated at S-21. Peter Maguire, a law professor and author of Facing Death in Cambodia, said the deaths of the foreign prisoners in S-21 were well-documented. “[Duch] is probably very bored now that his trial is over and seems to have developed a taste for the spotlight,” he said.

http://www.voanews.com/content/ex-se...l/3399388.html

[waltky]

Is Cambodia tiring of the Khmer Rouge trials?...

Khmer Rouge Cadre's War Crimes Charges Dismissed in Cambodia
February 22, 2017 — A U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in Cambodia dismissed charges against a former cadre of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime on Wednesday, saying the Buddhist nun had not played a senior enough role during a period when some 1.8 million people died.

The decision in the case of Im Chaem, who was suspected of running a forced labor camp, was a boon for veteran Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who opposes further trials. Critics said the decision undermined the credibility of the court, which has found just three people guilty after a decade of work at a cost of over $260 million. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia said in a statement that Chaem, in her 60s, did not fall under their jurisdiction because she was not a senior leader of the Khmer Rouge or one of the most responsible officials.

Most of the victims of the Khmer Rouge died of starvation, torture, exhaustion or disease in labor camps or were bludgeoned to death during mass executions. Pol Pot, "Brother Number One," died in 1998. Chaem, a former Khmer Rouge district commander, was charged with murder and crimes against humanity.

Former Khmer Rouge district chief Im Chaem.

She did not appear in court because Cambodian police would not arrest her or other senior Khmer Rouge cadres charged. Hun Sen, in power for 30 years, has warned that more trials could see Cambodia spiral into civil war. "As long as the judges followed the rules and the evidence, we must accept the decision, but it can be difficult sometimes to swallow," said Youk Chhang, who said he suffered at Im Chaem's camp at the age of 15. His team has spent more than 20 years documenting the horrors of the regime and provided half a million documents to the tribunal.

The court faced a test of its credibility and would need to explain its decision to survivors, said Panhavuth Long of the Cambodian Justice Initiative, which monitors the trials. "We've seen concerns by people in general about interference," he told Reuters. The court has been plagued by infighting, political interference, resignations and funding shortages since it was set up to bring to justice "those most responsible" for the deaths of a fifth of the population from 1975-1979.

http://www.voanews.com/a/khmer-rouge...a/3734756.html