CAMBODIA: For Many, Khmer Rouge Trials Taking Too Long

PHNOM PENH, Jun 6 (Newsmekong) - It was just 8 a.m. on a Sunday
morning, but 78-year-old farmer You Song had visited almost all the
places inside the Royal Palace here in the Cambodian capital.

Song does not live in Phnom Penh, but is from Oudor Meanchey, 469
kilometres away from the capital. He arrived here a day before
visiting the Royal Palace, a chance that he has been waiting for for
a lifetime.

It was an emotional visit because his home province of Oudor
Meanchey is the area where the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge,
under whose 1975 to 1979 rule some 1.7 million people died, had its
last days.

Going around the Royal Palace grounds, Song looked upset at times
and took deep breaths at others. He looked like he had unresolved
problems on his mind.

He would have been able to visit the Royal Palace a long time
ago, but recalls that the war made him lose “everything”.

His one five-year-old son and one four-year-old daughter died of
hunger during Pol Pot regime, he said, relating a story not too
unlike that of many of the victims of decades of conflict in this
South-east Asian country of more than 14 million people.

“My son asked me to help him before he died, while I was being
forced to work in the rice field,” Song recalled.

There is now the possibility, though long delayed, of justice
finally coming to the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime, but Song
says he will believe that only when the trial of the Khmer Rouge is
underway.

“I want to know and see with my own eyes what Khmer Rouge leaders
answer to the international court,” he said. “But I, as well as my
fellow villagers, do not think that the trial would happen because it
has been ten years already since they (the Cambodian government and
the United Nations) started planning.”

The trials were expected to start this year, but disagreements
over procedures, fees and other issues have delayed this. Officials
now say the trials are unlikely to start before 2008.

Reach Sambath, spokesman for the Khmer Rouge trials, confirmed
that from May 31 to Jun. 13, the trials’ rule committee will meet to
adopt the internal rules for the proceedings.

“We hope that the meeting will have a positive result that is a good
sign to show that the Khmer Rouge Trials (KRT) are moving forward,”
Sambath said. “Now we do not have any more problems that could cause
a deadlock to the process.”

He said that on Apr. 16, the KRT rules committee had actually already
agreed on draft internal rules. But the process got delayed after the
Cambodia Bar Association (CBA) demanded 4,900 U.S. dollars as
registration fees from foreign lawyers who want to work for the KRT.
The CBA have since agreed to lower the registration fee to 500
dollars from each foreign lawyer.

Nou Tharith, CBA deputy secretary general and spokesman, says he has
not seen any problem that could bring a deadlock to the Khmer Rouge
trials again.

Apart from the Royal Palace, Song wants to visit the Extraordinary
Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), where the trials of senior
Khmer Rouge leaders are to be held. But he does not know if he can go
in or not.

ECCC is a public court, so everyone can visit it, says Sambath. He
says that so far, more than 10,000 visitors, both national and
international. have come to visit the court complex since 2006. Some
have come alone, while others come in groups as big as 700 people.

“Every Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., they do not need to inform in
advance. They can just come to the gates and tell the security and
then we will let them in,” Sambath says. But apart from Tuesdays,
visitors need to give notice before coming.

“We strongly believe that this trial at least could bring justice
to the victims who killed, to relatives’ victims and to us who were
also the victims of the Pol Pot regime,” said Song. “And it is a
lesson for the young generation to learn and to prevent such a cruel
regime (from coming again).”

Song recalls that he was accused of violating the Khmer Rouge’s
orders and had been scheduled to be killed.

From 1975 to 1977, Song was moved to Sandai village from Chhuk
village in Samroang district to plant vegetables as food supplies for
the troops of Khmer Rouge senior Ta Mok. In 1977, he had become the
object of envy of other villagers for doing his planting job well.

Soon, he was accused of being a paratrooper among the troops of
former Cambodian prime minister Lon Nol, who was pro-Western and anti-
communist and was on the list of those the Khmer Rouge planned to
kill when they took over the capital in 1975. Song was arrested and
was to be killed by noon of the following day.
Fortunately, he said, his would-be killer found out the truth,
and he was allowed to move to live and work like other people in
Chhuk village.

There, he tried to find vegetables and fruits in the jungle at
night to mix with porridge so his five children and wife could eat –
but still, two of his children died.

Many people in Chhuk village would like to visit and watch the
trial as well, but he said they did not have money to afford to
travel to Phnom Penh.

Ly Sok Kheang, team leader for the living documents project at
the Documentation Centre of Cambodia that has formed and organised
records of Khmer Rouge atrocities, said his organisation could help
provide support for citizens to come to the trial if Song and other
villagers write to his organisation.

From February 2006 to the present, Sok Kheang said, his
organisation has brought 6,000 people from different Cambodian
provinces to Phnom Penh so that they can understand the Khmer Rouge
trial process and could be called on by the court to testify.

While in Phnom Penh, they had the chance also to revisit their
country’s troubled past, hoping to close what was a painful chapter
for many Cambodians. Many of these visitors went to places such as
the Toul Sleng genocide museum, the Choeung Ek killing fields, and
met members of the National Assembly who passed the KRT law.

At the end of May, the Documentation Centre of Cambodia had
another 50 people from the provinces coming on a similar trip. (END/
IPS/AP/IP/HD/Newsmekong/SR/JS/07)