Cambodia trial 2009

Human Rights Watch. Donate Now. A leg shackle is seen in the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng prison and torture center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which is now a genocide museum. On February 17, trial proceedings will begin against Kaing Kek Iev Duch , former chief of Tuol Sleng, where at least 14, people were tortured and executed.

In a January 14 statement, the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, a coalition of 21 Cambodian human rights organizations, called for the Khmer Rouge tribunal not to arbitrarily limit itself to five prosecutions, saying: "Without further prosecutions, the ECCC will fail to deliver justice to the people of Cambodia and damage efforts to create genuine reconciliation. Your tax deductible gift can help stop human rights violations and save lives around the world. Topic International Justice.

More Reading. In an indictment in August the tribunal said: "Duch necessarily decided how long a prisoner would live, since he ordered their execution based on a personal determination of whether a prisoner had fully confessed" to being an enemy of the regime.

In one mass execution, he gave his men a "kill them all" order to dispose of a group of prisoners. On another list of 29 prisoners, he told his henchmen to "interrogate four persons, kill the rest". After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Duch disappeared for two decades, living under two other names and as a converted Christian before he was located in north-west Cambodia by a British journalist in Taken to the scene of his alleged crimes last year, he wept and told some of his former victims: "I ask for your forgiveness.

I know that you cannot forgive me, but I ask you to leave me the hope that you might. Finally the guards either cut open their bellies or their throats. After the executions were complete, the guards covered the pits. The case has generated huge interest in Cambodia among those searching for answers about relatives among the quarter of the country's population who died of disease, torture, starvation, or were executed during the regime's rule between and About people queued in the tropical sun from just after dawn to take their places in the courtroom behind bulletproof screens to prevent revenge attacks on the defendants.

Svay Simon, a year-old farmer whose leg was blown off by a Khmer Rouge bomb in , was among those who crowded in. He lost 10 relatives, including his sister and brother, to the regime. The trial is expected to last several months and pave the way for the hearings against the four other elderly leaders, who are not likely to face justice until next year. Several potential defendants are worried the court would now come after them. Whether more than five Khmer Rouge leaders will appear in the dock is not yet clear.

But perhaps the number of defendants is less important than the effect the trial will have on the national mood. Youk Chhang says the trial is not about the past or the present - it is about the future. But those are the facts. And that will help restore our sense of identity, because right now Cambodians are in search of it.