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Latest update: 25/11/2009
- Cambodia - communism - genocide - Khmer Rouge - trial
Prosecutors demand 40-year sentence for Khmer Rouge jailer
Prosecutors asked Cambodia's war crimes court to hand a 40-year jail sentence to Duch, the former Khmer Rouge prison chief. Duch, who stands accused of overseeing 15,000 deaths, gives his closing remarks to the court.
AFP - Prosecutors asked Cambodia's war crimes court Wednesday to hand a 40-year jail term to former Khmer Rouge prison chief Duch, accused of overseeing 15,000 deaths at the regime's main torture centre.
The former cadre, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, was set to give his final remarks later Wednesday in which he is expected to beg forgiveness for his role in the communist movement behind the "Killing Fields" atrocities.
But lawyers for the prosecution said the previous expressions of remorse by the 67-year-old former maths teacher were limited and did not amount to a full guilty plea before the UN-backed tribunal.
"We submit... that the sentence to be submitted by this trial chamber should be 40 years in prison," prosecutor Bill Smith told judges in the prosecution's final arguments.
Smith said an appropriate sentence for Duch would be 45 years in prison but that should be reduced by five years for his general cooperation, limited acceptance of responsibility and expressions of remorse.
"No one should make the mistake that this case is equal to an unqualified guilty plea before an international tribunal," Smith said.
Duch is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and premeditated murder, and faces a maximum term of life in prison by the tribunal, which does not have the power to impose the death penalty.
The Khmer Rouge rose to power in 1975 and under leader Pol Pot wiped out nearly two million Cambodians through starvation, overwork and execution, before they were toppled by Vietnamese backed forces in 1979.
Emerging as a tragic spin-off of the US conflict in Vietnam, the movement emptied Cambodia's cities to take society back to a rural "Year Zero", purging city dwellers, intellectuals and even people who wore glasses.
For Cambodians the controversial tribunal, established in 2006 after nearly a decade of negotiations between Cambodia and the United Nations, is the last chance to find justice for the Khmer Rouge's crimes.
A verdict is expected early next year in Duch's trial -- which began in February and is the first to be held by the court.
Duch is expected to apologise again Wednesday as his defence bids to lessen his sentence, however prosecution and civil party lawyers have this week rejected his accounts of the past and called for a harsher decision.
"Duch is expected to speak and what we're told is he's expected to speak one or two hours," said court spokesman Lars Olsen.
As before, Duch sat Wednesday with judges, lawyers and witnesses behind a massive bulletproof screen to prevent possible revenge attacks.
Hundreds of Cambodians attended the specially built courtroom on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, while this week's proceedings are being broadcast live by all Cambodian television stations.
Tuol Sleng prison, a former high school, was at the heart of the Khmer Rouge security apparatus, forcing inmates to give false confessions that they had betrayed the regime or worked for foreign intelligence services.
Only around a dozen people are known to have survived, with most of the rest of the 15,000 men, women and children who passed through its doors taken for execution at nearby Choeung Ek, an orchard now known as the "Killing Fields".
It is now a genocide museum.
Duch has been detained since 1999, when he was found working as a Christian aid worker in the jungle, and was formally arrested by the tribunal in July 2007.
The court has faced controversy over allegations of interference by the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen and claims that Cambodian staff paid kickbacks for their jobs.
The joint trial of four other more senior Khmer Rouge leaders is expected to start in 2011 and the court is also investigating whether to open more cases against five other former Khmer Rouge cadres.
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Khmer Rouge Trial
As a former Khmer I can assure everyone who's watching this trial - whatever the outcome maybe, it might just address some of the SYMTOMS not the CAUSES of the country's tragedy.
The greatest sadness of all is not the countless of lives lost or the hellish sufferings we khmers have endured, but our collective ignorance about WHAT brought us here; and our never-ending-journey in circle within this blackhole.
Since the collapse of Angkor could we khmer name one established Khmer city or a distinct and legitimate Khmer leadership which represented our cultural heritage, independence and cohesiveness as a souvereign nation, as comparared to those of our neighbors such as Thai Ayudhia or Vietnamese Hue? Historically we khmers never had the opportunity to really live as one integrated nation to fully exercise ou thoughts and ideas, and civil discourse despite the towering richness of Angkorian civilization in our background.
It is ironic that the term Cambodge or Cambodia (Kambuja) began to be heard only after the French colonial power was firmly extabilshed in Indochina. In fact, according to our neighbors, Khmer Civilization was a myth, we have existed as a nation that never WAS. Civility, thoughts and ideas have never arrived in our fractured land. We have lived under one ugly tyrant after another up to the present time, in addition to the imposed rules by our neighbors and the French colonial system; and this saga continues (Vietnam still hovers in the background, Thai never have come to term with Prah Vihear and other Khmer ancient ruines along the Khmer-Thai border).
Some of the defendents in the current and perhaps the subsequent trials may be found guilty and locked away for 40 years. But I dare to predict that the gost of these monsters will come back to haunt Cambodia in another time and another form in the near future. Just ask this simple question: what ever happened to the millions of disaffected Khmer Rouge and/or paysants and their children who are still being marginalized and ignored? What ever happened to the megatons of arsenal the khmer rouge used to terrorize the country with not very long ago?
Sihaknouk and Lon Nol crated monsters such as we see on the current list of defendents.
Pol Pot and his gang produced characters such as Hun Sen and his band of robbers.
Mother Cambodia for the most part has been beaten, robbed, and raped, and left to die by her own children, beside the occasional raping, plundering by the Vietnamese and the Thai, and to a certain extend by the colonial French, not to forget the American carpet bombing between 1969 and 1975.
Stay tune this saga will continue, and it will get increasingly interesting. Confucius once said " Study without thought is vain; thought without study is DANGEROUS!". I have to say that the characters (self-proclaimed leaders) on Khmer drama and political scene from post-angkorian civilization down to the present which currently being played out for the world to see, fit this word of wisdom perfectly.
As a individual khmer I wake up in the morning look myself in the mirror and remind myself to go on living as a non-khmer, the reality of the khmer saga is too hard and very painful to take.
To really understand Khmer mentality and their idiosyncrasy one needs to only seek the opinions of Khmer neighbors and arch-enemies - the Thai and the Vienamese. They can better describe Cambodia and the Khmers from the standpoint of a more advance society in social, economics, and political reasoning, prejudice not withsatanding. Better yet Chinese, Vietnamese immigrants who once lived among the Khmers, and of course the colonial French cadres who have worked in colonial Cambodia, generally have a closer-to-truth description of the Khmer mentality than the Khmer of themselves.
One Awaken Khmer