Man explains role in Cambodia genocide

Cambodian Meo Soknen, 13, stands inside a small shrine full of human bones and skulls, all victims of the Khmer Rouge, near her home in the Kandal Steung district of Kandal province, Cambodia.

Wed, 08 Apr 2009

A leader of the genocidal Khmer Rouge says he ordered the recruitment of young peasants and trained them to be torturers and killers.

Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, is best known for heading the Khmer Rouge special branch and running the infamous Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison camp in the capital, Phnom Penh.

A reported 15,000 people died in the prison during the three-year rule of the communist Khmers in Cambodia.

"The initiative to recruit staff was mine... We did not use the word 'killing office' -- they were invited to do revolutionary work. And what was the revolutionary work at the time? It was killing," Duch told the court.

The 66-year-old, who faces charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and premeditated murder, told a hearing at the UN-sponsored Cambodia Tribunal that uneducated young staff were "like a blank piece of paper" whom he could instruct to extract confessions of spying from prisoners under torture and then kill them.

The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 after a five-year civil war with the military-led government, which had in March 1970 launched a successful coup against the then head of state, prince Norodom Sihanouk.

Duch, who is now a math teacher and has converted to Christianity, has explained that if the US had not supported the military government of Lon Nol, the Khmers would have been destroyed by 1970.

"I think the Khmer Rouge would already have been demolished," he said. "But Mr. Kissinger [the then US secretary of state] and Richard Nixon were quick [to back coup leader Gen. Lon Nol], and then the Khmer Rouge noted the golden opportunity."

Duch said that this alliance helped the Khmer Rouge build up its power over the course of the 1970-75 war against the Lon Nol regime.

The Nixon administration and the US national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, by 1975 had launched a series of military operations inside Cambodia to destroy “mythical” Vietcong bases within the neutral country.

Nixon's plan was, however, to show the Vietnamese communists how tough he could be -- a policy he once described as the "Madman Theory of War".

The theory proved to be disastrous for the delicate balance between the royalists, republicans and communists. The peace loving king was overthrown by the military and a small group of fanatics -- namely the Khmer Rouge gained power in the country.

In a bid to transform Cambodia -- which had been renamed by the regime to Kampuchea -- into an agrarian heaven, the Khmers forced city dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects.

The guerrilla group, aimed at "restarting civilization" in "Year Zero", attempted to discard all traces of culture and traditions within the society to start from scratch.

The Khmers, during their three-year rule, slaughtered over 1.5 million people. Whole families were killed in executions; starvation, disease and overwork also took its toll on the nation.

Despite the enormous amount of suffering caused by the genocide, little action has been taken so far to mete out justice in support of those who have fallen victim to the slaughter.