Khmer Rouge tribunal takes message to the movement's heart

Pailin town.

ABC Radio Australia

September 29, 2010

Last week, the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal in Cambodia, visited the border town of Pailin in the country's west.

The trip was to explain the court and its workings, to an audience of 250 people - most of whom are former members of the Khmer Rouge. The week before, the tribunal had indicted four former Khmer Rouge leaders - all of whom used to live in Pailin.

Presenter: Robert Carmichael
Speakers: Mey Mak, deputy governor of Pailin; Andrew Cayley, international co-proscutor; Lars Olsen, legal affairs spokesman, ECCC

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CARMICHAEL: The town of Pailin in the hilly countryside of western Cambodia near the Thai border is well-known for its association with the Khmer Rouge.
The communist movement that brought Cambodia to its knees in the 1970s, and which fought on from bases along the Cambodian-Thai border after that, finally collapsed in the late 1990s. Pailin played a central role in precipitating that collapse when the regime's foreign minister, Ieng Sary, defected to the Cambodian government with several thousand fighters in 1996. In return Ieng Sary received a royal pardon and an amnesty. His timing was good. Within a few years the Khmer Rouge was finished. But over the next decade Ieng Sary's luck turned. In 2003 the government and the United Nations agreed to establish a tribunal to try those most deeply implicated in the regime's crimes. Amnesties were declared null and void.

In 2007 both Ieng Sary and his wife, the former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith, were arrested. Earlier this month the tribunal indicted both for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indicted along with them were former head of state Khieu Samphan, and the man known as Brother Number Two, Nuon Chea. In most of Cambodia, their indictments are seen as long overdue. But not here.

Almost everyone in Pailin has a Khmer Rouge heritage, including deputy governor Mey Mak, the guest of honour at last week's public meeting. Addressing the crowd - a mix of monks and nuns, police and military, and ordinary civilians - Mey Mak sounded less than enthusiastic about the indictments of the four former Pailin residents.

MAK: Mey Mak told those present that decisions in the Khmer Rouge were made by one person - the Khmer Rouge's former leader Pol Pot, who died in 1998 - and that meant the court had indicted the wrong people. The hands of these four, he said, were not stained with blood - Khieu Samphan was responsible for the economy. Ieng Sary's role as foreign minister meant he merely travelled in and out of Cambodia. And Ieng Thirith was just the social affairs minister. All were under the power of Pol Pot, said Mey Mak.

CARMICHAEL: It is hardly the strongest of legal arguments nor the most original, as the court's international prosecutor Andrew Cayley pointed out in his response.

CAYLEY: And I certainly anticipate in this trial as in many others I have done, that responsibility will be laid at the feet of the dead, and the living will claim innocence.

CARMICHAEL: Cayley was one of several senior court officials who made the 800-kilometre round trip to Pailin. One purpose was to address a key fear of ex-Khmer Rouge: How many people will the court try? The tribunal's first trial was of Comrade Duch, the former head of the Khmer Rouge's security prison known as S-21. In July the court convicted him of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentencing him to 30 years.

Cayley said the four indictments filed this month would take that total up to five people.

CAYLEY: And then finally there will be another five in cases three and four who are under investigation. Those five may or may not go to trial, depending on the work of the investigating judges and what they find. So with those ten, that is it.

CARMICHAEL: Court spokesman Lars Olsen says the day went well.

OLSEN: As we expected, they had quite a lot of questions. And their focus is a bit different than what we are used to in our outreach events, which usually deals mainly with victims' populations. Whereas here, being in a former Khmer Rouge stronghold, they are more concerned about to what extent the court will put a lot of people on trial and so forth, and the national reconciliation rather than reparations for victims.

CARMICHAEL: What was unsurprisingly apparent at the close of the meeting was that the prospect of further prosecutions sits uneasily here. But the residents of Pailin were no doubt comforted at the news that a maximum of 10 people will face trial for 2.2 million deaths. Whether that constitutes justice for the people of Cambodia is another question entirely.