Pailin residents watch educational video about the Khmer Rouge trial (top).Khmer Rouge Tribunal judges, You Bunleng (L) and Marcel Lemonde (R) attended the meeting in Pailin (below).
PAILIN, Cambodia (AP) — Officials from Cambodia's genocide tribunal held a town hall-style meeting Wednesday in the Khmer Rouge's former heartland to persuade neighbors of the regime's ex-rulers to help with the trials.
Judges and officials from the U.N.-backed tribunal held the meeting at a Buddhist temple on a hillside near Pailin, a derelict town near the northwestern border with Thailand where ex-Khmer Rouge leaders set up homes and lived for decades as ordinary citizens until last year.
Five senior figures of the Khmer Rouge, whose radical policies led to the deaths of some 1.7 million people in the 1970s, were arrested last year and are awaiting long-delayed genocide trials to begin in the capital, Phnom Penh. The trials are scheduled to start this year.
More than 100 residents attended the question-and-answer session, the first activity of its kind conducted in one of the former Khmer Rouge strongholds.
"How long is this tribunal going to drag on for? I demand that the judges find justice for us," one resident asked, directing his question at two of the tribunal's judges who led the discussion and replied there was no specific timeframe for the trials.
The three-hour meeting started with a documentary film about the tribunal, explaining the roles of a judge, prosecutor and lawyer.
Cambodia's judicial system has faced persistent allegations of corruption and bias. U.N. human rights investigator Yash Ghai recently visited the country and called the judiciary "a perversity."
Tribunal officials hope the meeting will dispel fears that low-ranking former Khmer Rouge will become targets of the court. Officials hope to gain the valuable input of Pailin villagers as investigations continue into the alleged crimes of Khmer Rouge leaders.
"For truth to be found, your participation is needed," You Bunleng, a Cambodian judge told the crowd, which sat cross-legged on the temple's tile floor.
Before the meeting got under way, officials distributed brochures titled, "An Introduction to the Trial of Khmer Rouge Leaders," which showed a picture of villagers in the 1980s discovering a pile of skulls.
"I can't read," said a 50-year-old woman, Chin Peap. "But this picture shows the killing during the Khmer Rouge era."
The Buddhist temple where the meeting took place is the site of a 1996 ceremony that integrated ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers into the national army. The ceremony, presided over by Prime Minister Hun Sen, was billed by the government as a gesture to end more than two decades of civil war.
The regime's notorious leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998.
Pol Pot's surviving deputies — Kaing Guek Eav, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan — are being held in the tribunal's custom-built jail in Phnom Penh on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
By KER MUNTHIT
PAILIN, Cambodia (AP) — Officials from Cambodia's genocide tribunal held a town hall-style meeting Wednesday in the Khmer Rouge's former heartland to persuade neighbors of the regime's ex-rulers to help with the trials.
Judges and officials from the U.N.-backed tribunal held the meeting at a Buddhist temple on a hillside near Pailin, a derelict town near the northwestern border with Thailand where ex-Khmer Rouge leaders set up homes and lived for decades as ordinary citizens until last year.
Five senior figures of the Khmer Rouge, whose radical policies led to the deaths of some 1.7 million people in the 1970s, were arrested last year and are awaiting long-delayed genocide trials to begin in the capital, Phnom Penh. The trials are scheduled to start this year.
More than 100 residents attended the question-and-answer session, the first activity of its kind conducted in one of the former Khmer Rouge strongholds.
"How long is this tribunal going to drag on for? I demand that the judges find justice for us," one resident asked, directing his question at two of the tribunal's judges who led the discussion and replied there was no specific timeframe for the trials.
The three-hour meeting started with a documentary film about the tribunal, explaining the roles of a judge, prosecutor and lawyer.
Cambodia's judicial system has faced persistent allegations of corruption and bias. U.N. human rights investigator Yash Ghai recently visited the country and called the judiciary "a perversity."
Tribunal officials hope the meeting will dispel fears that low-ranking former Khmer Rouge will become targets of the court. Officials hope to gain the valuable input of Pailin villagers as investigations continue into the alleged crimes of Khmer Rouge leaders.
"For truth to be found, your participation is needed," You Bunleng, a Cambodian judge told the crowd, which sat cross-legged on the temple's tile floor.
Before the meeting got under way, officials distributed brochures titled, "An Introduction to the Trial of Khmer Rouge Leaders," which showed a picture of villagers in the 1980s discovering a pile of skulls.
"I can't read," said a 50-year-old woman, Chin Peap. "But this picture shows the killing during the Khmer Rouge era."
The Buddhist temple where the meeting took place is the site of a 1996 ceremony that integrated ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers into the national army. The ceremony, presided over by Prime Minister Hun Sen, was billed by the government as a gesture to end more than two decades of civil war.
The regime's notorious leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998.
Pol Pot's surviving deputies — Kaing Guek Eav, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan — are being held in the tribunal's custom-built jail in Phnom Penh on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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