Thursday, 01.08.09
Cambodia is preparing to try the aging leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that brutally ruled the country in the 1970s.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- (AP) -- Thirty years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the specter of the murderous regime still haunted Cambodia on Wednesday as victims remembered the countless dead and the country prepared to finally try the movement's leaders.
More than 40,000 people jammed Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium for speeches and a parade to mark the day Vietnamese troops ousted the ultra-communist regime.
''On Jan. 7, my second life began,'' said a 59-year-old farmer whose father and sister died of starvation under the Khmer Rouge. ``I want to see Khmer Rouge leaders prosecuted as soon as possible because they are getting old now.''
She was one of millions who endured what many survivors said was ''hell on earth.'' Phnom Penh, the capital, was emptied at gunpoint, its citizens forced to work in vast slave labor camps on starvation rations and under the constant threat of execution. Religion, unapproved marriages, money and most entertainment were banned.
When it was over, 1.7 million or more Cambodians had perished during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule.
But none of the surviving leaders have yet faced justice.
One of the accused -- Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, who headed the Khmer Rouge's largest torture center -- will probably take the stand in March at a U.N.-backed tribunal, said co-prosecutor Robert Petit. He said the trial is expected to take three to four months.
But the other four, all of them aging and ailing, probably won't be tried until 2010 or later.
''Although in the past three decades Cambodia has made great progress, difficulties that are left by war and genocide have been far reaching and are yet to be completely removed,'' Senate President Chea Sim said in the keynote speech at the stadium.
Cambodia is preparing to try the aging leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that brutally ruled the country in the 1970s.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- (AP) -- Thirty years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the specter of the murderous regime still haunted Cambodia on Wednesday as victims remembered the countless dead and the country prepared to finally try the movement's leaders.
More than 40,000 people jammed Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium for speeches and a parade to mark the day Vietnamese troops ousted the ultra-communist regime.
''On Jan. 7, my second life began,'' said a 59-year-old farmer whose father and sister died of starvation under the Khmer Rouge. ``I want to see Khmer Rouge leaders prosecuted as soon as possible because they are getting old now.''
She was one of millions who endured what many survivors said was ''hell on earth.'' Phnom Penh, the capital, was emptied at gunpoint, its citizens forced to work in vast slave labor camps on starvation rations and under the constant threat of execution. Religion, unapproved marriages, money and most entertainment were banned.
When it was over, 1.7 million or more Cambodians had perished during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule.
But none of the surviving leaders have yet faced justice.
One of the accused -- Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, who headed the Khmer Rouge's largest torture center -- will probably take the stand in March at a U.N.-backed tribunal, said co-prosecutor Robert Petit. He said the trial is expected to take three to four months.
But the other four, all of them aging and ailing, probably won't be tried until 2010 or later.
''Although in the past three decades Cambodia has made great progress, difficulties that are left by war and genocide have been far reaching and are yet to be completely removed,'' Senate President Chea Sim said in the keynote speech at the stadium.
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