Khmer Rouge Trials Set to Start

NTDTV

Thirty years after the fall of the Khmer Rouges 'Killing Fields,' in Cambodia, surviving senior henchmen of leader Pol Pot are to be tried in court. The charges will include crimes relating to the deaths of 1.7 million people. Let's hear more on this landmark event.

The UN-backed long-awaited international tribunal finally gets underway on Tuesday. And the former head of Cambodia's notorious Tuol Sleng jail is the first to stand trial for Khmer Rouge atrocities.


Kiang Guek Eav, also called Duch, is one of five senior Pol Pot henchmen who is blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people.

Tribunal officials say the start of the trials after years of preparation is a landmark for the nation.

[Helen Jarvis, Public Affairs Officer, Cambodia Court]: "It's a very historic occasion for Cambodia finally after all these
years to have the case opening."

Of the 14, 000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng jail by the Pol Pot regime, Chum Mei is one of the handful who has lived to tell the tale.

He was thrashed with electric cables and his finger and toe nails were pulled out to make him confess to being a CIA spy.

[Chum Mei, Tuol Sleng Prison Survivor]: "I want to ask Duch why he brought people to be tortured or killed and what did I do to make him torture me here? My children, my wife, were
killed. Were they CIA too? Who was behind it all?"

Tuol Sleng was one of many jails set up by the Khmer Rouge for those considered opponents of its revolution.

Victims were forced to confess to a range of crimes, then bludgeoned to death in the Killing Fields on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

Lor Sim was a Khmer Rouge guard at Tuol Sleng.

She says she did not kill anyone but would have paid with her life if she failed to obey orders.

[Lor Sim, Former Khmer Rouge Prison Guard]: "I worked days and nights with no sleep and I would be killed if I did not do so."

The tribunal opening has been delayed by lengthy legal disputes and alleged corruption among judges.

Thirty years after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime, those who lost family and friends now have a chance for justice.