Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 18/05/2009: The court buildings, located 20 kilometres from the centre of Phnom Penh, on the 16th day of hearing at Duch's trial.
©John Vink/ MagnumBy Stéphanie Gée
18-05-2009
After two weeks of suspension, the trial of the former director of S-21, Duch, resumed with difficulty on Monday May 18th, with delay and bungles in the versions of the documents to be distributed for reading, concerning the positions of the defence team in relation to the chapters of the closing order relating to the implementation of the policy of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) in the Phnom Penh detention and torture centre. By the end of the day, U.S. expert Craig Etcheson, investigator with the office of the co-Prosecutors of the court, started testifying on the structure of Democratic Kampuchea, which he has studied closely.
An almighty Permanent Committee
The role of confessions Duch declared during the investigation that “the contents of confessions [was] the most important task for S-21.” He acknowledged during the hearing that some of them were quoted in the two official journals (Revolutionary Flag and Revolutionary Youth) or, upon order from a higher echelon, were recorded to be broadcast during political meetings or on the waves of the propaganda radio, the Voice of Democratic Kampuchea. For the most part, they were confessions of Vietnamese prisoners, broadcast in their entirety, and Cambodian prisoners considered as important, for whom only extracts were used. The goal, Duch recalled, was to disclose the names of the traitors to the party. However, the role of S-21 was not to determine if the detainees were actually traitors, because the simple fact they were arrested and transferred to this centre were enough to establish their guilt. In confessions sometimes as thick as several hundreds of pages, prisoners were, under duress, required to write a political autobiography, confess their alleged crimes and alleged membership of intelligence agencies (CIA, KGB or bodies of the Vietnamese Communist Party), and accuse other alleged enemies of the revolution. The accused recognised they were documents written with political ends and serving as excuses for the elimination of those who represented obstacles. Lists of enemies were therefore established on the basis of those forced denunciations.
Confessions exploited in the context of a power struggle
If a name was mentioned several times in confessions, that person was arrested. But the accused specified that the rule varied on a case by case basis. As an example, he said that “the name of Ta Mok [member of the CPK Standing Committee of the Central Committee] appeared in confessions, but the Standing Committee decided not to take any steps against him.”
Although Duch claims today that he quickly became sceptical as to the veracity of the confessions, he argues that back then, he did not have anything to assess them and distinguish true from false, and adds that by annotating the confessions, he only sought to make the task of his superiors easier and allow them to save time. For Duch, whether or not they followed what was written in the confessions collected in S-21 depended on the good will of the regime leaders. He thus reports words from Pol Pot, recorded in the minutes of a meeting on October 9th 1975: "Police is one thing, but, here, it is up to us to decide who we arrest."
Judge Lavergne then asks him if, beyond his doubts, he believes that the confessions could also have been used to serve an absolute fight for power within the CPK by some persons. Duch acknowledges it. According to his own analysis, two men faced each other: Pol Pot and Ta Mok, with the latter ordering the arrest and sentence of Brother no. 1 in 1997 on the basis of confessions-accusations. The accused also noted that Ta Mok, powerful secretary of the South-West zone, had never sent anybody to S-21, except for only two individuals, who originally did not belong to his network and came from the city.
Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 18/05/2009: Media room during the 16th day of hearing at Duch's trial at the ECCC.
©John Vink/ Magnum Outline of a power hierarchy under Democratic Kampuchea
In the middle of the afternoon, academic Craig Etcheson, author, among others, of The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea, published 25 years ago, started to outline the hierarchy in Democratic Kampuchea and the CPK, which “Central Committee was, in theory, the most powerful organ of Democratic Kampuchea.” According to the statutes of the party, the CPK was to convene a congress every four years – the first took place in 1960 and the fifth in 1978 – as well as ordinary meetings every six months, which frequency was not respected in practice, the court investigator explained. The executive body of the Central Committee was the Standing Committee, also known under the name “Angkar Leu”. It was directed by a secretary, Pol Pot (deceased in 1998), and a deputy secretary, Nuon Chea. Ieng Sary, Vorn Vet (executed in 1978), Sao Phim (committed suicide in 1978), Ta Mok (deceased in 2006) and Ros Nhim (executed in 1978) were members of the Standing Committee, while Son Sen (executed in 1997) and Kung Sophal (executed in 1978) were alternate members. Later, Son Sen was to be promoted as full member of the Standing Committee.
The Standing Committee, Pr. Craig Etcheson continued, using charts he prepared, ruled over the zones (initially six of them) that made up the country. Each was governed by a committee comprising of a secretary appointed by the Standing Committee, who then appointed a deputy in charge of security issues, and a member in charge of economics. The zones were themselves further subdivided into entities named “sectors”, which number varied from one zone to another, and were also governed by a similar triumvirate. As for sectors, they were subdivided into districts, also directed by a triumvirate. Then came communes, managed by a CPK branch committee, the lowest level of the hierarchy, and under them, villages or rather cooperatives, mobile brigades, etc. “The creation of zones and sectors was an administrative novelty started under Democratic Kampuchea,” noted the American, who acknowledged, in agreement with Duch, that the 1976 statutes of the CPK would have been a “confidential” document, as “the party placed a very high value on secrecy.”
Each zone and sector committee commanded military units of regiment size, which were simple militias (“chlop”) at the district level. “All echelons were constantly exhorted by the Standing Committee to take action on internal security.” The expert quoted an extract from a May 1978 issue of the journal Revolutionary Flag: “We must see as key the duties of attacking the domestic enemy, […] every party level must therefore adopt the role of leading the army and the people to attack all such enemies, sweep them cleanly away, sweep, and sweep, and sweep, again and again, ceaselessly, so that our party forces are pure, our leading forces at every level and every sphere are clean at all times.”
As for the creation of S-21, while the accused declared to the co-investigating judges that the ordered emanated from Son Sen and the secretary of Division 703 in August 1975, given the principles of democratic centralism and collectivism described in the CPK statutes, Craig Etcheson deems likely that Son Sen would not have acted of his own authority, but more likely pursuant an order of the Standing Committee.
However, according to the U.S. researcher, Duch's direct superior from March 1976 to September 1977 (thereafter, Duch was to be under the direct orders of Nuon Chea) was in interlocking positions of authority in the government, the party and the military, as he was deputy Prime Minister for national defence, member of the CPK Standing Committee, and finally, chief of staff in the revolutionary army. However, he underlines that Son Sen's real authority flowed from his position within the CPK.
The trial resumes tomorrow morning.
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Small reshuffling at the tribunal
A press release of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) indicates, on Monday May 18th, that Reach Sambath, until then press officer, is promoted chief of Public Affairs, responsible for all media relations and provision of public information on the workings of the ECCC, taking over from Helen Jarvis. The latter, involved in the establishment of the ECCC since 1999, is redeployed to head the Victims Unit, following the resignation of Keat Bophal from that position. It is specified that a “of other positions are in the process of being filled to strengthen the functions of the Unit with regard to processing of complaints and civil party applications; assisting and supporting Civil Parties, including with legal representation; and preparing recommendations on probable grouping of civil parties for Case 002.”
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