Cambodia: Evidence at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Posted By Chhunny Chhean On 2009-03-31 @ 21:06 pm In Cambodia, East Asia, English, History, Human Rights, Law, TOPICS, Weblog | No Comments

VOA Khmer [1]interviewed former Khmer Rouge rebels who doubt there will be sufficient evidence to convict the five leaders waiting to stand trial at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal [2]. Sok Pheap, a general in the army who had defected from the Khmer Rouge in 1996, challenges,

I didn’t know [who the killers were]; I was the soldier in the forest, and when I came back home also my relatives had gone missing, killed, and most of villagers had died.

Another former Khmer Rouge member, Meas Mouth, states that:

For instance, the skull bones that have been displayed: the court must know which skull belonged to a person killed by the Vietnamese, which belonged to a person killed by B-52 bombers, or any of the Khmers who did not die by the Khmer Rouge.

A lawyer from the Cambodian Defenders Project [3] agreed that because the events occurred 30 years ago, evidence and witnesses could be hard to come by.

However, Youk Chhang of the Documentation Center of Cambodia [4], stated there are hundreds of thousands of documents to link the accused to the war crimes.

In addition to documentary evidence, testimonies of survivors are being gathered, including in Long Beach, California [5], where many Cambodians resettled after the genocide.

Victims and their relatives have the right to file complaints through the Victims Unit of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Instructions on how to file a complaint are found here [6].

[7]
Photo capturing faces of the Tuol Sleng [8] prison by Yarra64 [9]and licensed through Creative Commons [10].


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Article printed from Global Voices Online: http://globalvoicesonline.org

URL to article: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/03/31/cambodia-evidence-at-the-khmer-rouge-tribunal/

URLs in this post:

[1] VOA Khmer : http://www.voanews.com/khmer/2009-03-26-voa1.cfm

[2] Khmer Rouge Tribunal: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/03/31/cambodia-trial-begins-for-khmer-rouge-leader/

[3] Cambodian Defenders Project: http://www.cdpcambodia.org/default.asp

[4] Documentation Center of Cambodia: http://www.dccam.org/

[5] Long Beach, California: http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_12016405

[6] here: http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english/victims_unit.aspx

[7] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yarra64/3390059182/

[8] Tuol Sleng: http://www.tuolsleng.com/

[9] Yarra64 : http://www.flickr.com/photos/yarra64/

[10] Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en