What Happens After

Elizabeth Do

The word “Khmer Rouge” can invoke images of brutality, terror
and tragedy. Indeed, the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 is
arguably one of the worst human rights violations in world history, holding
court with the Holocaust, Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, an d the Rwandan
Genocide. In my years of studying political science at Stanford, I’ve become
familiar with the history of such genocides, how they emerge and unfold in a
country’s darkest days.

But what happens after? How do countries recover from their horrific pasts?

This past summer, I got a glimpse into how Cambodia has decided to deal with
and take charge of its past, namely through the means of the justice system.

While in Cambodia carrying out field research for my thesis, I got the
chance to attend some of the hearings at the Extraordinary Chambers in the
Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) for the trial against Guek Eav Kaing, alias Duch
(pronounced “Doik”), the former head of the Khmer Rouge’s (KR) S-21, or Tuol
Sleng, prison. Under Duch’s watch, an estimated 17,000 people perished at
S-21. Prisoners included officers from the former Lon Nol regime,
intellectuals, and eventually even cadres from within the Khmer Rouge’s own
party. Driven by fear and paranoia of such political and social threats to
the new regime, the Khmer Rouge brought prisoners to S-21 on trumped-up
charges of espionage and treason and employed torture and mass extermination
in order to extract confessions and deal out punishments. There are a few
survivors of S-21 but in general, once people were brought to the prison,
their fates were sealed.

Sadly, 17,000 deaths is only a drop in the bucket considering the overall
death toll of more than 1.7 million people caused by the KR regime. When the
extremist communist group took over Cambodia in April 1975 and renamed the
country Democratic Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge began a reign of terror
characterized by 17-hour work days, food deprivation bordering on
starvation, campaigns against political enemies, and waves of disappearances
and arbitrary killings. The name Pol Pot, the alias of Saloth Sar who headed
the Khmer Rouge, still rings eerily in people’s conversations of Cambodia’s
past.

Even more disturbing is the fact that most former KR leaders have lived with
nearly total impunity for their actions since the end of the regime in 1979.
In an effort to address this injustice, the United Nations and the Cambodian
government agreed to jointly establish the ECCC, better known as the Khmer
Rouge Tribunal, in June 2003. After additional negotiations between the UN
and Cambodia and funds raised by international donors to create the ECCC
budget, the court began to take shape by July 2006. The ECCC is a hybrid
court, meaning the court “enforce[s] a combination of domestic and
international criminal law and comprise[s] both local and international
judges, prosecutors and administrative staff.”[1] Examples of hybrid courts
include those in Kosovo, East Timor and Sierra Leone. The hybrid court
structure gives the ECCC the legitimacy gained from incorporating
international standards of justice and the broad impact gained from being
based just outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia and actually being accessible to the
Cambodian people.

The objective of the ECCC is to investigate the crimes committed during the
KR period. “The atrocity crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the ECCC
are genocide, crimes against humanity, and certain war crimes. The ECCC also
has the power to judge a limited set of crimes under Cambodian law.”[2] So
far, it has focused its efforts on charging the former senior members of the
Khmer Rouge. As of today, the ECCC has charged four former officials,
including:

Nuon Chea, former prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea and second in
command after Pol Pot;

Ieng Sary, former deputy prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea and third in
command after Pol Pot;

Ieng Thirith, wife of Ieng Sary and former minister of social affairs of
Democratic Kampuchea; and

Khieu Samphan, former president of Democratic Kampuchea and fifth in command
after Pol Pot.

While these four people have yet to be indicted, the ECCC has indicted the
former chief of S-21, Duch, on charges of crimes against humanity and other
crimes. His nine-month trial began in February 2009 and recently concluded
Friday, November 27th.

During my two-month stay in Cambodia, I attended a couple of Duch’s
hearings. A glass, bullet-proof wall separated the courtroom where he sat
and the adjacent room where I sat with other audience members. The audience
room filled with a diversity of people including tourists, journalists,
Cambodian student groups, and elderly Cambodian villagers who had been
bussed to the tribunal from the countryside. The courtroom consisted of the
judges, defendant and prosecution teams, and translators who translated the
proceedings into Khmer, English, and French (the court’s three working
languages). Finally, a section of the courtroom was designated to the civil
party teams, which consisted of Cambodian people who had been victims
themselves or had family members who were victims at S-21 and were filing
civil suits against Duch. Some civil party claimants, I was told, had
attended every single hearing since the beginning of the Duch trial.

Duch was not what I had expected. His physical appearance was small and
unassuming. He bore a closer resemblance to my aging father than what I
would imagine for the former head of one the most infamous security
detention centers of the KR regime. On my first day attending the trial,
Duch was at the witness stand answering questions from the ECCC judges
regarding S-24, a “re-education center” that was in fact a labor camp that
he oversaw in addition to S-21. He answered the judges’ questions in a
detailed and meticulous manner, which was fitting considering his background
as a math teacher and also shed some light on how he was able to rise to the
top of the KR ranks and maintain control of the S-21. On other days, the
court heard testimony from former staff members of S-21, including Him Huy,
a former guard part of the S-21 team who transported people to the prison.
The testimony from these “insiders” characterized the S-21 operations as
orderly and systematic.

The most memorable scene from the trial for me was hearing Norng Chan Phal,
one of the handful of people who survived S-21, testify. In 1978,
eight-year-old Chan Phal was brought to S-21 with his mother and his younger
4-year old brother. He was just a kid, but he remembered the Khmer Rouge
beating his mother when they arrived at the prison and subsequently being
separated from her. For the few weeks he stayed at S-21, Chan Phal stayed in
a back room of the prison until Vietnamese soldiers, who would eventually
depose the Khmer Rouge, arrived at the prison in 1979. In the courtroom,
Chan Phal’s voiced trembled when he recalled trying to search through the
prison cells for his mother when the Vietnamese arrived, only to find dead
rotting bodies. He said that, at the time, he wanted to remain at S-21 so
his mother could find him. His voice then trailed off and the silence in the
courtroom seemed to recognize this statement as a reflection of his past
false hope. Over thirty years had passed but it was clear that the S-21
experience still lived with him. During Chan Phal’s testimony, Duch hardly
looked at the witness and appeared stone-faced. Perhaps he felt
disconnected; although he has expressed regret over the deaths of the
prisoners and has taken responsibility for them as the chief in command of
the prison, he has maintained that he did not carry out any killings and
only tortured one individual. Moreover, he has openly questioned the
validity of Chan Phal’s presence and survival at S-21, saying that all child
prisoners there were killed.

Witnessing these different and contested testimonies, I saw justice unfold.
Thirty years ago, such an exchange was not possible. At that time, many
Khmer Rouge were in hiding from and even active in warfare against the
Vietnamese invading forces, which undermined attempts at securing peace and
justice for the Cambodian people. Today, to be able to face a former KR
perpetrator, whether as a witness or civil party claimant, is profound both
in its symbolic and legal terms. While the public discourse about the Khmer
Rouge has assuredly begun decades ago, the recent ECCC trial has offered an
official platform to seek, speak, and record this dialogue and extract the
truth. It also provides recourse for rectifying past wrongdoing. For these
reasons, the prospect for justice in the aftermath of the KR regime is
promising. Of course, the ECCC is not imperfect. In fact, allegations of
corruption and bias have put the court’s legitimacy and effectiveness into
question and threatened to shut down the operation. Much more can also be
done to address the legacy of the KR regime and the present-day needs of its
victims such as in the areas of poverty and mental health. Nonetheless, the
progress of the ECCC thus far in facilitating truth, closure for victims,
and punishment of those most responsible for KR crimes represents one step
closer to justice and recovery in Cambodia.

With the completion of the trial against Duch, the ECCC is set to begin
“Case 2” against the four other defendants. Unlike Duch, these former top
officials have been less cooperative and denied responsibility for the
crimes that took place under their control. As such, “Case 2” will likely be
a formidable challenge for the ECCC prosecution team. At the same time, the
case against the former top leaders of one of the most horrific regimes in
history will also represent an important milestone for both Cambodia and the
international community. Indeed, history is in the making.