The Khmer Rouge on trial

Who is on trial?

Kaing Guek Eav, aka 'Comrade Duch'. Now 66, Duch was the commandant of 'S-21', a prison in the capital, Phnom Penh, where thousands of Cambodians were interrogated, starved and tortured, before being sent to the 'killing fields' outside the city to be beaten to death with an iron bar. Around 14,000 people were sent to S-21: only seven are thought to have survived. Duch admits that he was responsible for what happened at S-21, but says he would have been killed himself if he had not obeyed orders.

Who was he taking orders from?

The Communist Party of Kampuchea (Cambodia) – better known by its French colloquial name, the Khmer Rouge. Founded by a group of former exchange students who had studied at the Sorbonne, the Khmer Rouge began as a conventional Marxist movement. But when a former technology student called Pol Pot became the party’s leader in 1962, it moved towards an extreme Maoist ideology that glorified rural peasantry and insisted on the subjugation of the individual to the 'Angka', or 'Organisation': the ruling body of the party (and Pol Pot was to become known as 'Brother Number One').

How did the Khmer Rouge come to power?

During the Vietnam War – under pressure from its Chinese and North Vietnamese neighbours – Cambodia allowed the communist Viet Cong to set up bases on its territory. As punishment, America launched a massive, secret bombing campaign against Cambodia. During one three-month period in 1973, American B-52s dropped more bombs on Cambodia than were dropped on Japan in the whole of the Second World War – the equivalent of five Hiroshimas. Between 1969 and 1973, American bombs killed at least 150,000 Cambodians. The effect was to destabilise the country and provoke a five-year civil war, which only ended in 1975, when 68,000 black-clad Khmer Rouge guerrillas marched into Phnom Penh.

Did they have popular support?

Initially people greeted the Khmer Rouge with joy, hoping they might bring peace. But within days, the new regime set about constructing its peasant utopia – by force. 'Year Zero' was declared. Thousands of people were driven out of cities and forced to work on collective farms. Private property, currency and religion were abolished. The national library was turned into a pig pen, and ancient Buddhist parchments were used by Khmer Rouge soldiers to roll cigarettes. In an effort to destroy family ties, children were separated from their parents and raised in collective nurseries. Strangers were forced to marry each other in mass ceremonies.

How bloody was the regime?

In four years of Khmer Rouge rule, between 1.7 million and 2.2 million Cambodians died – out of a population of 8 million. Most were killed by exhaustion and starvation on collective farms. But at least 500,000 people were deliberately murdered by the paranoid regime. Having an education, speaking a foreign language, wearing glasses or using a toothbrush could mark you out as a capitalist traitor. Even picking wild fruit was deemed “private enterprise”, punishable by death. “Angka has as many eyes as a pine-apple,” warned posters. “Angka sees everything you do.” Suspects were tortured, made to “confess” and beaten to death because bullets were scarce. “To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss,” was the regime’s motto.

How was the regime toppled?

The Khmer Rouge turned against communist Vietnam and began cross-border raids in the late 1970s. In 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, drove out the regime with the help of a Khmer Rouge defector, Hun Sen, and installed its own government. Pol Pot and his comrades fled into the jungle bordering Thailand; but they were not yet finished. Cold War America and the West refused to recognise communist Vietnam’s government in Phnom Penh, and gave secret support to the Khmer Rouge’s guerrilla campaign against the new regime. Refugee camps just inside the Thai border were used by the Khmer Rouge to regroup. Many former Khmer Rouge leaders got jobs with NGOs and UN agencies. Comrade Duch became a Christian and took a job with the American Refugee Commitee. Pol Pot, meanwhile, directed guerrilla operations from his comfortable headquarters in Thailand.

When did the Khmer Rouge admit defeat?

After 1993, when UN-backed elections established a new coalition government headed by Hun Sen, the Khmer Rouge lost its international backers. Its power base dwindled away, and in 1997 it agreed to lay down arms. That same year, the party – now eager to disassociate itself from past crimes – arrested Pol Pot and charged him with treason. The former leader died in their custody in 1998, still insisting: "My conscience is clear".

Why have no Khmer Rouge members been tried before?

Partly because suspects are hard to find – Comrade Duch was tracked down by a journalist, Nic Dunlop, in 1999 – and partly because much of Cambodia’s current leadership is drawn from the Khmer Rouge. Hun Sen remains PM, and the head of his parliament and party are both former Khmer Rouge comrades. Although it was Hun Sen who first asked the UN for a tribunal, he has since shown a marked lack of enthusiasm for the court – suggesting that it would be better to "dig a hole and bury the past".

What will the trials achieve?

It is hard to say. Cambodia does not have the death penalty, so Duch will probably be sentenced to life in prison. His trial is taking so long (it began in February) that the five other suspects awaiting trial may never get to court. But it has a symbolic value: although most Cambodians are too young to remember the atrocities, polls show that 69 per cent want some kind of justice. ·