By Stéphanie Gée
Ka-set
Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 15/02/2009: Civil party Khoeum Meth continued her testimony, followed by a former Khmer Rouge nurse, also a plaintive ©John Vink/ Magnum (file picture)On Thursday July 9th, before the parties interrogated by turns Mrs. Chim Meth (or Khoeum Meth), president Nil Nonn reminded them they “must not ask questions that are long or disconnected from the facts.” The survivor, whose place of detention before she was sent to the Prey Sar re-education camp remained unclear, was followed by a former S-21 nurse. Part of a revolutionary family that was purged by a paranoid regime, she inaugurated a new category of civil parties: people who voluntarily served the murderous Angkar before being crushed in their turn by the hellish system.
What did the civil party say yesterday?
Very quickly, a small controversy started over the civil party’s photograph, taken in 1977 and presented in court on the previous day. Marie-Paule Canizarès, co-lawyer for the accused, declared that if all parties agreed to say the photograph was taken in Prey Sar (S-24), the defence would accept that the document was put before the Chamber. Kim Mengkhy, one of the lawyers for Mrs. Chim Meth, protested. “We are not sure where the photograph was taken.
The civil party said it had been taken before her arrest, so it cannot have been at S-24…” The French lawyer maintained her stance: “I am going through my notes from yesterday, following the statement of the civil party who, asked by Your Honour whether the photograph had been taken in Prey Sar or in S-21, answered very precisely that it was in Prey Sar. Therefore, I believe that in light of the civil party’s statement, there can be no doubt over the conditions in which the picture was taken.” Martine Jacquin, co-lawyer for Chim Meth, could be heard protesting in her microphone, which she hadn’t realised was still off: “I do not agree. That is not what she said.” She took the floor again, this time officially: “According to the notes we took, the civil party stated that the picture had been taken in her unit when her biography was made in her unit, and that at the time, she hadn’t been particularly worried about it. Afterwards, when she arrived at the detention centre, the biography and photograph were already there. The accused said it was done in Prey Sar, but for the civil party, she first went to the detention centre and then, she was sent to Prey Sar, while the photographs were made before.”
It turned out that the two lawyers were right, quoting from two different extracts of the civil party’s testimony – after the author of this article verified recordings of the French interpretation of her statement. This illustrated the ambiguities in her testimony, which were not picked up, starting with the location of unit 17, which the civil party belonged to and sometimes located in Prey Sar, sometimes in other places… The only constant on this point of her story was that the photographs were taken before she was arrested.
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