The Khmer Rouge on trial

July 16, 2009
The First Post

The first trial of senior Khmer Rouge member Kaing Guek Eav is underway in Cambodia. But 30 years on, can justice be done?

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