Father searches for truth

Sam Bith (Photo: Reuters)

Chhouk Rin

April 3, 2010
By SEBASTIAN STRANGIO
The Age

Off a dusty track in Trapeang Chranieng village lies a half-finished Buddhist pagoda, its unpainted walls still exposed to the mid-afternoon sun. Like many across Cambodia, the new building - as well as a nearby shrine, built in 2007 - is dedicated to the spirits of those killed in the village while it was under the control of Khmer Rouge insurgents in the 1990s.

Now a small hamlet of thatch houses, there is little to hint at Trapeang Chranieng's tumultuous past. As a Khmer Rouge camp - part of the armed group's Phnom Voar (''Vine Mountain'') stronghold - the village was the last home of Melburnian David Wilson, Briton Mark Slater and Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet, three tourists kidnapped when Khmer Rouge troops ambushed a Sihanoukville-bound train on July 26, 1994, killing 13 Cambodians.

Despite heated negotiations with Cambodian government officials to secure their release, the three were killed in early September as Phnom Voar came under fierce attack from government troops. When soldiers finally overran the area the following month, the bludgeoned bodies of the three men were found in a shallow grave at the foot of the hill.

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