Many victims of the Khmer Rouge regime may now get justice

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot

25 Jul 2010
Trevor Royle
The Herald (Scotland)

"Whoever was arrested must die. It was the rule of our party," Kaing Guek Eav

A Dreadful mark punctuating Cambodia’s recent history will be reached tomorrow when the UN-backed special war crimes court known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) hands down its verdict on Kaing Guek Eav.

Better known as Comrade Duch, he stands accused of the murders of 14,000 innocent fellow citizens during the dark night of the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979. The trial will conclude a judicial process that has scarred the nation, and made many people question what happened when Cambodian turned against Cambodian.

Duch, an otherwise nondescript man in his late 60s, does not look like a mass murderer, but if he is found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment – and everything points to that outcome – he will become part of an infamous history in which those in authority killed and tortured simply because they had the power to do it.
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