June 22, 2011
ABC Radio Australia
Next week, the international war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh will begin its second trial, that of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement.
As part of the case against them, the UN-backed tribunal investigated six sites where people were compelled to perform forced labour.
One of those is a largely abandoned airfield in central Cambodia outside the provincial capital of Kampong Chhnang, from where Robert Carmichael reports.
Presenter: Robert Carmichael
Speakers: Youk Chhang, director of Documentation Center of Cambodia; Kun Nath, soldier based at Kampong Chhnang airfield
Click here to listen to the audio program (Windows Media)
SFX: WILDTRACK: AT THE END OF THE RUNWAY
CARMICHAEL: I am standing at the end of a runway nearly two and a half kilometres long and 60 metres wide. Ahead of me the rectangular blocks of poured concrete stretch away into a mirage under the hot sun.
This is Kampong Chhnang airfield in central Cambodia, a place where many thousands of Khmer Rouge army personnel were ordered to work, and where an unknown number died.
On Monday the four surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement will stand trial in Phnom Penh at the UN-backed court. They face a string of charges including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for their alleged roles in the deaths of around two million people during their government’s rule between 1975 and 1979.
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