Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
17‐01‐2008
By Den Sorin
Moneaksekar Khmer
Unofficial Translation from Khmer by KRtrial.info
Meas Muth, Ta Mok’s son‐in‐law, might face arrest, according to a source from a senior official in the
Ministry of Interior, but the arrest will not be made by the government but by the Khmer Rouge
tribunal. The official in the Ministry of Interior said that some former Khmer Rouge commanders might
face arrest by the government and some by the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Those who will be arrested by
the government are related to the murder of a British deminer and a Cambodian interpreter. Among
those people, a former Khmer Rouge commander has been arrested already.
However, Meas Muth will not be arrested by the government but by the tribunal since Meas Muth is not
only Ta Mok’s son‐in‐law, but also a member of the Central Committee of the Khmer Rouge communist
party.
At present, Meas Muth, 69, is residing in Samlot. His home is made of luxurious wood and has a
different style from others in Samlot, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold. One can easily find Meas
Muth’s home by simply asking the local people and they will point to the plush home of Meas Muth. On
the wall of the house hang Meas Muth’s photos. It seems like he was the hero of a regime which made
the country prosperous.
In contrast, the Khmer Rouge regime caused the destruction and mass murder in the country. For this
reason, diplomats around the world called the Democratic Kampuchea regime “the Killing Fields”.
Therefore, the photos of Meas Muth are for himself only, not for Cambodian people.
Recently, Meas Muth has told some foreign journalists that he had no confidence in the Khmer Rouge
tribunal to seek justice for the victims. Meas Muth pointed out that the trial should not only be held for
the killings by the Khmer Rouge, but also for the death caused by B52 bombs of the US and for the
killings by the Vietnamese troops.
Meas Muth claimed that if the court could investigate all those killings, he would believe that the Khmer
Rouge court could give justice to victims. “The Khmer Rouge court will not be able to give victims justice
if it could not find the people related to these events from other countries,” claimed Meas Muth.
Through his speech, Meas Muth seems to be trying to shirk his responsibility for the mass killings during
the Khmer Rouge regime.
At present, the Khmer Rouge tribunal has taken 5 former Khmer Rouge leaders into custody. They are
Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Kaing Guek Eav, commonly known as Duch. The
Khmer Rouge leaders who have been listed to face trial include Pol Pot, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan, Nuon
Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Ta Mok, Ke Pok, Duch, and Yon Yat, Son Sen’s wife. However, amongst
these people some have already died and only the five important figures being detained at the Khmer
Rouge tribunal are still alive.
According to a source close to the Khmer Rouge tribunal, although only the aforementioned are listed in
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the agreement on the establishment of the Khmer Rouge tribunal, the agreement gives way to the
tribunal’s judges to issue arrest warrant on others who are found deeply related. And Meas Muth will be
one of them.
Meas Muth once told a foreign journalist that he was not interested in the court, and claimed that the
deaths of Cambodians had been related to other countries.
Meanwhile, Reach Sambath claimed that the Khmer Rouge tribunal was not authorized to try foreign
leaders.
According to an Interior Ministry’s official who asked for anonymity, secret police have been sent to
Somlot to observe Meas Muth, in case he flees abroad. However, it is believed that Meas Muth could
escape to nowhere besides Thailand. And if he escapes to Thailand, it will not be a concern since
Cambodia and Thailand have signed an extradition treaty with each other already. The two countries will
make good cooperation in this issue.
At the moment, there is chaos in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold after a rumour has been
circulated that there will be more arrests of former Khmer Rouge commanders. However, some former
Khmer Rouge people and soldiers are happy with the arrest and the trial since if there is the trial, all
Cambodians will have no more doubts about the mass killings during the Khmer Rouge regime, as the
Khmer Rouge leaders will give an account of those killings.
A middle‐level ranking Khmer Rouge leader said that at the moment even Tep Khunnal was also
[paranoid]. Tep Khunnal is a former Khmer Rouge diplomat and personal assistant to Pol Pot. He is
currently an official of the Cambodian People’s Party and also Malay’s district deputy governor. Besides,
Tep Khunnal is also a wealthy man along the border. Some sources said that although Tep Khunnal
would not be arrested, he would inevitably become a witness in the Khmer Rouge tribunal.
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Source: International Justice Tribune, September 2009
No more than ten former members of the Khmer Rouge will be prosecuted before the Extraordinary
Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). On September 7th, the interim international co‐prosecutor
William Smith submitted to the office of the co‐investigating judges what he said were his final requests
for investigation. They relate to five individuals, charged in two separate submissions, thus adding to the
five people already prosecuted in 2007.
By Thierry Cruvellier, Phnom Penh
The identities of the accused have not been released, but it is widely expected that former high‐ranking
military leaders Sou Met and Meas Mut make up one of the new cases, while it’s thought the other case
involves three Khmer Rouge cadres who acted at the district level.
The Cambodian government has publicly and unequivocally opposed all prosecutions other than the five
that have been under way for the last two years.
The Cambodian co‐prosecutor Chea Leang appeared to support her government, when she opposed the
additional investigations requested by her international colleague. But after nine months of
deliberation, in an August 18th decision made public September 2nd, the five judges of the pre‐trial
chamber indicated that they had not been able to resolve the disagreement between the co‐
prosecutors—the three Cambodian judges opposed the new submissions, while their two international
colleagues gave their approval. In the absence of a super majority of four votes, the international
prosecutor is thus free to act.
“The final results are zero”
The current division, means the fate of these additional investigations is uncertain and could be stalled
in the early stages.
The government, meanwhile, is keeping up the pressure on the court. In a speech on September 7th,
Prime Minister Hun Sen once again raised the spectre of a civil war that could cause up to “200,000 to
300,000 deaths” if new proceedings are launched.
While no one takes the threat of instability seriously, Hun Sen warned two days later that the court
would not obtain a new indictment. “Please go ahead with the procedures. I will not have a say, but the
thing is that you need to find a supporting force...you need four votes,” he stated, suggesting that the
Cambodian judges should also do their part to block the process. “Thus, the final results are zero”.
At least one former Khmer Rouge leader seems to find support in Hun Sen’s words. In an interview with
Voice of America on September 10th, 65 year‐old Im Chaem, who several sources identify as one of the
proposed new suspects, said: “I absolutely will not go, because the charge is unacceptable, and even if
I’m called to court, I will not go.”
Download the International Justice Tribune No.89
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An ex‐KR claims the right to be forgotten
29 September 2009
By Jacques Follorou
Special Report
Le Monde (France)
Translated from French by Luc Sâr
Click here to read the article in French
Trapaing Tav (Cambodia) – At first glance, it is difficult to picture that Im Chem, a slender‐looking
grandmother with high cheek bones, is among the five new people accused by the KR Tribunal in mid‐
September. The tribunal is in charge of judging crimes perpetrated by the KR between 1975 and 1979.
Not far from Anlong Veng (northern Cambodia), the historical KR stronghold, Im Chem received us at a
wooden table while being surrounded by a group of her family, inside her house built on stilt. Dressed in
a brown blouse with large buttons, her piercing eyes with blue reflections are changing from smiling to
cold looking. She said that she was not informed about the investigation against her: “I am not scared of
anything, I did nothing wrong.”
Up to now, only the former leaders of this terror regime, which led to the death of at least 1.7 million
people between 1975 and 1979, were legally pursued. Im Chem was only a small part of the KR system.
During the time when the actions in which she was accused of took place – a direct involvement in the
mass crimes perpetrated between 1978 and 1979 – she was the district chief of Preah Net Preah
[Buddha’s eye] located in Banteay Meanchey province along Cambodia’s northwest, at the border with
Thailand. Thirty years later, she is still occupying an official position. Considered as an official, she is the
deputy‐chief of the Trapaing Tav commune, about half an hour away from Anglong Veng. She
symbolizes a Cambodia that is torn between the right to be forgotten and the sanction against
unpunished crimes.
“Nothing to regret about”
In 1998, the Cambodian government initiated the national reconciliation process. Ex‐soldiers of the Pol
Pot regime were drafted into the regular army. The administration of the north and west regions, the
traditional KR stronghold, was given to them in exchange for their disarmament. Numerous former KR
cadres currently occupy powerful positions. They defected prior to the fall of the [KR] regime to escape
the internal purges. It was the cases of Sar Kheng, the minister of Interior, and of Hor Nam Hong, the
minister of Foreign Affairs. Hun Sen, the prime minister, was also one of Pol Pot’s faithful followers, he
defected to the enemy, the Vietnamese.
When reminiscing about the past, Im Chem sometimes closes her eyes, as if she is enthralled by her
souvenirs. “I have nothing to regret about what I did under the KR era. We felt that we were at war, we
could not act against the events. Throughout history, there were always errors being made.” According
to testimonies collected in the charges leveled against her, as district chief, Im Chem would have
ordered the arrest of dozens of people and sent them to a local “security center.” Cambodia then
counted several hundreds of such prison camps. The most famous of them all was S‐21 [Tuol Sleng] in
Phnom Penh where 12,380 people found their death.
“When I became the Preah Net Preah district chief,” she claimed without batting her eyes, “the rules
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were already in place; we pushed people to produce as much as possible; if you do not abide by the law,
you must pay for it and that could mean death. We never killed people for nothing.”
Daughter of poor farmers, she only spent three years in a school run by monks before returning back to
her parents’ rice fields. According to her, people did not join the KR by force, but rather “to defend the
country” against the enemies both internal and external. “The responsibility of the death of the
Cambodians does not lie on the Khmer Rouge alone. Why nobody recall fact that soldiers of the pro‐US
Lon Nol military regime [1970‐1975], as well as the US bombings between 1974 and 1974, led to
numerous civilian victims?” she wondered. At the fall of the KR, she escaped to the Dangrek Mountains
along the northern border with Thailand, then a refuge for thousands of the Pol Pot followers up to
1998. “They would have killed me if I stayed behind.”
Currently, she is living in an area that is 100% inhabited by former KR followers. She confides that she is
living in peace, surrounded by five children and ten grandchildren. “We must know how to turn the
page. If they continue to investigate me and others, this will lead to hatred by our children and it will
bring in a new civil war.”
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Cambodian reconciliation efforts force Khmer Rouge veterans to confront the past
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
By Dustin Roasa
The Washington Post
ANLONG VENG, CAMBODIA ‐ In a dimly lighted concrete classroom with smudged and peeling walls, the
principal of Anlong Veng High School recalled the man who had built it, the late Khmer Rouge leader Ta
Mok.
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"Everyone here loves Ta Mok. He was a good leader, and he cared about his people," 42‐year‐old Sreng
Kor Ma said. Known as "the Butcher" for his brutality during Khmer Rouge rule, the commander remains
popular in this remote former Khmer Rouge stronghold in northwestern Cambodia, where he built
hospitals, bridges and other infrastructure and where thousands of the organization's former soldiers
still live.
But this year, 12 years after the Khmer Rouge surrendered, long‐held loyalties are finally being
challenged in Anlong Veng. In April, a local truth and reconciliation forum allowed victims to publicly
confront people who had participated in the regime. In June, the government distributed a high school
textbook here that for the first time teaches the history of the Khmer Rouge to the children of its former
soldiers.
And in July, a joint U.N. and Cambodian tribunal handed down its first conviction of a former Khmer
Rouge member, sentencing the onetime chief of the notorious Tuol Sleng torture center, Kaing Khek Iev,
better known as Duch, to 35 years in prison. With each of those developments, anxiety has grown
among Anlong Veng's Khmer Rouge veterans, complicating efforts at reconciliation and their attempts
to reintegrate into Cambodian society.
"There is resentment and fear among the former Khmer Rouge, but they are powerless to do anything,"
said Chhang Youk, head of the independent Documentation Center of Cambodia. "For them, life under
the Khmer Rouge was glorious, but the regime has become symbolic of evil. It is creating divisions within
families."
Life after the Khmer Rouge
During the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia from 1975 until 1979, an estimated 1.7 million people were
executed or died from starvation, disease or overwork. When the Vietnamese invaded and toppled the
Pol Pot‐led government in 1979, remnants of the regime and its military fled to Cambodia's border with
Thailand. There they launched an insurgency that endured until the last of the movement surrendered
in December 1998.
As Pol Pot, Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary directed the guerrilla war from their bases in western Cambodia's
mountains and jungles, Ta Mok cultivated a following in Anlong Veng. But in the mid‐1990s, after a U.N.‐
sponsored peace agreement led to the country's first democratic elections in 1993, Khmer Rouge
fighters began defecting to the government, culminating in the surrenders of Ieng Sary in 1996 and
Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan in 1998. Pol Pot died of natural causes in 1998, and Ta Mok, who had
held out, was captured in 1999 in the nearby Dangrek Mountains. He died in prison in 2006 while
awaiting trial.
Most former Khmer Rouge fighters have since descended into the grinding poverty common in rural
Cambodia, and many remain nostalgic for the movement. Although a few elite Khmer Rouge officials
kept their local government posts in exchange for laying down their arms, the rank and file remain poor,
unskilled farmers.
"These people have benefited very little following the surrender," said Sok Leang of the Center for
Justice and Reconciliation, which holds public forums throughout Cambodia, including in Anlong Veng.
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"They are embedded with the utopian agrarian ideology of the regime. They were brought up with no
concept of doing business."
Sor Lim, 55, who joined the Khmer Rouge as a teenager in 1974, settled down to life as a poor rice
farmer in 1998. "Life under the Khmer Rouge was good. Ta Mok fed everyone, but now life is difficult
because we have to provide for ourselves," he said.
The ongoing Khmer Rouge tribunal has also provoked worries here. Early next year, the court is
expected to begin trying Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, another
former Khmer Rouge minister. The court's mandate is to prosecute senior leaders and those most
responsible for crimes, but it has not said whether it will pursue cases beyond those four. This has done
little to calm fears in Anlong Veng.
Recent media speculation has centered on Im Chaem, 64, who was a provincial district chief during
Khmer Rouge rule in the late 1970s. In 2007, she told researchers from the Documentation Center of
Cambodia that she had supervised construction of the Trapeang Thma dam, a project in which
thousands of forced laborers are thought to have died.
On a sweltering recent evening, Im Chaem returned from working in the fields to her wooden stilt house
outside Anlong Veng. As the sun cast long shadows across the parched grass, Im Chaem declined to
discuss her past in the Khmer Rouge. If the court summoned her, she said, she would refuse to go.
"Cambodia is at peace and stable," she said. "If there are more prosecutions, there will be war."
Prime Minister Hun Sen, who defected from the Khmer Rouge in 1978, has also repeatedly warned of
instability if the court pursues more suspects. "Cambodia must dig a hole and bury the past," he has
said.
But confronting the past is just what Cambodia must do to move forward, said Chhang Youk, of the
documentation center. "Reconciliation in Khmer terms is reconnecting the broken pieces," he said. "It's
our obligation to put these broken pieces together, so that we can understand."
The center produced the first government‐approved textbook about the Khmer Rouge, the 75‐page "A
History of Democratic Kampuchea," which it distributed in Anlong Veng in June as a supplement to the
Education Ministry's high school history textbook, which contains less than four pages on the Khmer
Rouge.
As in much of Cambodia, Anlong Veng's young people know few details about the Khmer Rouge, despite
the town's connection to the regime. Touch Valeak, 19, a student at Anlong Veng High School, said the
new textbook was helping students understand a key part of their history, though his parents remain
skeptical of both the book and the tribunal. "They are suspicious," he said.
This resistance has hindered reconciliation, Sok Leang said. But the public forums, the textbook and the
tribunal are beginning to have an impact, he said.
Still, the Khmer Rouge retains a powerful allure here. Up in the Dangrek Mountains, an overgrown path
leads to a rectangle of black soot under a rusted tin roof. Pol Pot's body was burned here on a pile of
tires after his death in 1998.
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Nuom Sothea, 31, a roadside cellphone vendor, said she didn't know much about the man. "But he has a
strong spirit, and many local people go there to pray to him," she said.
It was Nuom Sothea's birthday, and later that day she planned to walk to Pol Pot's final resting place,
where she would leave a bunch of ripe bananas in hopes of bringing good luck.
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Last Khmer Rouge to defect discuss reconciliation
Im Chaem was a Khmer Rouge district chief in the late 1970s. (Photo: VOA)
Her name is Im Chaem, and she was a Khmer Rouge district chief in the late 1970s. Media reports have
speculated she could be one of the five names on the list for prosecution.
Robert Carmichael, VOA
Phnom Penh Friday, 16 April 2010
"When we are talking about reconciliation, it is reconciliation of a nation, and with the
Cambodian context that must include a lot of the former perpetrators as well. And in one sense
we're all victims in this process."
In 1998 the town of Anlong Veng in Cambodia's northwest became the last stronghold of the Khmer
Rouge to surrender to the government. Recently, the community was the scene of a new effort to help
bring reconciliation and justice to the region.
On the outskirts of the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng sits the compound of the
movement's last leader, Ta Mok.
Ta Mok, who died in jail awaiting trial four years ago, was a terrifying figure in Cambodia, but he was
much admired here, one of the Khmer Rouge's last strongholds.
Recently, his home saw the first reconciliation meeting of former Khmer Rouge cadres and the group's
victims.
Cambodian‐American lawyer Daravuth Seng runs the Center for Justice and Reconciliation, which
organized the meeting. He says the gathering aims to get Khmer Rouge members and their victims to
talk to each other to promote understanding.
From that understanding, he says, reconciliation can come.
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"When we are talking about reconciliation, it is reconciliation of a nation, and with the Cambodian
context that must include a lot of the former perpetrators as well. And in one sense we're all victims in
this process."
From 1975 to 1979, the ultra‐Maoist Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, were responsible for the deaths of
more than a million Cambodians ‐ from disease, overwork or execution.
Around 150 former Khmer Rouge and some of their families gathered here as well as a small group of
Buddhist monks. Several police attended, along with representatives from the international tribunal that
is trying five Khmer Rouge leaders.
It is not long before the Khmer Rouge raise their main concern. They have heard the tribunal has a
secret list of five more it wants to prosecute.
They say that violates a pledge they received when they surrendered in 1998 that there would be no
losers from their defections.
An elderly woman addresses the tribunal staff.
Her name is Im Chaem, and she was a Khmer Rouge district chief in the late 1970s. Media reports have
speculated she could be one of the five names on the list for prosecution.
She wants the prosecutions to end with the five people already in custody.
She says at one time the tribunal said only five were suspected, and now it says another five. This made
all the elderly people who were engaged in the war feel unsafe. She says they do not know when will be
their turn because they lived and served during that time. Even though Pol Pot died already, there might
be another five and then five more and then 10?
Tribunal spokesman Lars Olsen says today is unusual since most Cambodians want to know why so few
Khmer Rouge are being held accountable.
"Here it is 'Why do you want to prosecute more? It should be enough with the five, don't stir up
everything after we have reintegrated.' So this is the major difference."
The trial of one Khmer Rouge leader ended last year and a verdict is expected in the coming months.
Four others are in prison and are expected to face trial next year. Most of the group's senior leaders,
however, died long before the tribunal began its work a few years ago.
By the end of the day, participants have discussed the meaning of reconciliation, justice and
reintegration. There is broad agreement that the leaders currently in jail ought to be prosecuted, but no
one else.
Participants are also tired of being referred to as "former Khmer Rouge". They say the term is equated
with murder and oppression, which is unfair to their children. Far better, they say, that all are called
Cambodian.
And they recognize their lives have improved since they defected. One attendee says families used to
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live in the mountains and were unable to share a meal together. Now their children have schooling, and
people have access to health services and good roads.
In short, they want peace and more economic development for this impoverished part of Cambodia. It is
time, they say, to look to the future.
Organizer Daravuth Seng says the day went better than he expected. Former Khmer Rouge turned up,
engaged, and spoke.
They listened as a member of a victims' association told them that the Khmer Rouge ‐ responsible for
the deaths of perhaps 2 million Cambodians ‐ killed his parents.
Daravuth Seng says one or two people even showed remorse.
A central purpose of the reconciliation effort is to grasp why they joined the Khmer Rouge.
"If we are to say never again, we really need to understand both sides, to understand the way these
folks are perceiving the world."
Seng says the day's event is not an end in itself, but the beginning of steps toward reconciliation.
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Cadres face prospect of more arrests
'Sometimes [my children] ask me, “Who is the Khmer Rouge? Who did all this killing?” And when they
do that, I clap my hands on my chest and say, “It’s me.”'
Meas Muth, former Khmer Rouge military division chairman, speaks at his expansive home in Samlot,
Battambang. (Photo by: Heng Chivoan)
'I have said again and again that I do not want to go to that court.'
Former Khmer Rouge Northwest Zone district chief Im Chem. (Photo by: Robbie Corey‐Boulet)
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Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Robbie Corey‐boulet and May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post
Former Khmer Rouge describe complex attachment to regime and its legacy.
Oddar Meanchey and Battambang Provinces ‐ At the age of 14, Out Moeun left her family home in
Anlong Veng district, Oddar Meanchey province, to work for Khmer Rouge Central Committee member
Chhit Choeun, alias Ta Mok.
Though it was 1987, a full eight years after the regime fell from power, units of Khmer Rouge soldiers
were still scattered throughout Cambodia, and she was one of many girls recruited to supply them with
weapons. Every two weeks or so, she and seven other girls would rise before dawn and begin travelling,
mostly on foot, to provinces as far afield as Kampong Cham and Kampong Chhnang. They each carried a
case of AK‐47s on their backs, along with one package containing food, clothing and a hammock.
Government and Vietnamese soldiers, from whom the girls had been instructed to hide, routinely
accosted them. “I shot at those enemy troops more times than I know how to count,” Out Moeun, now
36, recalled in an interview at her roadside grocery stall less than a kilometre from Ta Mok’s old house.
She was hit only once in those exchanges, sustaining a bullet wound she showed off readily: a deep
purple scar on the right side of her belly.
Like many former cadres in Anlong Veng, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold, Out Moeun still speaks
admiringly of the movement’s leaders, particularly Ta Mok, whom she described as “a good leader” and
“a better man than Pol Pot”. She shed tears when discussing his arrest in 1999 and his 2006 death in
pretrial detention at the Khmer Rouge tribunal.
This allegiance, however, has not translated into resentment towards the tribunal itself, which she
credited with operating “according to the law”. Asked if she was concerned about international
prosecutors’ ongoing push for more investigations, she said she was far too busy supporting her family
to pay much attention to the tribunal and its work.
She added: “I don’t care about the court arresting more people, because the people they would arrest
are not related to those of us at the lower levels. We don’t care.”
The question of how former cadres might respond to more arrests assumed greater urgency after the
tribunal announced in September that it had opened the door to investigations beyond those of the five
leaders currently detained. That decision overrode objections raised by national co‐prosecutor Chea
Leang, who had argued that, as a result of additional prosecutions, “ex‐members and those who have
allegiance to Khmer Rouge leaders may commit violent acts”. Five days after the announcement, Prime
Minister Hun Sen echoed this warning in a speech, saying, “If you want a tribunal, but you don’t want to
consider peace and reconciliation and war breaks out again, killing 200,000 or 300,000 people, who will
be responsible?”
Contrary to these statements, interviews with former cadres in Anlong Veng and Samlot, another former
stronghold in Battambang province, suggested a more complicated attachment to the regime and its
legacy, one that would seem to preclude outright violence in response to an expanded dragnet. Like Out
Moeun, most former cadres disavowed any personal stake in the fate of former regime leaders, though
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they also took obvious pride in the power those leaders once wielded – and in their own small
contributions in support of that power.
San Roeun, a 56‐year‐old former soldier who now sells tickets to Ta Mok’s house, which has been
transformed into a government‐run tourism site, expressed concern about how more arrests might
affect “the political situation”. But he ruled out the prospect of civil war, emphasising that he and others
like him had little interest in the welfare of those who might be arrested.
“The reason I joined the Khmer Rouge was because I wanted to help King Sihanouk,” he said. “I never
knew about Pol Pot. We wanted to fight Lon Nol.”
Reminiscing on his years in combat, he spoke at length of his performance on the battlefield, describing
his ability not only to survive but to continue killing government troops during the 1980s.
“My son and daughter, they are in school now, and they are reading about the history of the Khmer
Rouge killings,” he said, sitting in the booth from which he sells 50 tickets on a typical day. “Sometimes
they ask me, ‘Who is the Khmer Rouge? Who did all this killing?’ And when they do that, I clap my hands
on my chest and say, ‘It’s me. Your father is the Khmer Rouge.’”
Former military chairman speaks out
Among the few cadres who claimed that more arrests could in fact lead to civil war were Meas Muth, a
former Khmer Rouge military division chairman, and Im Chem, a former Khmer Rouge district chief, who
have been named by scholars and in the media, respectively, as possible suspects.
In an interview at his Samlot home, Meas Muth, who was listed as a possible suspect in a 2001 report by
historian Stephen Heder and war crimes lawyer Brian Tittemore, said Hun Sen’s prediction of “200,000
or 300,000” deaths was sound.
“Hun Sen knows everything about his country, and he was thinking about its future. There could be civil
war,” said the former secretary of Central Committee Division 164, which incorporated the Khmer
Rouge navy. He added that his “supporters” would likely take part in the unrest, and that he had
supporters “everywhere in Kampuchea”.
In their report, titled “Seven Candidates for Prosecution: Accountability for the Crimes of the Khmer
Rouge”, Heder and Tittemore point to “compelling evidence” suggesting that Meas Muth was
responsible for the execution of cadres under his command. That evidence includes 24 Tuol Sleng
confessions signed by prisoners from his division.
Though Meas Muth denies having been informed of Khmer Rouge arrest, interrogation and execution
policies, the report includes accounts of meetings during which they were apparently discussed. At a
General Staff meeting he attended in 1976, for instance, Son Sen, the defence minister, instructed those
present to “have an absolute standpoint about purging counterrevolutionary elements; don’t be half‐
baked”. The following month, Son Sen said at a similar meeting that the party should do “whatever
needs to be done to make our army clean”. At that meeting, according to the report, Meas Muth said,
“On this I would like to be in total agreement and unity with the party. Do whatever needs to be done
not to allow the situation to get out of hand” and to prevent the strengthening of “no‐good elements or
enemies”.
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Along with an overview of the evidence and its implications, the report includes a thumbnail sketch of a
young Meas Muth, a broad‐shouldered man in a plaid shirt with full, closed lips and a thick head of
brown hair. For the interview in Samlot, the former commander, now 73, wore a light blue button‐up
half‐sleeve shirt over a tank top. His lips, when opened, revealed stained, jagged teeth, and his
considerably thinner hair had whitened.
As he talked, he smoked tobacco wrapped in tree leaves and spat into a dark blue pail that rested beside
his chair. The shade of the pail matched exactly the stones embedded in the patterned tiles that covered
the floor, one of the more eye‐catching features of his sprawling home, which comprises three buildings
and is surrounded by a 5‐hectare orchard of coconut, mango and jackfruit trees. Another highlight is the
staircase of the main building, an imposing spiral made of polished beng wood.
Completed in 2006, the house stands in marked contrast with the more modest, though comfortable,
stilt constructions nearby, and has become a frequent gathering place for Meas Muth’s neighbours,
many of whom are relatives, supporters or soldiers who fought under him. On the afternoon of the
interview, neighbours stopped by periodically to discuss plans for the next day’s Kathen festival
celebration to be held at the nearby Ta Sanh Chas pagoda, the construction of which Meas Muth has
largely funded.
One family brought a guest who had never before been to the house. Upon entering, she complimented
Meas Muth on the stones in the floor. Meas Muth looked down and said: “These stones, these are just
simple stones. They are not high‐quality.” The guest then walked to the staircase, put her arm on the
banister and marvelled at the sheen of the wood. Meas Muth replied, “That’s made out of just simple
wood. It is not a rare quality. It is just normal wood. Maybe you could find it anywhere.”
After 10 minutes of small‐talk, the family left, and Meas Muth answered questions about the allegations
laid out in the Heder and Tittemore report.
“Yes, I remember that man,” he said, referring to Heder, the principal author. “He spoke Khmer fluently,
and then he just wrote blah blah. It wasn’t true. He just wrote what he heard, not what he saw.”
He said that, contrary to the report, he spent the regime years as a “simple leader” supervising workers
in the Battambang rice fields.
“I had never heard about S‐21, because I was not in Phnom Penh. I was here, in Samlot, so I just knew
everything around me,” he said.
He acknowledged having attended the meetings mentioned in the report, including a General Staff
meeting in September 1976 at which Tuol Sleng was represented by its third‐ranking cadre. But he said
he did not remember what was discussed. “I can’t remember because it’s been over 30 years already,”
he said.
He said he would not be surprised if the court came to arrest him, though he argued that this would be a
waste of everyone’s time, in no small part because, unlike Tuol Sleng prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias
Duch, he would resist cooperating with any attempt to prosecute him. Not for him, apparently, the teary
confessions, the claims of responsibility or the pleas for forgiveness that were the hallmarks of the Duch
hearings.
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“Duch is crazy, because he wants the tribunal to be the end of his life,” Meas Muth said. “For me, I will
not cooperate. I want to have a life, like all other people.”
‘We must follow the leader’
Like Meas Muth, former Khmer Rouge district chief Im Chem, who in September was reported to be a
suspect by the French newspaper Le Monde, said the threat of unrest was real.
In an interview at her home in Anlong Veng, where she lives with her husband and one of her two
daughters, she said attempts to uncover the truth about old conflicts would inevitably give rise to new
ones.
“If you want to recover it, it will become new,” she said. “People will go to protest in Phnom Penh to
demand that the prime minister doesn’t arrest more people, because he said he wouldn’t. And if he
allows it to happen anyway, civil war will happen again.”
The Northwest Zone district Im Chem headed, Preah Net Preah, was home to Trapaing Thmar Dam, the
regime’s biggest irrigation project.
“Thousands and thousands of people were sent there to dig this water basin, which is even bigger than
the baray at Angkor Wat,” Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC‐Cam),
said in an email. Notorious for its brutal working conditions, the dam was included in a list of work sites
falling under the scope of the investigation for the court’s second case that was made public last week.
DC‐Cam’s 2007 annual report describes Im Chem as “one of the overseers of the [dam’s] construction”.
Im Chem, now 67, repeated her claim that the dam was completed by the time she was transferred to
Preah Net Preah, and she added that, as district chief, she had the authority only “to encourage people
to work in the rice fields”.
Several former cadres and experts said Im Chem was too far down the chain of command to be a likely
candidate for prosecution. “If she is one of the suspects, then the gates are wide open, since there are a
number of former Khmer Rouge on her level who are still alive,” said Alex Hinton, author of Why Did
They Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide.
For her part, Im Chem said she survived the regime by following Ta Mok from her native Takeo province
to the northwest, adding that any crimes she might have committed were the result of having obeyed
his orders. “We live in a society where we must follow the leader,” she said.
She denied being concerned about talk of more arrests, though she, too, said she would not cooperate
with an investigation.
If the court were to detain her, she asked that she at least receive advanced notice. “If they want to take
me to the court, they should alert me first, because sometimes I take naps, and it would take me by
surprise if I were sleeping,” she said. “Plus, I have said again and again that I do not want to go to that
court.”
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‘Finish the job’
Though Meas Muth and Im Chem were largely alone in their descriptions of the threat of civil war, many
low‐level cadres shared their view that more arrests would do more harm than good, citing concerns
that any resulting tension, even if it didn’t lead to violence, could compromise efforts to promote
national reconciliation and economic development.
Those residents of Anlong Veng and Samlot who have no ties to the regime, however, for the most part
encouraged the court to continue its pursuit of former leaders.
“The prime minister says he will not allow the court to arrest anyone else, but I don’t care,” said Long
Thy, 49, who moved to Anlong Veng in 1999. “I want to see justice. If they can investigate even just one
more leader, they should do it. It’s up to the court.”
Mao Sovannara, 41, a Royal Cambodian Armed Forces soldier who has been posted in Samlot since
2005, said it was the government’s responsibility to remedy any problems resulting from more arrests,
not to air its views on whether they should be carried out in the first place.
In 1975, at the age of 7, the Battambang native was taken from his home and sent to a cooperative in
Banteay Meanchey, a move that separated him from his parents, his brother and his sister. The
conditions in the rice fields, he said, were “like torture”, and he never saw his parents and brother again.
Speaking outside the grocery stall they run in the Samlot market, both he and his sister, Mao Ravin, said
they had gotten to know Meas Muth since moving there, and that they had no problem with him
personally. “I do not discriminate against him,” Mao Ravin said. “He’s a good man now.”
But Mao Sovannara said his relationships with Meas Muth and other cadres had not altered his belief
that the tribunal was necessary. “I’ve waited over 30 years to see justice, so the tribunal should be
allowed to do its work,” he said. “The young generation will get important knowledge, and also a lesson:
When you start something, you don’t stop in the middle. You finish the job.”
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Questions Linger Over More Tribunal Indictments
By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
18 September 2009
The investigation of five more suspects under the Khmer Rouge tribunal continues to be controversial,
and the question of whether more suspects will be indicted in a heavily politicized environment remains.
The government promised amnesty for ex‐Khmer Rouge in 1996, a move that led to peace and stability
in subsequent years. But the government and the UN also established a law between 1999 and 2003 to
try Khmer Rouge leaders involved in crimes.
UN prosecutors have moved to investigate five more suspects, but it is now up to the investigating
judges to determine if the cases warrant arrests. Prime Minister Hun Sen and other Cambodian officials
have warned that widened indictments beyond five Khmer Rouge leaders already in custody could lead
to national instability.
James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which monitors the UN‐backed
tribunal, told VOA Khmer the court must be free of influence from politicians and other outside actors,
to allow the investigating judges to do their work.
“Tribunal staff is legally obligated to arrest and investigate the additional suspects if the evidence
justifies it,” he said. “It is not an optional exercise.”
“Investigators and police must do their jobs and enforce the law regardless of the personal preferences
of one or more government officials,” he said. “This is about the rule of law.”
At least two former Khmer Rouge leaders who could face indictments have echoed Hun Sen’s remarks.
One, Meas Muth, now an adviser to the Ministry of Defense, has said he will go to court if it is the
government’s wish. Another, Im Chaem, currently a deputy commune chief in Anlong Veng district,
Oddar Meanchey province, has said she will not go if summoned.
John Hall, an associate professor at California’s Chapman University of Law, said there is less chance war
will erupt in Cambodia over the indictments. Rather, observers say the objection of Hun Sen to bring
more members of the regime to trial could implicate current members of the government and the ruling
Cambodian People’s Party.
“The apparent willingness of the tribunal to move forward with additional prosecutions suggests that
the international judges, at least, are unwilling to allow Hun Sen to influence the legal proceedings with
alarmist threats of impending civil war,” he said, adding that Hun Sen’s position was not based on a legal
argument.
“So while Hun Sen has thankfully been unable at this point to hijack the tribunal’s legal decisions, the
independence and integrity of the proceedings seem to hang by a thread, thanks to the firm stand of the
international prosecutor and international judges,” he said.
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Knut Rosandhaug, the UN’s tribunal coordinator, said the court has so far complied with international
standards and made independent decisions.
“It’s a clearly established international standard that courts do not seek approval or advice on their work
from the executive branch,” he said.
Lao Monghay, a senior researcher for the Asian Human Rights Commission, said politicians “should
develop a culture of utmost restraint regarding the functioning of any court of law and uphold its
independence and impartiality.”
If the Cambodian investigating judge does not cooperate with his international counterpart, Lao
Monghay said, he “would show his political bias and would fail in his job.”
More questions arise as to who will actually make arrests if more indictments are handed down.
Latt Ky, a tribunal monitor for the rights group Adhoc, said peace has so far been adequately
maintained. “So I do not see anything impacting the seeking of justice for the victims of the regime of
Democratic Kampuchea.”
Caitlin Reiger, head of the prosecutions program for the International Center for Transitional Justice,
said the Khmer Rouge no longer exist as a fighting force.
“However, Cambodia is not the first or last country to raise these tensions,” she said. “Where a conflict
is ongoing and peace is the immediate priority, there may be legitimate concerns about whether
pursuing justice may be an obstacle to securing peace.”
Such concerns emerged with former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic and former Liberian
president Charles Taylor, she said. “Yet with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that their indictments
actually contributed to peace by moving those ‘spoilers’ from the negotiations.”
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Indictments Hint at Tribunal Independence: Scholar
By Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
09 September 2009
An American professor who has been following and writing crucial articles about the UN‐backed Khmer
Rouge tribunal on Monday offered a cautious congratulations to the court’s latest development which
could lead to more prosecutions of the regime’s senior leaders.
John Hall, a law professor at Chapman University School of Law, said in a letter to VOA Khmer that “by
deciding to open the door to additional prosecutions, the tribunal has proclaimed its determination to
remain above political manipulation.”
Hall was referring to a decision by the Pre‐Trial Chamber last week to move five more indictments to the
investigating judges, following the recommendation of the international prosecutor’s office and against
the judgment of the Cambodian prosecutor.
Prime Minister Hun Sen has warned that further indictments could lead to instability or war, fears
echoed by Cambodian officials and judges. (Three Cambodian Pre‐Trial judges decided against moving
the indictments forward, but with two international judges in favor of the move, the chamber did not
reach the super‐majority necessary to kill the prosecution’s submissions to investigating judges.)
“The apparent willingness of the tribunal to move forward with additional prosecutions suggests that
the international judges at least are unwilling to allow Hun Sen to influence the legal proceedings with
alarmist threats of impending civil war,” Hall wrote.
The concern of instability has little basis in the reality of contemporary Cambodia, Hall said, calling the
split decision “particularly worrying, because the argument against additional prosecutions—a vague
and less unconvincing threat of civil war from the prime minister—is clearly not a legal argument
adequate for the court to reject additional indictments, such as an insufficiency of evidence.”
Now, Hall said, a worry lingers over whether Cambodian officials will cooperate with the court if the
indictments move even further through the process.
“How will the Cambodian government respond if indictments are brought against former senior Khmer
Rouge who are currently active supporters of Hun Sen and the CPP?” he asked, referring to the ruling
party. “Will the prime minister then use the excuse of national stability to pull the plug on the hybrid
tribunal, perhaps proceeding with a purely domestic trial only of the current five defendants?”
The tribunal is currently trying Kaing Kek Iev, the former prison chief known as Duch, and is holding
Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, four of the senior‐most leaders.
At least one former Khmer Rouge commander, Meas Muth, a probable suspect for indictment who
serves an advisory role to the Ministry of Defense, has said he does not fear prosecution for his role in
what he says was defense of the country from foreign invasion.
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Indict No More: Former Rebel Commander
By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Cambodia
25 March 2009
“Everyone knows that His Majesty was the leader ... To bring in only five and not to bring in the
chief, that is not a breakthrough. It’s just detention of the five for sale, or for nothing” ‐ Meas
Muth, Former KR commander
With five Khmer Rouge leaders in jail, and potential further indictments delayed indefinitely, many
former soldiers of the regime continue to live among their victims.
Meas Muth, a 70‐year‐old former Khmer Rouge division commander, would be a possible suspect under
a wider indictment scheme. But he believes that charges against the leaders already in custody—Noun
Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, and Duch—are enough.
“To add five, six or 10 more, or more than that, that’s not for justice, but to stir up Cambodia, causing
instability,” he told VOA Khmer in an exclusive interview at his home near the Thai border. “In fact, until
today, the situation pleases everyone.”
More indictments could include the real leader of the revolution, he said.
“Everyone knows that His Majesty was the leader,” he said, referring to the former king, Norodom
Sihanouk, who abdicated in 2004 but who also rallied peasants to the Khmer Rouge cause in the 1970s.
“To bring in only five and not to bring in the chief, that is not a breakthrough. It’s just detention of the
five for sale, or for nothing.”
Following his ouster, then‐prince Norodom Sihanouk led a unified coalition, which included the Khmer
Rouge, to retaliate against his political opponent, the US‐backed prime minister, Lon Nol.
No one has publicly said the revered monarch should be indicted by the current tribunal. Experts,
however, suggest that there were other cadre who could be tried under the tribunal’s rules.
Research conducted by Stephen Heder in 2001 found that Meas Muth, as commander of Division 164,
one of only nine divisions, played a direct role in the arrest and transfer to Tuol Sleng prison of cadre
suspected as traitorous to the regime.
The leader of that prison, Duch, whose real name is Kaing Kek Iev, is schedule for the first tribunal trial,
next week, for crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and murder.
At his home in Samlot district, Battambang province, a former Khmer Rouge zone, Meas Muth denied
any wrongdoing as a commander for the government of Democratic Kampuchea. He also said he had
nothing worth testifying to for the tribunal.
As it brokered peace with the Khmer Rouge to end of years of fighting, the government offered amnesty
to soldiers of the regime, including those like Meas Muth.
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The government was forced to change its position, however, as talks for a tribunal got underway and as
investigating judges and prosecutors began seeking indictments.
Even then, the government and UN agreed that only senior leaders would be tried, but there is no clear
interpretation of who those would be, creating what some lawyers fear is a loophole for many former
cadre who defected to the government in 1996.
There has been no decision by the Pre‐Trial Chamber of the tribunal court on whether to indict more
senior leaders, a subject on which the Cambodian and foreign tribunal prosecutors disagree.
Cambodian prosecutor Chea Leang has said further indictments risk stability.
That position runs counter to just over half of Cambodians recently survey by the Documentation Center
of Cambodia, which found 52 percent of 1,100 people wanted more indictments.
Meas Muth would have fallen under the other 48 percent, who say, whether because of budget or
stability problems, that five is enough. For his part, he said, he now worked each day on his farm and
had recently donated money for the improvement of a nearby pagoda.
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