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PHNOM PENH - Victims of the Khmer Rouge atrocities faced the man who was its chief torturer yesterday as he went on trial for crimes against humanity.
In the first case involving a senior Pol Pot cadre three decades after the end of a regime blamed for 1.7
million deaths in Cambodia, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch and ex-commandant of the notorious S-21 prison, asked his victims for forgiveness.
"He said to the victims, I ask your forgiveness, I ask your forgiveness," French lawyer Francois Roux told Reuters Television after visiting his client, a former school teacher, for two hours at a detention centre near the court outside the Cambodian capital.
Yesterday's hearing was mostly procedural, with the main hearings due to start in March and a verdict expected by September. But it ends a decade of delays at the tribunal due to wrangling over jurisdiction and cash, and pre-trial machinations.
But for many victims, the memories of the torture remain a raw reminder of the communist regime's brutal rule.
Chum Mei was one of the few to survive the S-21, or Tuol Sleng prison.
Beneath the shade of spreading branches in the prison's courtyard, Chum Mei he slips off his sandals and demonstrates how Khmer Rouge torturers pulled out his toenails.
"They beat me seriously," he says quietly, sitting on the floor as tourists wander past, unaware of his story. "I tried to protect my face and they broke my finger. They kept repeating the same question: was I working for the CIA? They pulled out my toenails. Then they used electricity to shock me through my ear. And then I went unconscious."
He was one of an estimated 14,000 people sent to the prison, established in a secondary school in Phnom Penh. Barely a dozen survived. Today, just six are alive. Chum Mei is among them, and he is expected to give evidence at the trial, operated jointly by the Cambodian Government and the United Nations.
Tuol Sleng was central both to the Khmer Rouge's killing machine and the legacy of the Maoist-inspired regime that has reverberated down the years. There were other prisons equally brutal, some larger.
But Tuol Sleng, now a museum of the macabre, has come to represent the regime's horrors. Every day, tourists from around the world step quietly through the prison blocks that are haunted by history.
On a recent afternoon, Mei led the way through the classrooms full of bones and skulls, past photographs of more than 5000 former prisoners, who would end up being executed, usually at "killing fields" on the city's outskirts at an orchard called Choeung Ek.
The 78-year-old, once a car mechanic, stopped next to a photograph of half-a-dozen emaciated men standing at the gate of the jail and pointed to the pencil-thin figure in baggy-fitting fatigues. That was him. The shot was taken 30 years ago when the jail was emptied in the face of an invasion by Vietnamese forces that ousted the Khmer Rouge from power.
We move on to the tiny brick cell where he was shackled. "For me, the trial is very important," he says. "I need justice for Cambodia. I want the international community to find justice for Cambodia."
Bou Meng is also a survivor. He, like many other ordinary citizens, joined the Khmer Rouge revolution after a coup that ousted Cambodia's Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Sihanouk. But he ended up in Tuol Sleng after being denounced by a colleague as a traitor. To this day, the 68-year-old has no idea who denounced him or why.
"They beat me with all sorts of instruments, sticks and electric shocks," he says. "I still have the scars across my back." Sitting next to him in the restaurant garden as he talks is his second wife; his first was killed after she was sent to Tuol Sleng with him.
Meng survived the prison because, six months after he was taken there, Duch learnt that he was a painter. Handed paper and pencil, he was ordered to sketch. He was then handed a photograph of the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and told to make a copy. Meng did so, wisely deciding to ignore an unsightly mark on the regime leader's throat.
Duch told him they wanted him to paint four large pictures. He said each painting would take three months. "That is the only reason I am still alive," he said. "They left me alone to do the job. It was one year, and then the Vietnamese invaded and it was that which saved my life."
Meng will also give evidence against Duch. "The most important thing about the trial is finding justice for the prisoners," he added. "More than 14,000 prisoners were killed, including my wife. I will feel relieved if Duch is convicted. The soul of my wife will be peaceful."
- INDEPENDENT, AP