Yath Run was only nine years old when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975.
The victory for Pol Pot’s forces saw Yath Run separated from his parents and sent to a child labor camp in Cambodia’s rural northwest province of Battambang.
Decades later, Yath Run’s anger has not gone away for the regime that separated him from his family and whose policies and purges have resulted in the deaths of two million people in less than four years.
A lifetime in prison is not enough, he said, speaking ahead of the final ruling by the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh on Thursday, which upheld the former’s life sentence. head of state of the Khieu Samphan regime for genocide and crimes against humanity.
“They deserved 200 or 300 years in prison and even their remains should be handcuffed until their prison term has been served,” said Yath Run, 56.
The punishment of Khmer Rouge leaders should also continue with death; none of their relatives – not even children – should be allowed to attend their funerals, he said, proposing that the government designate a specific burial site only for the remains of regime leaders.
“They should not be allowed to have a funeral ceremony because during their regime innocent people were slaughtered and their bodies had no coffin to rest in,” he said.
The rejection of Khieu Samphan’s appeal by the Extraordinary Chambers of Cambodian Courts (ECCC) – the official name of the war crimes tribunal – marked the final decision in the UN-backed tribunal’s 16-year work.
The court said it upheld his conviction and life sentence “in light of all the circumstances, including the tragic nature of the underlying events and the extent of the harm caused by Khieu Samphan”.
Some have criticized the court for taking more than a decade and a half and spending more than $330 million to indict five top Khmer Rouge leaders and successfully convict only three. Others say the work of healing the Khmer Rouge nightmare will continue in Cambodia long after the court’s legal work is now complete.
Khieu Samphan, the 91-year-old former head of state of the Pol Pot regime, is the regime’s only surviving senior leader behind bars.
The regime’s so-called ‘Brother No. 1’, Pol Pot, died in 1998 before he could be brought to justice.
Nuon Chea, known as “Brother No. 2” and the regime’s main ideologue, was sentenced to two life terms by the court for crimes against humanity and genocide. He died in 2019.
Former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary was charged with crimes against humanity but died of ill health before his trial was completed in 2013.
His wife, Ieng Thirith, the regime’s former social action minister and Pol Pot’s sister-in-law, was also charged, but later declared unfit to stand trial on mental health grounds. She passed away in 2015.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as ‘Duch’, was convicted of crimes against humanity in 2010 for atrocities committed at S-21 prison and torture center in Phnom Penh. Duch died in 2020.
disturbing memories
More than 40 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, survivors are still troubled by their memories of that period, according to new research by the Documentation Center of Cambodia [DC-CAM]the country’s leading research institution archiving events from the Khmer Rouge era.
Based on a survey of over 31,000 survivors between August 2021 and August 2022, 87% of respondents said they still had disturbing memories of the past.
These memories ‘resonated’ with survivors, and ‘25% of those surveyed said they still suffer from nightmares from this period, despite the fact that it happened over forty years ago,’ the DC director wrote. -CAM, Youk Chhang.
Reflecting on the war crimes tribunal’s finding, Youk Chhang said the process was personal to each survivor, but the court process has allowed Cambodians to be more open about what happened.
This openness allowed them to deepen their own personal and collective past. Cumulatively, this led to people being willing to address issues more openly, which would help Cambodia in the future, he said.
DC-CAM also found that 47% of respondents had followed the court’s work, compared to 51% who had not. When asked what they thought of the court, 81% said ‘good/satisfied’, compared to 8% who said ‘not good/not satisfied’.
When asked what the court’s contribution to the individual and to society at large has been, the overwhelming response was “justice”.
Education was also seen as the most important way to “help the younger generation remember the history of the Khmer Rouge and prevent” the return of such a brutal regime.
Reconciliation
“For me, the most important thing that came out was the effect the tribunal had on national reconciliation,” said Craig Etcheson, author of Extraordinary Justice: Law, Politics, and the Khmer Rouge Tribunals.
Etcheson, who also served as an investigator in the court’s co-prosecutor’s office from 2006 to 2012, said the court process has started new conversations in Cambodian society.
Parents could finally talk to their children about the events of the late 1970s, Etcheson said. They could explain why previously they may not have been able to talk about what happened, and also why they behaved in certain ways, he said.
The tribunal had “reached into every nook and cranny of the country” and “beyond social divides”, he told Al Jazeera.
There has been outreach to explain the purpose of the court through television coverage, road shows, art exhibits and performances.
Important modules on the history of Cambodia during the regime period have been added to the school curriculum, and around 100,000 Cambodians have attended court hearings, he said.
As head of the tribunal’s public affairs office from 2006 to 2009, Helen Jarvis recalled a slight sense of foreboding when she first traveled to rural Cambodia to deliver information about the war crimes tribunal, worried about people’s reaction.
Former rank and file members of the Khmer Rouge had lived quietly in towns and villages since the movement’s end in the late 1990s, when fighters had the choice of defecting to the government or being arrested, and their strongholds military accepted the authority of Phnom Penh.
“I was so hesitant at first, wondering how we would be received,” Jarvis recounted, adding that to his surprise, his team never encountered any hostility or negativity on those trips.
“It was excitement, I think, especially in the rural communities from the start. But we didn’t have enough funding, in my opinion, to do it really well,” she said.
The tribunal – the first hybrid war crimes tribunal where national staff collaborated with international UN staff in a country where mass crimes were perpetrated – will be remembered for its public outreach and involvement of victims in the legal proceedings, she said, although she feels neither. the region had been adequately funded or staffed during the initial planning.
“It’s really ironic – those were two big gaps. But they turned out to be the biggest legacy, in my opinion.
To advance
When asked if he felt the tribunal was successful, DC-CAM’s Youk Chhang warned that “success” was never a word to use when it came to genocide and the deaths of two millions of people.
The most important part of the court process was its inclusion of survivors in the proceedings, he said, adding that the court “allowed people to participate and agree and disagree” and “bring to him personally the closure”.
“Although some people did not like the court, it allowed people to express themselves [their criticism] – it makes the court healthier,” he said.
Although the tribunal was important in terms of justice, prosecutions and sentencing, Youk Chhang says there is still much to do after the genocide.
“The court is not the history department or the counseling service,” he said. “This is what continues after the disappearance of the court.”
Teenager Khlout Sopoar was born a year after the UN-backed war crimes tribunal began work in Cambodia.
Sopoar never experienced the pain or trauma of previous generations who lived through the regime and its aftermath.
Yet the 15-year-old student was very clear in her judgment on the enormity of the crimes, their punishment and the need for reconciliation.
Khieu Samphan, the regime’s last surviving senior leader, deserved life in prison, she said.
And, the survivors of the regime should accept the justice rendered by the court.
“I think the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime were huge,” Sopoar said.
“But the victims should accept the sentence,” she said.
For Sopoar and millions of Cambodians, the end of legal proceedings marks the moment to move forward.