Khmer Rouge Prison Chief Duch: Babies Were Smashed In Cambodian Killing Fields

A marker signifies a resting place for victims of the Pol Pot regime at the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Photo © John Brown All Rights Reserved

Here is a report about the trial of former Tuol Sleng S21 Prison Chief Kaing Guek Eav also known as Duch, currently being held at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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PHNOM PENH (AFP) — The former jail chief of the Khmer Rouge regime told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes trial Monday that his staff had murdered babies by smashing them against trees at a "killing field".

Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his nom de guerre Duch, is on trial for overseeing the torture and extermination of 15,000 people who passed through the hardline communist movement's notorious Tuol Sleng prison. "The horrendous images of those (babies) smashed against trees, yes, that was done my subordinates," Duch said, referring to paintings depicting the atrocities committed by members of the 1975 to 1979 Khmer Rouge regime.

"I myself do not blame my subordinates, because they worked under me. I am criminally responsible," the 66-year-old added. The former math teacher, wearing a gray short-sleeved shirt, was responding to prosecution questions about the regime's policies at Tuol Sleng, where prisoners were often accompanied by their children.

Duch apologized at his trial late March, saying he accepted blame for the extermination of thousands of people at the prison, which served as the center of the 1975-1979 regime's security apparatus. But he has denied prosecutors' claims that he played a central role in the Khmer Rouge's iron-fisted rule, and maintains he only tortured two people himself and never personally executed anyone.

Duch faces life in jail if convicted by the court, which does not have the power to impose the death penalty. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998 and many believe the UN-sponsored tribunal is the last chance to find justice for victims of the regime, which killed up to two million people.

The tribunal was formed in 2006 after nearly a decade of wrangling between the United Nations and the Cambodian government, and is expected to next year to begin the trial of four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders also in detention.

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A recent survey conducted in Cambodia concluded that a large majority of the nation's citizens don't understand what this trial is all about. My view is that as an "outsider" as I have been called, I will never comprehend the situations and difficulty Khmers encountered between 1975 and 1979. Present day Khmers below the age of 35, about 70% of the population, share my weak grasp of the events that occurred albeit with the empathy I have. Those who survived those years have mostly suffered silently.

Will this trial serve justice to Khmers? Of course not. Why is it being held? It makes the Cambodian government and the rest of the international community, including you and I, appear to be caring people and I suppose we are.

Nevertheless, the trial of Kaing Guek Eav or any other responsible party, regardless of the outcome, will never bring back even one of the nearly 2 million people who perished.

John Brown Photojournalist On LIGHTSTALKERS
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