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Cambodia Holds First Trial of Khmer Rouge Leader for Genocide

Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- A Cambodian math teacher who turned a school into a torture chamber goes on trial tomorrow in the first hearing involving leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement that tried to slaughter the nation's intellectual class 30 years ago. Kang Kek Ieu, 66, also known as Duch, oversaw Tuol Sleng prison in the capital, Phnom Penh, where only about a dozen of at least 12,000 inmates survived. He is the youngest of five Khmer Rouge leaders who will face trial before a United Nations-backed tribunal accused of genocide.

Thanks to the UN most of the worst Khmer Rouge have died before their trials.

"Thirty years later, we have not recovered," said Sok Siphana, a former vice-minister in Cambodia's Commerce Ministry who now works with the International Trade Centre, a UN agency, in Geneva. "To do the things that Thailand and Malaysia take for granted, we are struggling to just fill that initial base."

The Khmer Rouge is blamed for the deaths of at least 1.7 million people during its rule from 1975 to 1979. Tuol Sleng was the most notorious prison in a network that targeted Cambodia's educated elite as the movement attempted to create a classless, agrarian society free of foreign influence starting at Year Zero.

What follows is an accounting of what the Cambodians have tried to do since the Khmer Rouge were removed and how much success they've had.

Posted by: Steve White 2009-02-16

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