The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), established to prosecute atrocities committed in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, have sentenced Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, to 35 years imprisonment for crimes against humanity. The 67-year-old the former schoolteacher worked for the Khmer Rouge as head of the Tuol Sleng detention facility, a converted school in which over 12,000 prisoners were tortured and brutally murdered. Only a dozen inmates are known to have survived the prison.
“However long the sentence it can’t compare to the suffering he caused,” says Cambodian survivor Var Hong Ashe, now living in the UK, whose first husband, she believes, was killed at Tuol Sleng. “The way they tortured people was unspeakable. Some measure of justice has been done but what can we do? We can’t expect him to be tortured as he tortured us – we don’t want to be as vicious and cruel.”
“It’s not enough. It should be a life sentence, but he got a good solicitor,” says survivor Chan Thou Kin-Kien (not her real name), who fled the Khmer Rouge with her immediate family in 1975. “What about the scars of the survivors? The scars are for life. All my extended family and all our neighbours were killed. I’m still angry when I think about it, and I can never forgive or forget, but Cambodian society today has moved on.”
Alain Werner, Senior Counsel to the Aegis Trust, was Co-counsel on one of the teams representing civil parties – survivors and relatives of Khmer Rouge victims – at the Duch trial. Speaking from Phnom Penh this morning, he stated, “That the victims could come and express how much they’ve suffered was very important. This was the first time in a trial of this kind that conditions were created where civil parties could have such a significant role.” Responding to the verdict, he commented, “For the scale of the crime no response could ever be enough, but it is important for the civil parties that Duch should not be released any time soon. With time subtracted from the sentence for illegal detention and for time served, even if he gets out in 18 or 19 years, he will be a very old man indeed.”
Werner added that the civil parties were, however, unhappy that the only reparation ordered by the court was for the names of the civil parties to be included in the judgement and any apologies from Duch to be published. “The civil parties believe this is not enough,” he says. “No funds have been allocated for reparations, but the court could have ordered that if one day funds were made available, specific reparations should be paid.”
The court has also now decided to disregard victims applications from 20 of the civil parties on grounds that they have not proved enough connection with someone who died or that they themselves suffered harm. “It is not satisfactory for victims that some of them were granted access to the trial as civil parties only to be told at the end that they are not considered as such,” Werner stated.
