The first suspect appeared before the U.N. backed Cambodian genocide tribunal to investigate former members of the Khmer Rouge. Kaing Khek lev, better known as Duch, was questioned for his role as the former prison warden in the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh. The prison was notorious for being used as a torture chamber, where some 16,000 people were processed and turned over to slave labor or murdered at the infamous “killing fields.”
The “killing fields” were mass sites used by the ultra-communist Khmer Rouge regime to practice a quasi-eugenics campaign. They tried to exploit communist ideals to create a classless society by way of an agrarian utopia through isolation, hard labor, and extermination. Pol Pot, the leader of the regime, used the prison as a secret detention facility and slaughterhouse during his genocidal regime that lasted from 1975-1979. During his rule, nearly 2-million people died from starvation, disease, forced labor and execution.
Kaing Khek lev is among five other former Khmer Rouge leaders that were handed over to the U.N. tribunal on July 18, 2007. Part of the prosecutions evidence are prison records from S-21 maintained by Kaing Khek lev.
After maintaining an existence among leftist sympathizers since the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979, he re-surfaced in 1999 after a photojournalist had a chance encounter with the man. He has been in military custody since then. He is 62.
UPDATE: The BBC is reporting that “Duch” has been charged with crimes against humanity for his role in the Cambodian genocide. The UN tribunal was expected to hand down its charges at the end of this week, but todays developments signify that there is at least some willingness in Cambodia to face its tumultuous past. There has been criticism in the past of transparency at the hybrid tribunal and the entire system was on the verge of collapse. This signifies, according to one survivor of the S-21 prison, “immense progress.”
