Cambodians observed their annual “Day of Anger” yesterday to remember victims of the Khmer Rouge terror as the regime’s alleged top torturer was being tried by a UN-backed genocide tribunal.
New schoolbooks were also distributed about the Khmer Rouge era, which has been virtually an empty page in an education system run by a government whose top leaders once served the movement.
About 2,000 Cambodians, including hundreds of Buddhist monks, gathered at Choeung Ek, a former Khmer Rouge “killing field” dotted with mass graves about 15km south of Phnom Penh.
PHOTO: EPA
Some 40 students re-enacted the torture and executions inflicted by the ultra-communists under whose rule in the mid-1970s about 1.7 million people perished.
The performers wore black uniforms, the Khmer Rouge’s standard attire. Some acted as executioners, swinging bamboo sticks at the heads of victims whose arms were bound behind their backs.
The performance was staged just meters away from a memorial filled with victims’ skulls and mass graves where thousands of others were buried.
Relatives of the victims said they hoped that some of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders would finally be brought to justice by the UN-backed tribunal.
Now being tried is Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, who commanded the notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh where as many as 16,000 men, women and children are believed to have been tortured before being sent to Choeung Ek for execution.
Duch is the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to face trial, and the only one to acknowledge responsibility for his actions. Senior leaders Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary and Ieng Sary’s wife, who are all detained, are likely to be tried in the next year or two.
“Why is the court taking so long to prosecute these leaders?” asked Tat Seang Lay, 47, whose two brothers were killed by the Khmer Rouge. “I want to see justice. I wish the court could end its trial process within the next few months.”
About 3,000 copies of the new schoolbook, A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979), were distributed yesterday in the province around Phnom Penh, with a half million more to follow for distribution throughout the country, said Youk Chhang, director of the private Documentation Center of Cambodia.
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