Tag Archives: Khmer Rouge

A Khmer Experiment

Sihanoukville. Raquel Vásquez has a Business and Law degree from Carlos III University, now enrolled in a postgraduate program in Defense and Communications. From her original Spain, she has been in countries like India, Singapore, France, Israel and Cambodia. Cristina Trenas is a filmmaker with studies in economics and journalism in the same University, but also in Paris and Washington. These two brave Spaniard girls made the team of a… Cambodian Experiment !!! Continue reading →

A small Christmas celebration in Kompot

Kompot.​ A group of about 150 persons attended the Christmas celebration at the Kompot Catholic Church last evening. Fr. Son, the parish priest and one of the few Cambodian Catholic priests – most of the clergy is made by foreigners, – underlined the presence of ten persons coming from countries like Colombia, Japan, England, France, Italy, Greece and Vietnam. ‘Even in our small group, the Lord gives us a sign that He was born two thousand years ago for all mankind,’ he said during the homily to the faithful, most of them young people. Continue reading →

Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge four on trial

Euronews. The UN-backed trial of the top surviving members of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime has finally got under way in Phnom Penh. The four defendants include the now 84-year-old Nuon Chea, or Brother Number 2, the chief ideologist behind Pol Pot’s “Killing Fields” revolution.

Case 002 initial hearing of the senior Khmer Rouge began

Sihanoukville. Students of communication of Don Bosco Sihanoukville watch the CTN transmission of the Case 002 initial hearing for the prosecution of four senior leaders of the Democratic Kampuchea Regime: Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith – who is also the sister-in-law of late Pol Pot; Khieu Samphan and Noun Chea. The transmission began at 9:00 and it will last until 16:00. It is considered an historical date in Cambodia after a long wait of justice to more than 1 million 700 thousand persons who disappeared between 1975 and 1979 under the Khmer Rouge regime.

Ien Sary’s royal pardon is not obstacule to process, tribunal

The Royal Pardon that former Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary got in 1996 is not a legal obstacle to the current process by ECCC, concluded the judges.  In the 1979 sentence in absentia by the People’s Revolutionary Tribunal, Sary and Pol Pot were sentenced to death, but King Norodom Sihanouk granted to Sary amnesty following a 1994 rule. This Monday the ECCC that is judging the surviving top leaders of the bloody regimen, declared that such amnesty is not an obstacle to proceed with the judgment of Ieng Sary.

 

Duch seeks to appeal his sentence

Kar Savuth, the lawyer of Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, sentenced by the International Court of Phnom Penh to 19 years in prison as director of S-21, the infamous center for torture and execustions of the Pol Pot’s regime, appealed the sentence and said that such tribunal has not jurisdiction over the case because it was established only to process the top leaders of the regime. Duch, who is so far the only Khmer Rouge sentenced for war crimes in July 2010, was not a top leader in the murderous regime that is accused of the disappearance of 1.7 million persons between 1975 and 1979. Continue reading →

Cambodia-US: Who Might Pays to Whom

The recent visit to Cambodia of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought out old ghost of the Cambodian history. We say ‘Cambodian history’, however, it belongs also to the US history in a very special way. The US Congress is enabling a new trade act for Cambodia under the code H.R. 5320. Now well, it happens that Congressmen Dana Rohrbacher and Bill Delahunt (find them in the collage I did with some prominent historical figures, down Lon Nol and at the side of Pol Pot) stated that ‘United States may not reduce or forgive any debt owed by Cambodia to the United States.’ (see csis.org.)  Continue reading →