Making a case for trying the guerrilla leadership

There is ample evidence of atrocities under the Khmer Rouge to bring a case against its leaders if the present powers so wish it.

RICHARD S. EHRLICH
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Pol Pot probably never shot anyone and his handwriting has not been confirmed, but thousands of mass graves, documents and interviews are sufficient to put Khmer Rouge leaders on trial, according to Cambodia's top Khmer Rouge archives expert.

"I doubt Pol Pot physically shot anybody, but as leader he was responsible for why so many people died," said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, the world's largest repository of Khmer Rouge information.

"So far, we cannot confirm Pol Pot's handwriting," Youk Chhang said during an interview inside his modern, temperature-controlled archive, where official documents from the former communist regime are examined and scanned into databases.

"Only a few documents about prisoners seem to be from Pol Pot, but by the time we tried to conclude [his signature], he died. Some documents say, 'from Brother Pol'. Only a few documents. The rest are written with a typewriter", and unsigned.

During Pol Pot's obsessively cruel 1975-79 reign, he and his regime's top officials never wrote the words "kill" and "execute", according to the Khmer-language text displayed at the documentation centre.

Instead, Pol Pot and his comrades ordered officials to "smash, destroy, pull out or remove...external and internal enemies", Youk Chhang said.

"But when you look at the whole document in context, those words refer to 'kill' and 'execution'."

Targets included capitalists, landlords, Vietnam, Thailand, the former Soviet Union and US imperialists.

"We have sufficient information from 800,000 pages of [Khmer Rouge] documents, 19,446 mass graves, 167 prisons, 20,000 photographs, 300 documentary films and we interviewed 2,000 former Khmer Rouge and 20,000 victims.

"So we know who is who, and which documents exist. We can be the guideline for the tribunal."

More than one million Cambodians -- some estimate more than two million -- perished under Khmer Rouge rule.

The secretive, vengeful regime called itself Angkar, an anonymous form of homeland security which meted out permission and punishment, accompanied by robotic slogans such as: "You must be loyal and love Angkar!" "Angkar selects only those who are never tired!" And, chillingly: "One feels frightened just hearing the word 'Angkar'."

Angkar's enigmatic leaders further disguised themselves with aliases.

In 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, chased Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge into the jungle and ended their frenzied, experimental policies which encouraged executions, enslavement, starvation and disease.

The Khmer Rouge were later empowered as guerrillas when Washington and other governments financed a coalition of rebels to attack Vietnamese occupation forces during the 1980s, ultimately convincing Hanoi to withdraw.

Pol Pot died in 1998.

The US and other countries now say they want an international tribunal to judge a remaining handful of elderly Khmer Rouge leaders, including Nuon Chea, Ta Mok, Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan.

Some of the creepiest documents archived for a future tribunal are known as "Khmer Rouge telegrams", sent from all over the country, every day, by cadre to update the regime on their revolution.

"When they sent a telegram to the [Khmer Rouge] standing committee, a copy would go to Ieng Sary, Pol Pot and the others. These telegrams include files from Tuol Sleng," Youk Chhang said.

Tuol Sleng was a blood-splattered, makeshift prison built inside a Phnom Penh school, where thousands of people were photographed, interrogated, tortured and executed. Their corpses were dumped in pits, known as "killing fields", on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

Today, the school, dubbed the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and nearby burial pits are popular tourist attractions pinpointed on city maps, glossy brochures and guide books for camera-snapping visitors to ponder Cambodia's past.

"We don't have all the telegrams from every day but we have many of them, and they go from the bottom up to the leadership. There are those [senders] who happen to be middle-men who were, for example, directing the prison on a daily basis and summarising the interrogations and sending it to the standing committee.

"This would give a lot of information for the [tribunal's] prosecution because it shows reports were sent from the field to the standing committee, from the countryside, from group leaders, unit chiefs, logistic chiefs" and others, informing them about the results of Khmer Rouge policies, laws and decrees, Youk Chhang said.

"The telegrams discuss everything: someone stole a chicken, there was a shortage of rice, someone escaped to the jungle, there was an attack from Vietnam, someone raped the wife of a cadre, an ox cart was broken when transporting rice and so on.

"We have translated over 1,000 telegrams which had been [sent and] copied to all the leadership. Some were two pages, some were three pages long."

The archive collected Khmer Rouge documents from various sources over the years.

"They were sent by individuals here [in Cambodia], or found in old buildings, or sent to us from abroad by people who took documents with them, including scholars, victims and Khmer Rouge themselves," Youk Chhang said.

"We have information that Pol Pot was a co-member of the standing committee and that there were a dozen people who collectively created the Khmer Rouge policies in which more than two million people died."

In 1976, King Norodom Sihanouk praised the Khmer Rouge's overthrow of US-backed President Lon Nol and declared in a speech that the Khmer Rouge would bring "perfect social justice" and "a new era which, beyond all doubt, will be the most radiant and glorious in the 2,000 years of our national history".

Khmer Rouge documents, however, describe King Sihanouk's resignation from his figurehead position as head of state and president of the Khmer Rouge's National Liberation Front of Kampuchea (Cambodia).

For example, document D7562's official minutes of a March 1976 standing committee -- attended by Angkar's Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and other top leaders -- says in part:

"While inside the country, he [King Sihanouk] feels completely lost without any future. He is very frustrated. He lacks work, he is bored, and the environment that surrounds him, in particular his wife [Queen Monineath] who cries constantly, pushes him to the point that he cannot endure any longer."

The official minutes add: "In the recent past we fought together, shoulder to shoulder. We very much regret his resignation...we won't allow him to leave the country."

Ominously it notes: "We consider him as a senior personality. We shall not kill him...but if he continues to resist us, we shall take measures to liquidate him."

After resigning, King Sihanouk was locked in his palace under house arrest for nearly three years.

* Richard S. Ehrlich is a former UPI correspondent who has reported from Asia for the past 25 years.