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Southeast Asia
Cambodia Holds First Trial of Khmer Rouge Leader for Genocide
2009-02-16
Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- A Cambodian math teacher who turned a school into a torture chamber goes on trial tomorrow in the first hearing involving leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement that tried to slaughter the nation's intellectual class 30 years ago. Kang Kek Ieu, 66, also known as Duch, oversaw Tuol Sleng prison in the capital, Phnom Penh, where only about a dozen of at least 12,000 inmates survived. He is the youngest of five Khmer Rouge leaders who will face trial before a United Nations-backed tribunal accused of genocide.
Thanks to the UN most of the worst Khmer Rouge have died before their trials.
"Thirty years later, we have not recovered," said Sok Siphana, a former vice-minister in Cambodia's Commerce Ministry who now works with the International Trade Centre, a UN agency, in Geneva. "To do the things that Thailand and Malaysia take for granted, we are struggling to just fill that initial base."

The Khmer Rouge is blamed for the deaths of at least 1.7 million people during its rule from 1975 to 1979. Tuol Sleng was the most notorious prison in a network that targeted Cambodia's educated elite as the movement attempted to create a classless, agrarian society free of foreign influence starting at Year Zero.
What follows is an accounting of what the Cambodians have tried to do since the Khmer Rouge were removed and how much success they've had.
Posted by:Steve White

#2  FR - I was in Saigon in 1970-71, working at the 12th Reconnaissance Intelligence Technical Squadron. We supplied all the imagery intelligence to Hq. 7th Air Force. We saw quite a bit of imagery taken of Cambodia, and I can confirm that there were darned few civilians in the areas occupied by the NVA. Those were the only areas we bombed. I can also confirm that the NVA had taken over several of the cultural treasures of Cambodia, and used them for military purposes. Angkor Wat was used as an NVA field hospital. I can also confirm that it was the DEMOCRATIC Congress that screwed Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and did their level best to "lose" Thailand. The Thais were able to defend themselves.

Some of the people that screwed Southeast Asia are still around, including at least three or four in the Senate. I'd personally LOVE to hang them all for treason, but unfortunately I'm not running things, and probably never will.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2009-02-16 19:37  

#1  The Khmer Rouge took power after a U.S. bombing campaign during the Vietnam War stirred discontent in the countryside against General Lon Nol's coup-installed government.

IIUC, that is a LOAD OF BULLSH*T.
1) We were bombing parts of Cambodia whose peasant population had been driven away by the NVA. THERE WERE NO CIVILIANS IN THOSE AREAS- Only murderous North Vietnamese.
2) Lon Nol fell because our traitorous congress refused to sell him arms to beat the KR off.
I wasn't there, so if someone has a different interpretation, please correct me.
Posted by: Free Radical   2009-02-16 15:48  

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