Cadres face prospect of more arrests

by karl | November 10, 2009 9:07 pm

ODDAR MEANCHEY AND BATTAMBANG PROVINCES, Cam­bo­dia — At the age of 14, Out Moe­un left her fam­i­ly home in Anlong Veng dis­trict, Odd­ar Meanchey province, to work for Khmer Rouge Cen­tral Com­mit­tee mem­ber Chhit Choe­un, alias Ta Mok.

Though it was 1987, a full eight years after the regime fell from pow­er, units of Khmer Rouge sol­diers were still scat­tered through­out Cam­bo­dia, and she was one of many girls recruit­ed to sup­ply them with weapons. Every two weeks or so, she and sev­en oth­er girls would rise before dawn and begin trav­el­ling, most­ly on foot, to provinces as far afield as Kam­pong Cham and Kam­pong Chh­nang. They each car­ried a case of AK-47s on their backs, along with one pack­age con­tain­ing food, cloth­ing and a hammock.

Gov­ern­ment and Viet­namese sol­diers, from whom the girls had been instruct­ed to hide, rou­tine­ly accost­ed them. “I shot at those ene­my troops more times than I know how to count,” Out Moe­un, now 36, recalled in an inter­view at her road­side gro­cery stall less than a kilo­me­tre from Ta Mok’s old house. She was hit only once in those exchanges, sus­tain­ing a bul­let wound she showed off read­i­ly: a deep pur­ple scar on the right side of her belly.

Like many for­mer cadres in Anlong Veng, a for­mer Khmer Rouge strong­hold, Out Moe­un still speaks admir­ing­ly of the movement’s lead­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly Ta Mok, whom she described as “a good leader” and “a bet­ter man than Pol Pot”. She shed tears when dis­cussing his arrest in 1999 and his 2006 death in pre­tri­al deten­tion at the Khmer Rouge tribunal.

This alle­giance, how­ev­er, has not trans­lat­ed into resent­ment towards the tri­bunal itself, which she cred­it­ed with oper­at­ing “accord­ing to the law”. Asked if she was con­cerned about inter­na­tion­al pros­e­cu­tors’ ongo­ing push for more inves­ti­ga­tions, she said she was far too busy sup­port­ing her fam­i­ly to pay much atten­tion to the tri­bunal and its work.

She added: “I don’t care about the court arrest­ing more peo­ple, because the peo­ple they would arrest are not relat­ed to those of us at the low­er lev­els. We don’t care.”

The ques­tion of how for­mer cadres might respond to more arrests assumed greater urgency after the tri­bunal announced in Sep­tem­ber that it had opened the door to inves­ti­ga­tions beyond those of the five lead­ers cur­rent­ly detained. That deci­sion over­rode objec­tions raised by nation­al co-pros­e­cu­tor Chea Leang, who had argued that, as a result of addi­tion­al pros­e­cu­tions, “ex-mem­bers and those who have alle­giance to Khmer Rouge lead­ers may com­mit vio­lent acts”. Five days after the announce­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Hun Sen echoed this warn­ing in a speech, say­ing, “If you want a tri­bunal, but you don’t want to con­sid­er peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and war breaks out again, killing 200,000 or 300,000 peo­ple, who will be responsible?”

Con­trary to these state­ments, inter­views with for­mer cadres in Anlong Veng and Sam­lot, anoth­er for­mer strong­hold in Bat­tam­bang province, sug­gest­ed a more com­pli­cat­ed attach­ment to the regime and its lega­cy, one that would seem to pre­clude out­right vio­lence in response to an expand­ed dragnet.

Like Out Moe­un, most for­mer cadres dis­avowed any per­son­al stake in the fate of for­mer regime lead­ers, though they also took obvi­ous pride in the pow­er those lead­ers once wield­ed – and in their own small con­tri­bu­tions in sup­port of that power.

San Roe­un, a 56-year-old for­mer sol­dier who now sells tick­ets to Ta Mok’s house, which has been trans­formed into a gov­ern­ment-run tourism site, expressed con­cern about how more arrests might affect “the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion”. But he ruled out the prospect of civ­il war, empha­sis­ing that he and oth­ers like him had lit­tle inter­est in the wel­fare of those who might be arrested.

“Some­times they ask me, ‘Who is the Khmer Rouge? Who did all this killing?’ And when they do that, I clap my hands on my chest and say, ‘It’s me. Your father is the Khmer Rouge.’”

“The rea­son I joined the Khmer Rouge was because I want­ed to help King Sihanouk,” he said. “I nev­er knew about Pol Pot. We want­ed to fight Lon Nol.”

Rem­i­nisc­ing on his years in com­bat, he spoke at length of his per­for­mance on the bat­tle­field, describ­ing his abil­i­ty not only to sur­vive but to con­tin­ue killing gov­ern­ment troops dur­ing the 1980s.

“My son and daugh­ter, they are in school now, and they are read­ing about the his­to­ry of the Khmer Rouge killings,” he said, sit­ting in the booth from which he sells 50 tick­ets on a typ­i­cal day. “Some­times they ask me, ‘Who is the Khmer Rouge? Who did all this killing?’ And when they do that, I clap my hands on my chest and say, ‘It’s me. Your father is the Khmer Rouge.’”

For­mer mil­i­tary chair­man speaks out
Among the few cadres who claimed that more arrests could in fact lead to civ­il war were Meas Muth, a for­mer Khmer Rouge mil­i­tary divi­sion chair­man, and Im Chem, a for­mer Khmer Rouge dis­trict chief, who have been named by schol­ars and in the media, respec­tive­ly, as pos­si­ble suspects.

In an inter­view at his Sam­lot home, Meas Muth, who was list­ed as a pos­si­ble sus­pect in a 2001 report by his­to­ri­an Stephen Hed­er and war crimes lawyer Bri­an Tit­te­more, said Hun Sen’s pre­dic­tion of “200,000 or 300,000” deaths was sound.

“Hun Sen knows every­thing about his coun­try, and he was think­ing about its future. There could be civ­il war,” said the for­mer sec­re­tary of Cen­tral Com­mit­tee Divi­sion 164, which incor­po­rat­ed the Khmer Rouge navy. He added that his “sup­port­ers” would like­ly take part in the unrest, and that he had sup­port­ers “every­where in Kampuchea”.

In their report, titled “Sev­en Can­di­dates for Pros­e­cu­tion: Account­abil­i­ty for the Crimes of the Khmer Rouge”, Hed­er and Tit­te­more point to “com­pelling evi­dence” sug­gest­ing that Meas Muth was respon­si­ble for the exe­cu­tion of cadres under his com­mand. That evi­dence includes 24 Tuol Sleng con­fes­sions signed by pris­on­ers from his division.

Though Meas Muth denies hav­ing been informed of Khmer Rouge arrest, inter­ro­ga­tion and exe­cu­tion poli­cies, the report includes accounts of meet­ings dur­ing which they were appar­ent­ly dis­cussed. At a Gen­er­al Staff meet­ing he attend­ed in 1976, for instance, Son Sen, the defence min­is­ter, instruct­ed those present to “have an absolute stand­point about purg­ing coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ary ele­ments; don’t be half-baked”. The fol­low­ing month, Son Sen said at a sim­i­lar meet­ing that the par­ty should do “what­ev­er needs to be done to make our army clean”. At that meet­ing, accord­ing to the report, Meas Muth said, “On this I would like to be in total agree­ment and uni­ty with the par­ty. Do what­ev­er needs to be done not to allow the sit­u­a­tion to get out of hand” and to pre­vent the strength­en­ing of “no-good ele­ments or enemies”.

Along with an overview of the evi­dence and its impli­ca­tions, the report includes a thumb­nail sketch of a young Meas Muth, a broad-shoul­dered man in a plaid shirt with full, closed lips and a thick head of brown hair. For the inter­view in Sam­lot, the for­mer com­man­der, now 73, wore a light blue but­ton-up half-sleeve shirt over a tank top. His lips, when opened, revealed stained, jagged teeth, and his con­sid­er­ably thin­ner hair had whitened.

As he talked, he smoked tobac­co wrapped in tree leaves and spat into a dark blue pail that rest­ed beside his chair. The shade of the pail matched exact­ly the stones embed­ded in the pat­terned tiles that cov­ered the floor, one of the more eye-catch­ing fea­tures of his sprawl­ing home, which com­pris­es three build­ings and is sur­round­ed by a 5‑hectare orchard of coconut, man­go and jack­fruit trees. Anoth­er high­light is the stair­case of the main build­ing, an impos­ing spi­ral made of pol­ished beng wood.

Com­plet­ed in 2006, the house stands in marked con­trast with the more mod­est, though com­fort­able, stilt con­struc­tions near­by, and has become a fre­quent gath­er­ing place for Meas Muth’s neigh­bours, many of whom are rel­a­tives, sup­port­ers or sol­diers who fought under him. On the after­noon of the inter­view, neigh­bours stopped by peri­od­i­cal­ly to dis­cuss plans for the next day’s Kathen fes­ti­val cel­e­bra­tion to be held at the near­by Ta Sanh Chas pago­da, the con­struc­tion of which Meas Muth has large­ly funded.

One fam­i­ly brought a guest who had nev­er before been to the house. Upon enter­ing, she com­pli­ment­ed Meas Muth on the stones in the floor. Meas Muth looked down and said: “These stones, these are just sim­ple stones. They are not high-qual­i­ty.” The guest then walked to the stair­case, put her arm on the ban­is­ter and mar­velled at the sheen of the wood. Meas Muth replied, “That’s made out of just sim­ple wood. It is not a rare qual­i­ty. It is just nor­mal wood. Maybe you could find it anywhere.”

After 10 min­utes of small-talk, the fam­i­ly left, and Meas Muth answered ques­tions about the alle­ga­tions laid out in the Hed­er and Tit­te­more report.

“Yes, I remem­ber that man,” he said, refer­ring to Hed­er, the prin­ci­pal author. “He spoke Khmer flu­ent­ly, and then he just wrote blah blah. It wasn’t true. He just wrote what he heard, not what he saw.”

He said that, con­trary to the report, he spent the regime years as a “sim­ple leader” super­vis­ing work­ers in the Bat­tam­bang rice fields.

“I had nev­er heard about S‑21, because I was not in Phnom Penh. I was here, in Sam­lot, so I just knew every­thing around me,” he said.

He acknowl­edged hav­ing attend­ed the meet­ings men­tioned in the report, includ­ing a Gen­er­al Staff meet­ing in Sep­tem­ber 1976 at which Tuol Sleng was rep­re­sent­ed by its third-rank­ing cadre. But he said he did not remem­ber what was dis­cussed. “I can’t remem­ber because it’s been over 30 years already,” he said.

He said he would not be sur­prised if the court came to arrest him, though he argued that this would be a waste of everyone’s time, in no small part because, unlike Tuol Sleng prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, he would resist coop­er­at­ing with any attempt to pros­e­cute him. Not for him, appar­ent­ly, the teary con­fes­sions, the claims of respon­si­bil­i­ty or the pleas for for­give­ness that were the hall­marks of the Duch hearings.

“Duch is crazy, because he wants the tri­bunal to be the end of his life,” Meas Muth said. “For me, I will not coop­er­ate. I want to have a life, like all oth­er people.”

‘We must fol­low the leader’
Like Meas Muth, for­mer Khmer Rouge dis­trict chief Im Chem, who in Sep­tem­ber was report­ed to be a sus­pect by the French news­pa­per Le Monde, said the threat of unrest was real.

In an inter­view at her home in Anlong Veng, where she lives with her hus­band and one of her two daugh­ters, she said attempts to uncov­er the truth about old con­flicts would inevitably give rise to new ones.

“If you want to recov­er it, it will become new,” she said. “Peo­ple will go to protest in Phnom Penh to demand that the prime min­is­ter doesn’t arrest more peo­ple, because he said he wouldn’t. And if he allows it to hap­pen any­way, civ­il war will hap­pen again.”

The North­west Zone dis­trict Im Chem head­ed, Preah Net Preah, was home to Tra­paing Thmar Dam, the regime’s biggest irri­ga­tion project. “Thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple were sent there to dig this water basin, which is even big­ger than the baray at Angkor Wat,” Youk Chhang, direc­tor of the Doc­u­men­ta­tion Cen­ter of Cam­bo­dia (DC-Cam), said in an email. Noto­ri­ous for its bru­tal work­ing con­di­tions, the dam was includ­ed in a list of work sites falling under the scope of the inves­ti­ga­tion for the court’s sec­ond case that was made pub­lic last week. DC-Cam’s 2007 annu­al report describes Im Chem as “one of the over­seers of the [dam’s] construction”.

Im Chem, now 67, repeat­ed her claim that the dam was com­plet­ed by the time she was trans­ferred to Preah Net Preah, and she added that, as dis­trict chief, she had the author­i­ty only “to encour­age peo­ple to work in the rice fields”.

Sev­er­al for­mer cadres and experts said Im Chem was too far down the chain of com­mand to be a like­ly can­di­date for pros­e­cu­tion. “If she is one of the sus­pects, then the gates are wide open, since there are a num­ber of for­mer Khmer Rouge on her lev­el who are still alive,” said Alex Hin­ton, author of Why Did They Kill?: Cam­bo­dia in the Shad­ow of Genocide.

For her part, Im Chem said she sur­vived the regime by fol­low­ing Ta Mok from her native Takeo province to the north­west, adding that any crimes she might have com­mit­ted were the result of hav­ing obeyed his orders. “We live in a soci­ety where we must fol­low the leader,” she said.

She denied being con­cerned about talk of more arrests, though she, too, said she would not coop­er­ate with an investigation.

If the court were to detain her, she asked that she at least receive advanced notice. “If they want to take me to the court, they should alert me first, because some­times I take naps, and it would take me by sur­prise if I were sleep­ing,” she said. “Plus, I have said again and again that I do not want to go to that court.” 

‘Fin­ish the job’
Though Meas Muth and Im Chem were large­ly alone in their descrip­tions of the threat of civ­il war, many low-lev­el cadres shared their view that more arrests would do more harm than good, cit­ing con­cerns that any result­ing ten­sion, even if it didn’t lead to vio­lence, could com­pro­mise efforts to pro­mote nation­al rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and eco­nom­ic development.

Those res­i­dents of Anlong Veng and Sam­lot who have no ties to the regime, how­ev­er, for the most part encour­aged the court to con­tin­ue its pur­suit of for­mer leaders.

“The prime min­is­ter says he will not allow the court to arrest any­one else, but I don’t care,” said Long Thy, 49, who moved to Anlong Veng in 1999. “I want to see jus­tice. If they can inves­ti­gate even just one more leader, they should do it. It’s up to the court.”

Mao Sovan­nara, 41, a Roy­al Cam­bo­di­an Armed Forces sol­dier who has been post­ed in Sam­lot since 2005, said it was the government’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to rem­e­dy any prob­lems result­ing from more arrests, not to air its views on whether they should be car­ried out in the first place.

In 1975, at the age of 7, the Bat­tam­bang native was tak­en from his home and sent to a coop­er­a­tive in Ban­teay Meanchey, a move that sep­a­rat­ed him from his par­ents, his broth­er and his sis­ter. The con­di­tions in the rice fields, he said, were “like tor­ture”, and he nev­er saw his par­ents and broth­er again.

Speak­ing out­side the gro­cery stall they run in the Sam­lot mar­ket, both he and his sis­ter, Mao Ravin, said they had got­ten to know Meas Muth since mov­ing there, and that they had no prob­lem with him per­son­al­ly. “I do not dis­crim­i­nate against him,” Mao Ravin said. “He’s a good man now.”

But Mao Sovan­nara said his rela­tion­ships with Meas Muth and oth­er cadres had not altered his belief that the tri­bunal was nec­es­sary. “I’ve wait­ed over 30 years to see jus­tice, so the tri­bunal should be allowed to do its work,” he said. “The young gen­er­a­tion will get impor­tant knowl­edge, and also a les­son: When you start some­thing, you don’t stop in the mid­dle. You fin­ish the job.”

Click here for the PDF of the orig­i­nal version.

Source URL: http://robbiecoreyboulet.com/2009/11/kenya-icc-suspects-cautious-at-heroes-welcome/

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