Word: cambodians
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With his hands raised prayer-like in front of his face in a somphea, the most deferential Cambodian greeting, Kaing Guek Eav didn't look like a man who once governed a prison where some 16,000 men, women and children were imprisoned and later executed. Wearing a white polo shirt and with his graying hair neatly combed, the rail-thin 65-year-old appeared relaxed as he rose, pressed his palms together and addressed the United Nations-backed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal on Tuesday at the first public hearing of a former member of Pol Pot's brutal regime...
...hearing that ended Wednesday in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh was a watershed for Cambodia. With almost three decades having elapsed since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, some believed a tribunal would never take place, and that justice would not be served for the estimated 1.7 million people who died during the regime?s radical political and social experiment between...
...Vann Nath, 62, another S-21 survivor and a well-known Cambodian artist, said he did not attend the hearing as Duch's appeal for release, eloquently argued by his U.N.-sponsored lawyers, made a mockery of the dead and those who narrowly survived. "Where was the U.N.?? he asks. ?Where were the international judges and lawyers when I was in S-21? Where were the human rights groups to help me at that time...
...issue before the court on Tuesday and Wednesday wasn?t the fate of Duch?s former prisoners, but his own detention without trial by the Cambodian military court, which arrested him in 1999, long before the tribunal took custody of him on July 31 and charged him with crimes against humanity and war crimes. Duch's two lawyers argued that their client's rights had been so violated by his more than eight years of incarceration that he should be released, or at least placed under house arrest, ahead of his trial - or compensated with a reduced sentence if found...
...Youk Chhang, for his part, says Ieng Sary was considered one of the "untouchable" Khmer Rouge leaders. His arrest and that of his wife have sent powerful messages to the Cambodian people that the tribunal is truly working to find justice for the victims of the regime. "[Ieng Thirith] was minister of social action and education," Youk Chhang says. "She will have a lot to tell us [in court...