An estimated 1.7 million Cambodian citizens died under the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979. It has taken almost 30 years to bring those responsible for the atrocities in the killing fields of Cambodia to justice. But a legal landmark was reached today.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, also known as the ECCC, is the tribunal responsible for trying senior members of the Khmer Rouge. Today, the court handed down a guilty verdict for the former director of Cambodia’s notorious Tuol Sleng prison. Kaing Guek Eav, known as “Comrade Duch,” was accused of overseeing mass torture and executions at the prison, resulting in the deaths of more than 14,000 people.
The tribunal proceedings are being closely monitored around the world, thanks in part to the efforts of a number of Chicagoans.
Leon Lim survived the Khmer Rouge regime of the late 1970s, and remembers the first night soldiers took over in April of 1975. “At midnight, four soldier[s] came to my house and asked [if] any member[s] of my family were member[s] of the old government or soldier[s] of the old government. At that moment, my life changed forever,” says Lim.
In April of 1975 Lim was a 22-year-old medical student living in Cambodia’s capitol, Phnom Penh. But with the Khmer Rouge takeover, the entire population was forced into farming labor camps.
“Every day that I work in the camp there, I see how they tortured people. Sometimes I see [a] whole village disappear,” he recalls. “The whole village disappeared. They executed them all in one night and dumped all the bodies in an old bombed crater,” he says. “I didn’t know if I would be the next one executed. Every time I see somebody approach me, a soldier approach me, I’m worried I’ll be the next person to be executed.”
After surviving more than three years and eight months in the labor camp, Lim set out for his village to find his family but it was too late.
“My parents and the rest of my siblings were executed by the Khmer Rouge. That’s the moment…it’s hard to describe it because every time I talk about it, I start to break down. Can you believe that your parents and siblings [were] all executed? It’s really hard. At that moment, my life changed forever, again.”
Almost 30 years after leaving his home country, Lim visits the only memorial to victims of the genocide outside of Cambodia. It rests inside the Cambodian American Heritage Museum on Chicago’s North Side.
Lim helped build “The Wall of Remembrance,” as it was known in 2004. 80 glass panels, each inscribed with nearly 25,000 names, represent the almost 2 million people who perished under the Khmer Rouge’s regime.
For the families of those who lost their lives in the killing fields, the memorial serves as a place of healing. But for many, the search for closure continues in the special court chambers in Cambodia.
Set up through a joint partnership of the United Nations and the Royal Government of Cambodia, the special courts were created to try the senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge, such as “Comrade Duch,” the director of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison.
“It is absolutely impossible to bring justice to 1.7 million victims and their families who have survived. That’s just impossible,” says Northwestern Law professor David Scheffer. “But, I think by bringing the senior leaders to account, we not only achieve some measure of justice but also help embellish and strengthen the historical record in Cambodia, because these trials produce an enormous amount of evidence and testimony, and all of that becomes part of the historical record.”
But when Illinois State Senator Jeff Schoenberg visited Cambodia in 2006 on a fact-finding mission, he was stunned by what else he learned about the tribunals.
“Standing in that open tribunal hall – I asked the representatives of the United Nations who were leading the tour if they were going to be showing the Khmer Rouge leadership tribunal on the internet. I just assumed that they were going to. And I found out that there were no plans whatsoever, largely out of budgetary constraints,” says Schoenberg. “And it immediately sparked my thinking that this is a very powerful story that needs to be told…not just within Cambodia, but throughout the world. We had all witnessed a genocide where people needed to be held accountable for their actions. And certainly, when I came back, I was determined to set about making something happen.”
He did that by securing funding from the JB & MK Pritzker family for a website – the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor — and by enlisting the help of David Scheffer, who is also Director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University.
“I think it’s a fantastic demonstration of how here in the depths of America and Chicago, we actually have created a very, very strong link to a judicial development in Cambodia. And frankly, we’re at the forefront of it,” says Scheffer.
Scheffer served as Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues under former President Bill Clinton and was instrumental in helping to set up the Cambodian war crimes tribunal.
“It takes time – international justice,” he says. “There’s always impatience in the international community, but these are huge crimes – they require a lot of investigation. They go after very senior people, and I think justice has been long delayed in Cambodia — but finally it will not be denied.”
The site itself is intended to track all of the developments, jurisprudence and related events surrounding the Cambodian genocide court proceedings.
“It’s not only the only place in the world where you can watch the trial proceedings…but you can also access all the relevant documents for the trial. There are blogs and guest essays from international legal scholars and human rights advocates,” emphasizes Schoenberg. “It really has become a focal point for stimulating more thinking and greater awareness about this atrocity so that the proceedings would be transparent, and so that the lessons of what occurred during this genocide would be learned and not repeated.”
And for survivors like Lim, it is another way to honor those who lost their lives — by sharing their stories with the world.
“The trial, even though it takes a long time to establish and to finish, it’s worth something for the Cambodian people. It’s worth something.”
