KHAMERLOGUE

Everyday.com.kh, 10 May 2012

Comrade Prak Khan,former S-21 interrogator in ECC Court

Seated under a wooden house in a remote part of Takeo province’s Bati district, a grey-haired man in a blue and grey shirt takes a cigarette from his pack and lights it.
Exhaling a cloud of white smoke, the thin man, named Prak Khan, begins to speak.
“I never told my bitter background to anybody in my village, even my wife,” he says. “They only know me as a banana seller.”
What his neighbours don’t know is that from 1976 to 1979, Prak Khan, 60, was an interrogator at the infamous S-21 detention centre.
Records from the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-CAM) confirm that Prak Khan interrogated 51 prisoners, rewriting two of their confessions.
Some were high-level members of the Khmer Rouge purged from party ranks. Some were culled from the military, both Pol Pot’s and Lon Nol’s. Some were secretaries of districts and regions, and the rest were simply people accused of espionage by an increasingly paranoid Khmer Rouge leadership.
“My wife just found out when the ECCC invited me to testify on Case 001, so from now on, I have to speak out to let the young generation know about their history,” he says, his sadness plainly visible.
Prak Khan was born into a farming family in Takeo province, the oldest son out of five brothers and sisters. He worked on the farm feeding animals until 1971, when he joined the Khmer Rouge.
“Angkar [the Khmer Rouge’s shadowy leadership] said that if a man from the village did not serve as soldier for two or three years, women would not marry that man,” he says. “So, all the men joined Angkar.”
Prak Kahn was 17 years old, lured in, like many others, by the promise that he was fighting for his king and country.
“I was fighting bravely to protect the nation, but I never knew who my leader really was,” he says. “I only knew that I was fighting to get the country back for King Norodom Sihanouk. I only found out the names Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary when the Khmer Rouge controlled Phnom Penh.”
Prak Khan started working in Tuol Sleng in 1976, first as a guard, then as an interrogator when his superiors discovered he had an eighth-grade education.
He was one of 30 in his interrogator group; he received no training.
“Duch only allowed me to go along with the older interrogator and see what he did, and I followed him for a long time,” he says. “Then Duch let me start my job: one person questioning one person in a quiet place, trying to make the prisoner confess everything.”
With the prisoners’ confessions already in hand, Prak Khan says he didn’t ask specific questions. If the prisoners did not begin to confess, he would start to threaten them, then beat them with whip.
If the prisoner still didn’t confess, the torture escalated.
“For the prisoners who did not confess, we would put a plastic covering over their head and face, and stab a pin under their fingernail, so that they’d answer all the questions,” he explains.
The techniques, says Prak Khan, were up the interrogators.
“We used our own methods for getting answers, but for all the prisoners we tortured, we did not kill them, because we were afraid that we would lose their answers,” he says. “If the prisoner died, we were punished.”
Interrogations for one prisoner took two or three months, and were done in secret at all hours of the day and night, in a building separate from the main holding cells.
All the prisoners’ confessions were taken to Duch and Mam Nai, another interrogator, says Prak Khan, lighting another cigarette. Sometimes they were given back, along with orders to re-interrogate the prisoner because their answers were unsatisfactory.
“When I heard Duch was sentenced to spend his whole life in prison, it was justice, because victims’ families can accept that,” he sats. “If it wasn’t a whole life sentence, it would not be justice, because he ordered the killings of a lot of people in his regime.”
However, Prak Khan endorses Duch’s accusations against Nuon Chea.
“I know that what Duch said at the ECCC about Nuon Chea is true, because I saw Nuon Chea three or four times,” he says, calling Nuon Chea’s rebuttal a lie.
Nuon Chea, currently on trial before the ECCC, has vehemently denied he is responsible for the reign of terror that caused the deaths of a quarter of the population.
“He doesn’t want to be responsible for what he has done.”
After the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979, Prak Khan fled to Omlaing in Kampong Speu, not Thailand, as some records suggest.
He returned to his home province a year later, married, and raised four sons and one daughter.
Of the 30 interrogators from S-21, he is the only one left.
Prak Khan says a sense of responsibility for his own actions compelled him to cooperate fully with the ECCC when they asked for his testimony.
“I was a low-level officer, so I said what I knew from my job. There is nothing to be afraid of,” he says. “But if all the Khmer Rouge leaders try to keep silent, the young generation will not know anything about their history in the country.”

Bridget Di Certo,the PPPost,  30 April 2012Less than a week before Swiss co-investigating judge Laurent Kasper-Ansermet is scheduled to depart the Khmer Rouge tribunal and quit the investigations into government-opposed cases 003 and 004, the UN has not yet named a replacement.

Former Co-investigating judge Laurent Kasper-Ansermet in a hand-out Photo. Photo by Eccc

When contacted by the Post yesterday, the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General of the UN said there was no new information on the status of the UN’s appointment of the two new international judges required to replace German judge Siegfried Blunk, who quit in October, and Swiss reserve judge Kasper-Ansermet, who leaves the court this Friday.
Both judges alleged political interference in their investigations into cases 003 and 004 against five surviving senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime as the motivation behind their resignations.

On March 30, two weeks after Kasper-Ansermet announced his resignation, Martin Nesirky, spokesperson for the Secretary-General of the UN, said the UN had initiated a process for the selection of a new international co-investigating judge and a new reserve international co-investigating judge.

“The Secretary-General believes … it is essential that the judicial process in relation to cases 003 and 004 be brought back onto a positive course,” Nesirky said at the time.
However, there has been no further information made public about when the UN will appoint two new judges.

When Kasper-Ansermet departs, it will effectively stall investigations into both cases, for which hundreds of people have applied for civil party status.
The UN’s Special Expert at the tribunal, David Scheffer, did not respond to questions yesterday.

Clair Duffy, of tribunal monitor Open Society Justice Initiative, said she believed work was being done to appoint new judges, “but at the same time, I think everyone was hoping that the issue of a new judge would be settled in the lag time between the announcement of Kasper-Ansermet’s resignation, and its actual date of effect”.

“Cases [003 and 004] have been virtually stalled for years now,” she said yesterday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bridget Di Certo at bridget.dicerto@phnompenhpost.com

By Kristin Lynch, the Phnom Penh Post 27 April 2012

For three hours yesterday at the Khmer Rouge tribunal, Ieng Sary de­fence counsel Michael Karnavas meticulously dissected more than three days’ worth of testimony by Saloth Ban, attempting to prove that Pol Pot’s nephew was speculating and consequently deal a blow to the strength of his testimony.

Earlier in the week, Saloth Ban, the former secretary-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, testified that Ieng Sary, the ministry’s deputy prime minister, was the “real boss” and held “complete responsibility”, but yesterday, Karnavas attempted to disprove such claims, focusing on the role that Chhim Sam Aok, alias Pang, played in the regime.
Pang was the chairman of government office S-71, one of the two highest-level offices within the regime.
Saloth Ban’s responses to Karnavas’ interrogation painted a picture of a leader with “influence in every ministry”, who reported to no one and “could take people away as he pleased”.
Many Ministry of Foreign Affairs personnel, Saloth Ban said, were removed by Pang or his “people” and taken to re-education centres or the notorious S-21 prison, with what seemed like little oversight or challenge.
“Ieng Sary told me that when Pang arrived, I was to do whatever Pang needed”, Saloth Ban testified.
“Did Pang ever explain to you on whose authorisation he was requesting these people to be transferred out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?” Karnavas asked.
“No, he didn’t explain to me, and I did not ask him,” Saloth Ban replied.
Through a repetitive line of questioning, Karnavas attempted to demonstrate that Saloth Ban had limited first-hand knowledge about the inner workings of the regime and its decision-making process and had been making statements about such matters based on personal conclusion.
Earlier in the week, Saloth Ban had said that Pol Pot never acted alone when making decisions.

To contac the reporter on this story: Kristin Lynch at kristin.lynch@phnompenhpost.com

By Kristin Lynch, 20 April 2012, the PhnomPenh Post

The credibility of a witness who served as the former bodyguard of Brother No 2 Nuon Chea came under withering attack yesterday at the Khmer Rouge tribunal, as lawyers from all sides attempted to poke holes in his statements.

Pol Pot (front, left) walks with the Chinese delegation led by Wang Dongxing (front, right), during the delegation’s visit to Democratic Kampuchea on November 5, 1978. Khieu Samphan and Noun Chea follow behind. During this visit, Pol Pot is alleged to have asked for direct aid from China, but the request was purportedly rejected. (Source: Democratic Center of Cambodia)

Assistant co-prosecutor Dale Lysak seemingly tried to preempt such doubts about Saut Toeung’s reliability early on, explaining that when the former bodyguard was originally questioned by co-investigating judges in December 2007 he had denied being a bodyguard and had only admitted to the role two years later.

“I want to give you an opportunity to explain … why when you were first interviewed that you denied being the bodyguard of Nuon Chea. Can you explain why you did that?” Lysak asked.

“I was traumatised by the regime, and I didn’t want to face this event again,” Saut Toeung responded.

However, during cross-examination, Andrew Ianuzzi, legal consultant for the Nuon Chea defence team, revealed that Saut Toeung’s “change in testimony” had occurred after the co-investigating judges had told the former bodyguard he would not be incriminated by answers he gave.

Reading from the transcript of Saut Toeung’s testimony in December 2009, Ianuzzi recited: “‘The co-prosecutors wish to impress upon [Saut Toeung] that we have no intention of prosecuting him for anything he may have done during the Khmer Rouge era’.”

“The next bit is a statement by the co-investigating judge You Bunleng,” Ianuzzi continued, reading from the document. “‘We are explaining to you that you will not be prosecuted for events that occurred during Democratic Kampuchea.”
In each instance, however, Saut Toeung said he did not know about such statements or did not remember them.

Saut Toeung’s credibility was damaged during questioning earlier in the day by assistant prosecutor Dale Lysak and civil party lead co-lawyer Elisabeth Simonneau Fort, when he redacted statements he had previously made under oath to the co-investigating judges.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kristin Lynch at kristin.lynch@phnompenhpost.com

David Boyle,PhnomPenhPost,10 April 2012

Ieng Sary’s defence lawyer, Michael Karnavas, yesterday picked up where Nuon Chea’s defence team left off last week, hammering at the credibility of testimony given by the most potentially damaging witness in Case 002, convicted Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch.

Ieng Sary in court room. Photo by Eccc Pool

In an at times testy session of court, Karnavas suggested that gaps in Duch’s first-hand knowledge of events had been filled in by his exposure to Khmer Rouge documents and history books.

He forced the former chief of the Khmer Rouge’s notorious S-21 interrogation facility to concede that, in a statement made to the court’s co-investigating judges, he said he avoided work to the “maximum” and “thus never grasped anything concretely”.
“If we were to reflect back on a day in the life of comrade Duch, your existence was more or less S-21 and then back home?” Karnavas at one point asked.

Karnavas put forward examples of statements Duch had made to the court’s co-investigating judges, indicating limits to his knowledge in a line of questioning that was frequently objected to as leading by international deputy co-prosecutor William Smith.

Specifically, Karnavas focused on whether Duch could provide any concrete evidence suggesting that Ieng Sary was consulted on arrests in his role as minister of Foreign Affairs.

“In practice, I do not know,” Duch said, insisting that he knew Ieng Sary was involved because, following the principles of the regime and its rigid hierarchy, he had to have been.

Duch resisted efforts by Karnavas to make him concede that he had relied on secondary evidence to formulate what the prosecution is arguing is unique and reliable first-hand knowledge of the inner workings of the Khmer Rouge.
But Karnavas did demonstrate there were limits to what Duch, who conceded that he had subsequently read history books about the regime, remembered about events.

“The saying goes that mind your own business. I must know what is happening at S-21. [Things outside of S-21], that is not my business,” Duch told the court.

He also conceded that in one document he submitted to the court’s co-investigating judges, he referred to himself as a “researcher”, again furthering a line of questioning pursued by Karnavas in his attempt to discredit the first-hand nature of Duch’s testimony.

by Paul Everingham,19 March 2012 publshed by PhnomPenh Post

It help to alleviate my disappointment in, and bewilderment at, the relentless criticism of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia by some of my brothers and sisters in the human-rights movement when I remember that many of them have not had the same experience as I have.

Photographs of victims of the Khmer Rouge displayed at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. Photo by Sovan Philong

I happen to be of that generation who, throughout their adolescent years in the 1960s and ’70s would turn on the nightly television news to watch the unfolding events in Indochina with an increasing fascination and abhorrence.

Even at that tender age, it was obvious that great crimes against humanity were being committed on a daily basis.

Then, in February of 1980, while sitting in an aeroplane, I opened a news magazine to read with chilling horror about the fate of my friends Stuart Glass and Kerry Hamill.
Glass, a Canadian, Hamill, a New Zealander, and British citizen John Dewhurst had been captured by Khmer Rouge naval forces while sailing past the Cambodian coast in September, 1978.

Glass was probably the lucky one; he was shot and killed at sea.

Hamill and Dewhurst were taken to Tuol Sleng prison, where the last signed portions of their lengthy “confessions” were dated exactly two months after their capture. They were executed soon after.

This perhaps helps explain my acute awareness of the international community’s abysmal record in relation to Cambodia.

Not least in this series of gross betrayals was the United Nations’ insistence on recognising the clearly insane and genocidal Pol Pot forces as the legitimate Cambodian government throughout the 1980s.

This was not mere symbolism; it enabled the Khmer Rouge to rebuild and to wage another decade of devastation. For those of us who cared, it seemed that Cambodia’s agony would be eternal.

When peace and sanity finally arrived in the early 1990s, many of us hoped that some sort of justice would be applied to those most responsible.

These sentiments were tempered by the knowledge that none of the other readily identifiable culprits responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent Cambodians, Vietnamese and Laotians had faced any accountability.

Indeed, when UNTAC came to Cambodia in 1992, it failed to conduct any war-crimes investigations at all.

Fast-forward to February, 2010, and I found myself sitting in the public gallery of a fully constituted combined United Nations and Cambodian war crimes trial.

The man who directed the torture, interrogation and murder of at least 13,000 people at Tuol Sleng, including my friends, was sitting in the dock just 10 metres away.

In the two years since the trials began, I have had the opportunity to closely observe one of the most open, exhaustive and supremely fair trials ever conducted anywhere – and the commencement of a second, even more thorough, exercise in justice.

And all  this is occurring right here in Cambodia, in the very midst of the millions of ordinary people whose previous lives had been so comprehensively destroyed.

A population that, for more than 20 years, had been the plaything of a handful of mass murderers – some from within their own country and some from among the world’s most powerful leaders.

A nation that, just 30 short years ago, was a complete wasteland.

For many of us, this is an occurrence of miracle and wonder.

Perhaps, I thought, there was still hope for those who believe in the better side of human nature, for those who strive to advance human consciousness – indeed, for the further development of human civilisation.

Yet it seems this is all a great injustice to some – a transgression that must be vilified and impugned at every opportunity.

I speak, of course, of those preachers of human-rights perfectionism who are insisting that every single aspect of the Khmer Rouge tribunal is consistent with some fantastical, utopian (and, in fact, non-existent) “international standard of justice”.
Lieutenant William Calley served 42 months of home detention for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in March, 1968.

This, I believe, was the sum total of  “international-standard justice” delivered by the rest of the world for one of modern history’s darkest chapters: America’s, and its allies’, war in Indochina.

If the UN and the human-rights NGOs could more fully recognise the Khmer Rouge tribunal as a unique landmark in international justice, then perhaps they might be able to play a more constructive role – at least until the rest of the world catches up with what is going on in Cambodia.

The trials under way at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia are the only formal justice ever applied, and ever likely to be applied, to the whole Indochinese mega-atrocity.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Paul Everingham is accredited by ECCC Public Affairs as an independent researcher.

The PP Post by Bridget Di Certo with additional reporting by Cheang Sokha

20 March 2012

After four months of seemingly endless conflict, Laurent Kasper-Ansermet is leaving the Khmer Rouge tribunal.

Co-investigating judge Laurent Kasper-Ansermet in a hand-out photo. Photo by Eccc

Cambodian staff at the tribunal have stonewalled all efforts by the UN-nominated reserve co-investigating judge to investigate government-opposed cases 003 and 004, effectively forcing his resignation, the judge announced yesterday.

The Swiss national tendered his resignation to the UN secretary-general, effective on May 4, 2012, in the midst of what he called a “dysfunctional situation within the ECCC”.
“I am truly blocked in every aspect,” Kasper-Ansermet told the Post yesterday.

“It is illegal, and I cannot validate this situation any more.”

Kasper-Ansermet’s Cambodian counterpart, You Bunleng, has opposed his authority to act in the capacity of reserve international co-investigating judge since the day the Swiss judge arrived in Cambodia.

However, this conflict has now spread and embroils the majority of tribunal sections key to fair and proper investigations into cases 003 and 004.

Information obtained by the Post yesterday revealed the rapidly deteriorating situation at the tribunal, in which national officers have prevented Kasper-Ansermet from conducting even the most basic functions of his office.

The head of the court management section and case file officer have refused to file Kasper-Ansermet’s Order on Resuming the Judicial Investigation in Case 003 under the instructions of the OCIJ national legal team leader and You Bunleng, a source from the court said yesterday.

This obstruction to filing has been extended to all case file documents created under the leadership of Kasper-Ansermet since his arrival in Cambodia, according to the source.

The effect of this is that no steps, including the resumption of investigations in Case 003, the continuation of investigations in Case 004 or records of investigators informing the five suspects of the charges against them and their rights have been filed with the court.

Further, as previously reported by the Post, national staff within the Court Management Section disregarded a judicial decision by Kasper-Ansermet to allow civil party applicant Rob Hamill’s lawyers access to the case file in 003.

This skirmish over access resulted in the OCIJ international legal team leader being banned from the Records and Archives Unit by the chief of the Court Management Section.

Access was only granted later by international staff.

Amid this widening divide, the source said that the national greffier of the OCIJ and You Bunleng’s administrative assistant have withheld the official OCIJ seal – the symbol of judicial authority of the office – from international staff in the office.

The Ministry of Interior additionally rejected a request by international staff for another seal because the request was not signed by both co-investigating judges.

It is in this context that Kasper-Ansermet opened an internal investigation for “interference with the administration of justice”, according to his press release yesterday.

However, even this internal investigation has been blocked by those under investigation who refused to respond to summons issued by international investigators.
International investigators were told that You Bunleng was the sole decider of policy within the OCIJ and made clear that all actions emanated from instructions of the Cambodian judge.

When contacted yesterday about the allegations, You Bunleng denied there was any ill intention on his part against Kasper-Ansermet.

“I actually never have had any dispute with him,” You Bunleng said by telephone yesterday.

“Of course I have met him, and we have discussed about work procedure, but my stance toward him has not changed from my previous statement.”

You Bunleng referred to a letter he addressed to Kasper-Ansermet on February 27, titled “Abrupt stop of unlawful acts and of the use of my name to link to these acts”.

You Bunleng wrote: “I would like to call for your abrupt stop of these unlawful acts and of the use of my name to link to such deeds, particularly to what you have so far considered solely as disagreements between co-investigating judges.”

The Post has previously reported on Kasper-Ansermet’s registration of a disagreement between the two judges.

In his response to that letter, Kasper-Ansermet wrote: “[I] urge you to comply with the law and to refrain from sending me admonitions that are without legal basis and whose sole aim seems to be undermining the proper performance of my duties.”

Council of Ministers’ spokesman Ek Tha said the government had no comment on Kasper-Ansermet’s resignation.

“All I can say is that the Royal Government of Cambodia is very clear and has never and will never interfere with the work of the ECCC,” Ek Tha said.

Clair Duffy of court monitor Open Society Justice Initiative said this was just the latest development in a history of Cambodian tribunal staff acting in accordance with executive will in respect to the government-opposed cases 003 and 004.

“It is interesting to see You Bunleng talk about Kasper-Ansermet’s unlawful conduct when you [consider that] every action and inaction and the unlawfulness of [Bunleng’s] conduct has been documented left, right and centre,” Duffy said.

“The UN and donors can stand upright now and address the heart of this issue.”

CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE CONTROVERSY FILE 1.0
3/ Morris/Wrong Man

Wall Street Journal 17 April 1995

The Wrong Man to Investigate Cambodiaby Stephen J. MORRISToday is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of one of the great moral catastrophes of our brutal century — the fall of Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge and the subsequent extinction of more than a million souls in the killing fields of Cambodia. As this unhappy observance approached, Congress last year created an Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigations under the State Department’s East Asia and Pacific Bureau. Its mission is to fully document Khmer Rouge crimes, and train Cambodians who will work for a tribunal to prosecute Khmer Rouges leaders.

It’s a worthy goal, but in a bizarre exercise of its mandate, The State Department has awarded $500,000 of US taxpayers money for a Yale University project headed by a man who spent most of the years of Khmer Rouge rule defending the regime and denouncing its critics. In considering applications, State had its choice of individuals with impeccable reputations and credentials for this important project. Yet for reasons that are unfathomable, research into Khmer Rouge crimes is to be carried out by Ben Kiernan, an Australian radical activist cum academic known as one of the Khmer Rouge’s most ardent defenders during Pol Pot’s reign of terror. Mr Kiernan eventually changed his line, denouncing the Pol Pot regime. But he still champions another Khmer Rouge faction that is now in the Phnom Penh government.

An Appalling Record

To understand why the choice of Mr. Kiernan as chief documenter of Cambodia’ nightmare is so appalling, let us recall the Khmer Rouge’s record, and Mr. Kiernan’s public statement during the time their crimes were being committed.

After the surrender of the Lon Nol government on April 17, 1975, the victorious Khmer Rouge leaders deported the two million residents of Phnom Penh and hundreds of thousands from other Cambodian towns in the countryside, where they became slave laborers. All former military officers and government officials who the Khmer Rouge could identify, and often their entire families, were slaughtered. Then the Khmer Rouge sought out and killed anyone they could find with an education. Between their victory in 1975 and defeat by invading Vietnamese in 1978, the Khmer Rouge executed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and condemned perhaps a million more to death by starvation and disease.

When all this began, Ben Kiernan was a graduate student in Australia specializing in Cambodia. And soon after the communist victory in April 1975, he published a flattering account of the nominal leader of the Khmer Rouge. In a June 1975 article in the Dyason House Papers titled “Khieu Samphan, Cambodia’s Revolutionary Leader,” Mr. Kiernan wrote that “Khieu Samphan’s personality — particularly his unassuming manner, ready smile and simpler habits — endeared him to Khmer peasants. Himself a peasant by birth, he is said to have been somewhat ascetic in his behavior, but never fanatical and always calm.”

When terrified Cambodians began escaping across the border into Thailand that summer and fall, however, a totally different picture of Khieu Samphan and Cambodia’s revolution emerged. Interviewed by Western reporters, the refugees provided horrifying accounts of barbarity.

But Ben Kiernan was angry with the Western press, not the Khmer Rouge. Writing in 1976 in the Melbourne Journal of Politics, Mr. Kiernan asserted that “there is ample evidence in Cambodia and other sources that the Khmer Rouge movement is not the monster that the press have recently made it out to be.” M. Kiernan admitted that some terror had been created by what he called “untrained and vengeful” soldiers in Northwest Cambodia. But he explained this a strictly local breach of discipline. “These atrocities were committed against orders from the [central] government,” he wrote, “and there is no evidence that the situation in eastern, southern and central Cambodia resembles that of the north-west.”

Then, as today, Mr. Kiernan drew a distinction between good Khmers Rouge and bad Khmers Rouge. In another 1976 article, “Social Cohesion in Revolutionary Cambodia,” published in the foreign-policy journal Australian Outlook, he embellished his apologia for the revolution with a Marxist class analysis of how newly liberated poor peasants were taking revenge against the rich. At the same time as hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were dying of hunger, Mr. Kiernan was confidently predicting a wonderful future for Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. “As a result of the Khmer Rouge irrigation program,” he wrote, “Cambodian agriculture will be modernized and peasant living standards will be increased.”

Mr. Kiernan wrote and spoke tirelessly against most refugee accounts and Western reporting. In 1977, for instance, when harrowing photographs of Khmer Rouge forced labor were published in Western newspapers, Mr. Kiernan wrote to a Melbourne newspaper, the Age, falsely asserting that what he called “photographs of alleged atrocities in Cambodia” had been “exposed as fake”. His conclusion: “The Western press have more of an interest in a bloodbath in Cambodia than the communists do.”

Mr. Kiernan’s conclusion were at variance with those of other interviewers of Cambodian refugees. For example, François Ponchaud, who had interviewed hundreds of Cambodian peasants from all regions, wrote in 1977: “The liquidation of all towns and former authorities was not improvised, nor was it a reprisal or expression of wanton cruelty on the part of local cadres. The scenario for every town and village in the country was the same and followed exact instructions issued by the highest authorities.”

During 1977-78, Mr. Kiernan and his Cambodian-born wife, Chanthou Boua, were part of the editorial collective that produced “News from Kampuchea”, a newsletter extolling life in Khmer Rouge Cambodia. The Kiernans did not know then that the regime they were promoting had killed Ms. Boua’s family. But this subsequent discovery did not shake their faith in communism.

At the beginning of 1978, The Vietnamese communists and the Khmers Rouge, who since 1970 had been allies against “U.S. imperialism”, publicly split. Western leftists were force to choose sides. Mr. Kiernan’s decision was assisted by event in Cambodia.

During 1977-878, Pol Pot, fearing traitors, purged his own Khmer Rouge apparatus, especially in the eastern zone. As the purges spread, many who had willingly obeyed Pol Pot’s orders in 1975-78 fled for their lives to Vietnam. These cadres returned with Vietnam’s invading army in 1979, denouncing the “Pol Pot genocidal clique” but celebrating communism and the Khmer Rouge.

The creation of a Cambodian communist alternative under Vietnamese sponsorship gave Mr. Kiernan a new mission. Since 1979, he has worked tirelessly as the academic world’s de facto defence lawyer for what he considers the good Khmers Rouge of the eastern zone and their Vietnamese patrons. There may have been some differences in the degree of brutality between eastern Cambodia and other zones during the Pol Pot years. But the distinction Mr. Kiernan draws is morally equivalent to praising the relatively milder Nazi policy in France by contrasting it with the more brutal Nazi policy in Russia.

Interestingly, Mr. Kiernan has maintained a long professional with association with the French activist Serge Thion , who was not only France’s leading supporter of the Khmers Rouges from 1972 to 1978 but also a promoter of the view that the Nazis did not murder six million Jews. Equally revealing is Mr. Kiernan editorship of a 1985 book that celebrates the life of Wilfred Burchett, the Australian journalist who entered Chinese-run POW camps during the Korean war and threatened Allied prisoners. The Australian government withdrew Burchett’s passport, while North Korea’s Kim Il Sung personally awarded him a medal.

Many Australians were puzzled in 1991 when Mr. Kiernan was plucked from obscurity at the University of Wollongong for a post at Yale University. Members of Yale’s distinguished history department probably did not know his full record when they offered him a temporary position.

A Puzzling Choice

But how did the State Department, which is paid to know about the politics of foreigners it funds, choose Mr. Kiernan to carry out research into Cambodia’s history? There were eight other applications submitted, many by teams (including one from the founder of Amnesty International USA) more distinguished than Mr. Kiernan’s.

State Department officials may claim that the Kiernan’s team proposal was more comprehensive and simpler to administer. And they may point to his modified views on Cambodia namely, that he no longer supports Pol Pot. But given his record of scholarship tailored to extremist political views and his current allegiance to potentially guilty politicians in Phnom Penh, Mr. Kiernan cannot be expected to lead a credible investigation.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Assistant Secretary Winston Lord can easily rectify this problem by withdrawing the award from Yale and re-opening the grant process. If they refuse to reverse a terrible decision that disgraces American honor and spits upon the graves of more than a million Cambodian, then Congress should take this matter into its own hands.

Mr. Morris, an Australian, is a research associate in Harvard’s department of government

By Bridget Di Certo,The PP Post,16 March 2012

Aussie Ben Kiernan insulted UN hybrid KR Kangaroo court in Phnom Penh

An award-winning historian who has studied, and written extensively about, the Khmer Rouge regime was too busy to appear in person at the tribunal trying the alleged perpetrators of its mass atrocities, prosecutors told the court yesterday.Prosecutors said author and Yale professor Ben Kiernan, who has studied Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge for about 40 years, was too busy to attend the UN-backed tribunal in person until some time in 2013.“We request the chamber to allow his testimony by video link,” senior assistant prosecutor Vincent de Wilde said. “Video link or nothing are the only options before us.”

Defence counsel were incredulous at Kiernan’s inability – or unwillingness – to attend the tribunal in person and give evidence. “We don’t see how it is that the gentleman is unavailable completely,” said Michael Karnavas, legal council for former foreign affairs minister Ieng Sary.

“He teaches a couple of classes [at Yale University] and the teaching schedule is already online, and he does not have any teaching obligations during the summer period,” Karnavas added. “The question is whether Kiernan is willing to come here, not whether he is able to come here.”

Kiernan first came to Cambodia to research the emerging communist party prior to 1975, before foreigners were evicted from Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge.

He subsequently returned to visit Thai refugee camps and spent the following decades conducting extensive research on the regime, collecting documents, writing books and articles on the events leading up to, during and after the fall of Democratic Kampuchea.

“We are disappointed by his apparent lack of enthusiasm to appear in court,” said Michiel Pestman, defence counsel for Brother No 2 Nuon Chea.

Defence counsel for former head of state Khieu Samphan likewise condemned Kiernan’s lack of availability “for an entire year”.

“I am somewhat puzzled by the apparent unavailability for an entire year of an individual  . . .  who has worked for more than 40 years on such a significant event as Cambodian history, and you are the international court designated to examine these facts and the individual does not find the time to attend these needs,” Anta Guisse said.

“His physical presence in the hearing is paramount.”

Both the prosecution and the civil parties maintained that hearing the expert by video link on a day yet to be determined would be sufficient.

Read here:  www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/cambear5.htm

http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~sophal/twoside.html

Does Ben have skeletons in the closet? This historian and his intimate past ideology synchronized with Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime.

Would the cradling hands kill? Mirror the mirror tells it all about the turned coat Historian.

Mme Boua Chanthou,the Historian ex-wife

Was he,the Historian, not a wife beater?

Local newspapers can tell and some noted Cambodians living in Connecticut knew of the Historian human darkside.