Cannabilism during the Khmer Rouge regime

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Cannabilism during the Khmer Rouge regime

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Re: Cannabilism during the Khmer Rouge regime

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I would rename this thread if I could to make it more generally about continuing stories from the latest proceedings.

More from the ongoing KR trial testimonials:
Man recounts slaughter of Vietnamese family in KRT testimony
Wed, 2 March 2016
Erin Handley
A former teacher was told to “cut off the wounded flesh” for the sake of the revolution after his Vietnamese wife and their three children were killed under the Democratic Kampuchea regime, the Khmer Rouge tribunal heard yesterday.

The traumatic account, related by civil party Uch Sunlay, continued the tribunal’s examination of Case 002/02’s third trial topic – the alleged genocide of Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese.

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In September 1978, Sunlay said, he and other workers who had Vietnamese spouses were taken on a two-day trip to cut bamboo, while his wife and children were carted away to be slaughtered. His children, he said, were “swung against a tree and died instantly”.

When the workers returned, Sunlay said his co-operative chief told them to steel their emotions before telling them their families had been taken away. “I want all of you comrades to get rid of this wounded flesh . . . in order to build the revolutionary labour class,” Sunlay recalled the co-operative chief saying. “I said what he instructed us to say, but in my heart I suffered.”

Sunlay also recounted how his father, a devout Buddhist, was killed for burning incense, while his father-in-law was forced to remarry in a ceremony of 11 couples. “All this suffering and harm cannot be forgotten,” Sunlay said.

His testimony before the court will continue today. It came after the civil party testimony of Khouy Muoy, a woman of Vietnamese and Chinese descent, who said she was “fortunate” to have survived the regime after losing her parents and siblings – 10 members of her family in total. “There is nothing that could compare to the loss of my family members,” Mouy said.

In an announcement yesterday, the court said it will begin hearing evidence on security centres and internal purges today – the fourth trial topic in Case 002/02 against former Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan.

The hearings will pinpoint alleged atrocities at Au Kanseng Security Centre, in Ratanakkiri province; Phnom Kraol, in Mondulkiri province; and Phnom Penh’s notorious S-21 prison, before moving on to allegations of forced marriage and the conflict between Cambodia and Vietnam.

According to the announcement, the court will then shift focus to the roles of Chea and Samphan in the alleged crimes, with evidentiary hearings expected to wrap up later this year and a judgement to be handed down in 2017.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/m ... -testimony
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Re: Cannabilism during the Khmer Rouge regime

Post by rozzieoz »

I don't even know how to start processing that level of pain and loss.
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Re: Cannabilism during the Khmer Rouge regime

Post by juansweetpotato »

Lest we forget the involvement of our governments.

They will never be brought to trial. BTW does anyone else note that all the brutal crimes are always reported as happening in those brief few years?
Weren't the PDK zones run as brutally? I've read they were even more brutal after the Viets invaded.
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Re: Cannabilism during the Khmer Rouge regime

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More haunting testimonials from the KR era
Witness tells court of re-education, killings
Thu, 3 March 2016
Erin Handley
It was for the crime of cutting rubber plants with an “upper class” or “feudalist” technique that Phon Thol found himself arrested, interrogated and imprisoned at Au Kanseng security centre, the Khmer Rouge tribunal heard yesterday.

Thol and his pregnant wife were carted off in 1977 for “re-education” at the detention centre, which was brought under the microscope yesterday as the court began the security centre phase of the current Case 002/02 against former Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan.
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Bearing witness to the atrocities at the Ratanakkiri province security centre, Thol told of killings, torture and fierce suspicion of alleged KGB or CIA spies.

He told the court a woman had her back sliced open and her gall bladder removed. According to his testimony, the organ was strung up in the kitchen – a gruesome “omen” for the other prisoners. Some died of dysentery or diarrhoea; another was shot for fleeing the compound.

“My hands were tied and my [feet] were shackled, but I was not tortured,” Thol said. “Other detainees were beaten and electrocuted . . . They used pliers to torture them until they became unconscious.”

Through cracks in bamboo walls where he lay shackled, he saw a large group of ethnic Jarai people brought to the centre and taken away. Later, while he had been entrusted to guard a jackfruit plantation, he stumbled upon the rim of a mass grave.

“I suspected that Jarai minority people had perhaps been killed at that place.”

When questioned by civil party lawyers, Thol said he did not know whether the security guards acted according to their own rules, or if directions trickled down from Khmer Rouge’s upper echelon.

The centre is one of three that will be examined by the court in the current case, with evidence of internal purges at Phnom Kraol in Mondulkiri province and S-21 in Phnom Penh to be addressed in the upcoming hearings.

Prior to Thol taking the stand, civil party Uch Sunlay continued his testimony from Tuesday’s session, delving into the details of the murder of his Vietnamese wife and their children.

Rhetorically, he asked the court room: “Why [did the Khmer Rouge] have a policy to kill even the babies and the infants? Is it that you [wanted to] become immortal?”

The trial continues today.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/w ... n-killings
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Re: Cannabilism during the Khmer Rouge regime

Post by Jamie_Lambo »

its so hard to imagine how scary them times would have been
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Re: Cannabilism during the Khmer Rouge regime

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The author of "Why Did They kill" comes in to testify at the KRT. Poor Nuon Chea objects to the author's use of the term "genocidal regime", not that it doesn't apply, but that the author is not an expert in the field of genodical regimes so shouldn't use that term so "carelessly".
KRT discusses genocide’s roots
Tue, 15 March 2016
Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon
Expert witness professor Alexander Hinton, author of Why Did They Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide, testified at the Khmer Rouge tribunal yesterday on the social and political factors that led to the perpetration of alleged crimes under the Democratic Kampuchea regime.

Defendants Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan are being tried on charges of genocide against the Vietnamese and the ethnic Cham in the current Case 002/02, and Hinton, an anthropology PhD who holds the UNESCO chair on genocide prevention at Rutgers University, yesterday expounded on his model of “ideological genocide”, which he argues fits the Cambodian context.

“One of the ‘primes’ you find in virtually every genocide is some sort of socioeconomic upheaval,” Hinton told the court, explaining that in 1970s Cambodia that prime could have been the conflict in neighbouring Vietnam “and waves of upheaval that were linked to that”, such as the US bombing under Operation Menu and the 1971 coup.

“In situations of existential angst people tend to gravitate towards messages that are clear, simple and – amidst the chaos of upheaval – a vision of a better world,” Hinton continued, pointing to the national emblem of Democratic Kampuchea, which depicted a sort of agro-industrial utopia, as an embodiment of such a vision.

Another factor, Hinton continued is “the manufacturing of difference” – the process of separating targeted groups like the Vietnamese and Cham from the general population.

An example provided later was the use of terminology in propaganda such as “rats, running dogs, germs” to dehumanise, which reduces the “moral inhibition” to killing those victim groups, Hinton argued.

Throughout the day prosecutor William Smith presented Hinton with excerpts of Khmer Rouge radio broadcasts and publications such as the Revolutionary Flag magazine, which Hinton repeatedly affirmed as contributing to the genocidal process and the “moral restructuring” which constituted the “revolutionary consciousness” of the Khmer Rouge.

“It lays out target groups against which violence can be perpetrated,” Hinton said of the propaganda, adding “these are precisely the sorts of [categorisations] that you find being used by many groups, [like] ISIS today . . . language of finding the other that needs to be eliminated”.

More than once, Nuon Chea defender Victor Koppe objected to Hinton’s liberal use of terminology, and questioned whether – “being an anthropologist” – he actually had the expertise to shed light on the evidence.

“My client downstairs is quite upset with things that he heard from his holding cell . . . carelessly using the word[s] ‘genocidal regime’ and ‘genocide’. I find that way outside of the scope of the expertise also, of this . . . expert,” he said.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/k ... ides-roots
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Khmer Rouge Tribunal Charges Ta An With Genocide

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Khmer Rouge Tribunal Charges Ta An With Genocide

BY GEORGE WRIGHT | MARCH 15, 2016 | អានជាភាសាខ្មែរ

Nearly a year after the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia charged former Khmer Rouge official Ao An, better known by his revolutionary alias Ta An, with crimes against humanity, the tribunal on Monday heaped a slew of new charges on the aging suspect, including genocide.

Ta An, 83, was charged by International Co-Investigating Judge Michael Bohlander with committing genocide against Cham Muslims, along with crimes against humanity at a wide range of sites during his tenure as deputy secretary of the Central Zone of Democratic Kampuchea.

Ao An (Dara Vanthan/DC-Cam)
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The alleged crimes against humanity include the persecution of former Lon Nol soldiers and Khmer Rouge cadre and their families in the central and east zones. He also stands accused of other “inhumane acts,” including forced marriage, rape and enforced disappearances.

The latest charges will be added to already-laid charges of premeditated homicide and crimes against humanity including murder, extermination, and persecution on political and religious grounds.

The sites where the crimes were allegedly committed include Kompong Cham province’s Wat Au Trakon security center, where about 30,000 people are thought to have perished. The pagoda has been a common topic in the segment of Case 002 relating to the alleged genocide of Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese, with many witnesses testifying during the ongoing trial of Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan about mass executions there.

Ta An is the third mid-ranking official to be charged with genocide in the government-opposed cases 003 and 004. Meas Muth, the commander of the regime’s navy, and Ta Tith, the former acting secretary of the Northwest Zone, were charged with genocide in December.

Ta An, who lives in Battambang province, waived his right to be present at Monday’s hearing and was represented in court by his lawyers, according to Lars Olsen, a spokesman for the tribunal.

Richard Rogers, a lawyer for Ta An, said he had been expecting the new charges against his client, but was surprised by how extensive they were.

more...
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/khme ... de-109883/
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Nuon Chea testifies

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Chea denies animus claims in tribunal speech
Fri, 18 March 2016
Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon
Image
Ex-Democratic Kampuchea brother number two Nuon Chea confronted expert witness Alexander Hinton yesterday at the Khmer Rouge tribunal, challenging his assertions that Khmer Rouge propaganda had expressed racial animosity towards the Vietnamese and advocated the killing of Vietnamese civilians.

The alleged genocide against the ethnic Vietnamese and Cham minority are key charges against Chea and fellow co-defendant Khieu Samphan in the current Case 002/02, though the Chea defence has long argued that the regime’s alleged targeting of ethnic Vietnamese had nothing to do with race – a prerequisite for genocide – and everything to do with its problematic relations with Vietnam as a state.

Hinton had previously testified extensively on the Khmer Rouge regime’s deployment of the colloquial and often derogatory term “yuon” – used to describe Vietnamese people – characterising it as an incitement to violence.

He also drew a parallel between the violent consequences of anti-Vietnamese rhetoric and the sporadic reprisals that ac-companied anti-Muslim sentiments in the US after 9/11.

“The [US] government began to talk about Muslims and Arabs in derogatory terms, as barbarians and savages, and in the United States, there began to be attacks on people,” Hinton said.

However, in a 10-minute commentary prior to adjournment, Chea took issue with Hinton’s testimony on the use of the word Yuon.

“I have listened to the testimony, and I feel uncomfortable with that,” Chea said, going on to recite the definition of Yuon from a 1967 edition of Samdech Chuon Nath’s Khmer dictionary, which states the term refers simply to residents of territories that largely comprise modern-day Vietnam.

“So Democratic Kampuchea did not mean to incite anyone, and the term is clearly defined in that dictionary, and actually Pol Pot gave instructions to us that we should not regard them [Vietnamese] as our hereditary enemy; they were our friends, but we had contradictions with them,” he said, adding “although [Pol Pot] did not elaborate further on those contradictions”.

Responding further to the rhetoric of “one of ours for 30 of theirs”, which was discussed by parties in the context of a Pol Pot speech reproduced in the April 1978 edition of Revolutionary Flag magazine, Chea argued that this was simply a question of “militia military tactics”.

“Pol Pot said we should only deploy a smaller number [of forces] against the larger number [of Vietnamese forces] because we had only a limited number of troops,” he said, adding that “it did not in any way refer to the killing of any Yuon civilians”.

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http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/c ... nal-speech
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