Posted on 03/31/2009 10:16:47 AM PDT by angkor
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA (AP) - The man who ran the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison in Cambodia accepted responsibility Tuesday for torturing and executing thousands of inmates and expressed "heartfelt sorrow" for his crimes.
Kaing Guek Eav (pronounced "Gang Geck Ee-uu"), better known as Duch ("Doik"), told the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal he wanted to apologize for his actions under the Khmer Rouge, whose radical policies while in power from 1975 to 1979 left an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians dead.
Duch, 66, who commanded the group's main S-21 prison, accepted responsibility for the crimes committed there, "especially the torture and execution of people." As many as 16,000 men, women and children are believed to have been brutalized and killed at S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng.
"I would like to express my deep regret and my heartfelt sorrow," Duch said.
He is charged with committing crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as torture and homicide, and could face a maximum penalty of life in prison. Cambodia has no death penalty.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Duch was arrested 5 to 10 years ago while working in some Christian mission in Cambodia. He's the only one of the despicable KR leadership to have admitted to his unspeakable crimes, and he's done so since his arrest. The others (including Khieu Samphan with his PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris) protest to this very day that they were innocent, or even that the millions murdered are "a myth."
Truly rotten and evil old men who 30 years later cannot own up to their crimes.
By the way there are a few other reports this week mentioning Pol Pot's death as a "heart attack."
That's not at all true. One of Pol Pot's KR guards admitted in 1999 or 2000 (and it was only briefly reported in the press) that Pol Pot was injected in the heart with poison. My guess: to keep him from spilling the beans on his "Brothers."
Boo frikkin’ hoo. This guy sounds just like Polpot when he was confronted for his crimes.
Socialism, and Atheism has about 100 million victims in the past century alone. That’s several times more than ALL the victims of all holy wars in history of all religions combined.
Pol Pot denied there were any crimes, that only a few died and it was an accident.
This was back in 1998 and shortly after the pathological liar Pol Pot had ordered his longtime KR “Brother” Son Sen to be executed and then to be repeatedly run over with a truck (along with his wife and children) in order to “grind them into dust.”
The “KR way” wasn’t just metaphorical talk, that’s the kind of stuff they actually did.
These KR dudes were first class serial murderers and
genocidal freaks.
Oh, they were Maoist Commies too. The one and only telephone line in Phnom Penh was a direct circuit to Beijing. Diplomatic relations were few and far between, and only with other Commie countries. Same with air transport.
Pol Pot wanted to “out-Mao Mao”, and to some degree he did, bringing about the petri-dish example of the horrible, murderous, and genocidal evils of Communism.
The Hanoi Vietnamese Commies were and remain nearly equally evil, but even they came to despise and hate Pol Pot and his psychopath cronies.
Some of the faces of victims and their murderers:
http://www.tuolsleng.com/photographs.php?photographsPage=7
I’d call it not “Socialism and Atheism” but simply Communism.
Period.
Not only did Mr. Duch have 18,000 victims tortured and murdered, but the KR is estimated to have killed between 2 and 3 million Cambodians.
In three short years.
I spent some time in Cambodia and I didn’t know a single Khmer person who hadn’t lost a close relative. Usually 2 or 3 or 5, but in some cases as many as 9 or 10. One woman I met had lost her entire family, brothers and sisters and parents (a total of 11 as I recall). Only she survived.
This is grandmas, grandpas, Mom, Dad, kids, uncles, sisters and brothers.
This is what Communism does to people.
Wasn’t the New York Times communist I mean columnist Anthony Lewis a supporter of the Khmer Rouge?
Only after the KR had run out of stuff to loot and pillage in Cambodia and started raiding across the border in Vietnam did the Hanoi butchers give a damn. Before that, they were perfectly cool with their Commie brothers in Cambodia.
One of the other KR leaders was interviewed on camera a few years ago, from his retirement redoubt out near the Thai border.
When asked about the millions murdered under the KR reign ot murder, the evil old creep snickered and smirked and brazenly lied “Oh, that’s such an exaggeration, some died and that was an accident” blah blah blah.
Noam Chomsky, Lewis, and many others were supporters of the KR over the “evil” United States.
>>>>> Tell it to satan when you see him <<<<<<
I hope all of them are on the hotline to hell.
(Sound familiar?)
How does one “apologize” for murdering and torturing 16000 people? “Sorry” seems to be unequal to the task.
Agreed, “communism” is a better description than my choice of words.
May I ask what brought you to Cambodia?
One of my best friends back in 1981 when I was 10 years old was a refugee boy from Cambodia. I always heard that he came from a bad situation, but it wasn’t until my adulthood that I realized the type of life he must have come from.
>>>>> Only after the KR had run out of stuff to loot and pillage in Cambodia and started raiding across the border in Vietnam did the Hanoi butchers give a damn. <<<<<
The KR used their typical savage and obscene methods against the Vietnamese border towns. One town has a genocide memorial like they have in Cambodia, because the entire town was wiped out by the KR.
The Vietnamese finally had enough when the KR launched a rocket attack on the border town of Chau Doc, which is a big town by VN standards.
The KR was toppled by the Vietnamese within two weeks of that attack.
But yes, the KR was allied in a way with Hanoi, because they were all part of Ho Chi Minh’s “Communist Party Of Indochina.”
Footnote: Ho Chi Minh was (this is true) co-founder of the Communist Party of France when he was a young man, and was a favorite of the Commies in Russia. So you can see why he was tight with the French-educated Khmer Rouge leadership.
>>>>> How does one “apologize” for murdering and torturing 16000 people? <<<<<<<
I suspect Mr. Duch knows that he’s going straight to Hell.
>>>>> May I ask what brought you to Cambodia? <<<<<
I did some work for an NGO there.
Most of these creeps are still around and still playing their games and still getting innocent people killed. I do believe God will have a special place in hell for them.
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