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The lodge where I stay in Kabul was badly damaged on Oct. 8 when a suicide car bomb exploded 80 meters down the road near the Indian Embassy. Seventeen Afghans working in photocopy shops near the embassy were killed and another 60 wounded. The Indian diplomats were unharmed. No apologies were offered by the perpetrators for the killings. Nobody was hurt at my lodge, but 75 windows were blown out. The next day I was talking with the owner, who, for the third time in three years, had to fork out $3,000 to fix his windows. I asked him what...

IN late November 1978, in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, a 35-year-old Sydney pub and club worker Ronald Keith Dean signed a confession that he was an operative for the CIA. Three weeks later, another Australian, David Lloyd Scott, signed a similar statement detailing years of anti-communist activity and a long career with the premier US spy agency. Dean and Scott, two knockabout Aussies, who had embarked on a Southeast Asian yachting adventure and strayed into contested waters, thinking they were in Thailand, were, of course, nothing of the sort. Captured by the Khmer Rouge and undoubtedly terrified in Pol...

U.S. charges three men with molesting children in Cambodia They are the first to be charged under an international law-enforcement operation that targets U.S. citizens who travel to Cambodia for illicit sex. They could face 30 years in jail for each victim. Raja Abdulrahim September 1, 2009 Three American men who are suspected of traveling to Cambodia to molest children have been charged in federal court as part of a new initiative aimed at cracking down on the child sex tourism business there, authorities said Monday. Ronald Gerard Boyajian, 49, of Menlo Park, Calif.; Erik Leonardus Peeters, 41, of Norwalk;...

Will the long-awaited trial of Khmer Rouge leaders ease Cambodians' trauma, or stir painful memories? A Cambodian psychiatrist has testified at the trial of a confessed Khmer Rouge torturer that up to 40 percent of Cambodians suffer psychological trouble as a result of the faction’s brutal four-year rule. “According to research conducted after the Khmer Rouge period, two out of five Cambodians have [suffered] mental problems and psychosocial crises. This figure is high—up to 40 percent” of the population, Chhim Sotheara said. Studies this year also found that some 14 percent of Cambodians aged 18 and older have suffered post-traumatic...

A beauty pageant for victims of Cambodia's millions of landmines has been cancelled after the government denounced the event as an insult to disabled people. A government spokesman, said today that the Miss Landmine contest, which was to have taken place this Friday, would "make a mockery of Cambodia's landmine victims. The government does not support this contest." Twenty contestants aged 18 to 48 were due to appear in a photo exhibition in the capital, Phnom Penh, with members of the public invited to vote for their favourite over the internet. The winner, due to be announced in December, was...

Artemisinin-based medicines fail a growing number of patients in Cambodia. The malaria parasite, carried by mosquitoes, is growing resistant to artemisinin-based drugs.James Gathany / CDC Malaria parasites in Cambodia are becoming increasingly resistant to the drug hailed as the world's best chance to eradicate the disease.Artemisinin-based drugs are currently the best weapon against malaria, a disease which kills around a million people every year and is spread by mosquitoes carrying malaria parasites such as Plasmodium falciparum. These parasites have already developed resistance to drugs such as chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, once the front line against the disease, so hopes have been...

The death of Pol Pot, 23 years to the day after he and the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia, occasioned long backward glances at one of the 20th century's most horrific genocides. It was noted everywhere that the communist reign of terror in Cambodia lasted nearly four years and that at least 1 million human beings -- by some estimates as many as 2 1/2 million -- were murdered in an orgy of executions, torture, and starvation. "In the name of a radical utopia," The New York Times recalled in its long obituary, "the Khmer Rouge regime had turned...

On February 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite delivered his verdict on the (ongoing) war in Vietnam. The most trusted man in America pronounced that it was "...more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam War is to end in a stalemate." Stalemate.... The Tet Offensive, which battle prompted Cronkite's televised towel throwing, was a decisive American victory -- of the more than 80,000 Communist troops who poured south on the Vietnamese New Year, American and allied South Vietnamese soldiers would kill or capture more than 58,000, while suffering a combined, and comparatively light, 9,000 casualties. Tet was in fact a disaster for the...

For almost 40 years, people have blamed Richard Nixon for escalating the Vietnam War into Cambodia and Laos unilaterally, and painted Nixon as just short of a dictator for doing so. History has a habit of turning contemporary opinion on its ear as information comes to light, and a Washington Post story shows that will happen with Nixon and the war as well. According to newly-released documents, Nixon sought and received the support of Democratic leadership in Congress in expanding the war:

The synopsis for this grant opportunity is detailed below, following this paragraph. This synopsis contains all of the updates to this document that have been posted as of 06/23/2009 . If updates have been made to the opportunity synopsis, update information is provided below the synopsis. If you would like to receive notifications of changes to the grant opportunity click send me change notification emails . The only thing you need to provide for this service is your email address. No other information is requested. Any inconsistency between the original printed document and the disk or electronic document shall be...

US President Barack Obama removed Laos and Cambodia from a trade blacklist, opening the way for US loans to companies doing business in the former US adversaries. The United States has been boosting ties with both Southeast Asian nations. But the decision on Laos was sharply criticized by campaigners for the country's Hmong minority, which says it faces persecution. In brief declarations, Obama said Cambodia and Laos had each "ceased to be a Marxist-Leninist country," a designation that prevented financial support by the US Export-Import Bank for businesses operating in the two nations. The move, which still must go through...

June 14, 2009Obama's Other Controversial ChurchBy Andrew Walden "This is a guy (former Weatherman terror-bomber Bill Ayers) who lives in my neighborhood ... the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago - when I was 8 years old - somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense." -- Barack Obama on the Campaign trail, 2008 As President Obama prepared to commemorate D-Day, the Associated Press dug up old details and photos to write a warm fuzzy story about the WW2 service record of Obama's maternal grandfather...

The old stone bridge, Spean Thma, is near the temple of Ta Keo and near the metal bridge on the road to Ta Prohm. The bridge was originally constructed in Angkorian times, but it has suffered badly through the centuries. Huge trees grow out of the stones with much of the masonry severely damaged. Travellers who stop and look can see the corbelled arches and the remains of a stepped embankment. The Siem Reap River flows about five metres below it. The river was originally canalised by the ancient Khmers and took a straight route north to south. The river...

Hello everyone, I'm working on a book about my passion (and, I think, yours): American exceptionalism through the eyes of immigrants who haven't always had the fortune of living in freedom. This book consists of first-person stories of Americans who lived under authoritarian regimes: Cuba, Eastern bloc countries (Poland, Russia/former USSR), Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Laos, and so on. Unfortunately, there are many, many such countries to choose from. The local talk station I listen to has broadcast calls from new Americans who came here for liberty, which they weren't accorded in their homeland. Every call I've ever heard from one of...

Korea Eyeing SE Asia for Energy Resources MAY 04, 2009 07:56 “Advance into CLV, an alternative to the post-China era!” Countries are increasingly setting their sights on Southeast Asian countries in preparation for the era in which China loses its attraction as a base for manufacturing and a consumer market. The Korean government and companies are paying close attention to “CLV,” namely Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The three countries offer more investment opportunities than Thailand and Singapore, where advanced economies have gained the upper hand. In addition, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam have shown interest in learning from Korea’s experience of...

LONDON - THIEVES tried to rob Queen Elizabeth II's 19-year-old granddaughter, Princess Eugenie, and her friends while they were travelling in Cambodia, a British newspaper reported on Monday. Royal protection officers had to intervene to protect the princess, the youngest daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, when a thief tried to steal her friend's purse as they walked through Phnom Penh one night, the Sun said. The two officers tackled the thief but were pelted with stones by another man, forcing them to let him go and focus on getting the princess to safety. They also managed to retrieve...

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...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A former teacher accused of carrying out the murderous policies of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge will finally face trial Monday, as prosecutors launch their first case against the hardcore communists who turned the country into a killing field three decades ago. A U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal has charged Kaing Guek Eav, 66, with committing crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as torture and homicide. The tribunal is seeking to establish responsibility for the brutal 1975-79 misrule of the group, when an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died of starvation, medical neglect, slave-like working conditions and execution. "Cambodians...

NLONG VENG, Cambodia – He was one of the greatest mass killers of the 20th century, but that doesn't stop the hopeful from praying at Pol Pot's hillside grave for lucky lottery numbers, job promotions and beautiful brides. Nor does it stop tourists from picking clean the bones and ashes from the Khmer Rouge leader's burial ground in this remote town in northwestern Cambodia. The grave is among a slew of Khmer Rouge landmarks in Anlong Veng, where the movement's guerrillas made their last stand in 1998 just as Pol Pot lay dying. A $1 million tourism master plan is...

Pol Pot’s 76-year-old sister-in-law, Ieng Thirith, pleaded with a Cambodia court to grant her mercy and not find her guilty of contributing to the deaths of the at least the 1.7 million who perished in that country’s "killing fields." The Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, and, under Pol Pot, a Marxist leader, and the support of China, the Khmer Rouge forced millions of people to work on communal farms, and ultimately contributed to families dying of starvation, overwork and disease — not to mention execution. Nearly all of Cambodia’s lawyers, doctors, artists and intellectuals were killed. Most...

FrontPageMagazine.com | “I have waited 30 years for this trial,” said painter Vann Nath, 63,” on the eve of Feb. 17 pre-trial proceedings in Phnom Penh's international Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). So have an estimated 3 million other survivors of Pol Pot's five-year Cambodian reign of terror. On April 17, 1975 -- “Year Zero,” as the communist tyrant named that date -- Pol Pot's communist forces began driving people from Cambodian cities with the fanatical goal of recreating a perfect, clean, peasant-controlled, communist agrarian society. The cadres of “brother number one,” as Pol Pot was known,...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The boss of a prison where some 16,000 men, women and children were tortured and executed appeared before Cambodia's genocide tribunal Tuesday in its first trial over the Khmer Rouge reign of terror more than three decades ago. [snip]Duch, 66, is accused of committing or abetting a range of crimes including murder, torture and rape at S-21 prison - formerly a school - where up to 16,000 men, women and children were held and tortured, before being put to death. "This first hearing represents the realization of significant efforts to establish a fair and independent tribunal...

Thirty years after the fall of Cambodia's "Killing Fields" regime, 78-year-old Chum Manh will finally see his torturer stand trial. Nearly every Cambodian family lost loved ones during the 1975-79 period of Khmer Rouge rule that claimed an estimated 1.7 million lives. Despite their role in one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century, none of Pol Pot's surviving henchmen ever faced justice. Until now. The U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal opens its first trial on Tuesday when 66-year-old Duch, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, faces charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and homicide while he ran...

Trials of five brutal leaders will begin next monthFinally, at everlastingly long last, someone is to answer for the atrocities of the Khmers Rouges - in particular, the savagery of 1975-79, when they ruled all of Cambodia. Agence France-Presse reports from Phnom Penh that Feb. 17 is the day the regime's torturer-in-chief will go on trial in the capital for crimes against humanity. Kaing Khek Iev, better known as Duch, is the first of five scheduled to go before a UN-sponsored tribunal for one of the great crimes of the 20th century. An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians out of a...

THE kumbaya crowd which pressed for East Timor's independence must shoulder much of the blame for the failure of its dysfunctional Government. But while the collective of liberation theologists and civil rights lawyers cheered Fretilin's Portugese-educated Marxist guerrilla leaders, the same candle-wavers protested against the toppling of the mass murdering Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. Yet East Timor, with a population estimated at about one million, whose independence was internationally recognised on May 20, 2002, is now arguably in proportionately worse shape than Iraq, population 26 million, where the first election under its new constitution took place just last December. The...

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Thousands of Cambodian survivors of the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" marked 30 years Wednesday since the fall of Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist regime, blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people. Up to 80,000 people packed into the capital's Olympic stadium for a rally organized by the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), descendant of the puppet government installed by Hanoi after its troops ousted Beijing-backed Pol Pot on January 7, 1979. "We have always remembered those who sacrificed their lives to save us from genocide," aging CPP President and former guerrilla Chea Sim told the cheering crowd....

"Candidate Jimmy Carter said he stood for change." - Associated Press, 11/3/1976 Goodness. What a difference a year makes. In fact, a year after Carter's inauguration night, even some Democrats were rolling their eyes. Come, now: Let's revisit history, shall we? Before President Jimmy Carter's January1977 inauguration: November 3, 1976: "What Will Carter Presidency Look Like?" An AP news analysis, by Louise Cook reminds literates that "Jimmy Carter said he stood for change. He left a long list of promises" like Whatshisname. Consider.  "A streamlined bureaucracy"? Yes.  "A new tax system"? Yes. "A pared-down defense budget"? Yes. "Comprehensive national health and...

The purpose of this statement is to provide all Member States of the United Nation with an objective description of the various aspects of the problem arising from the Khmer territories of Cochin-China (South Vietnam). In the past those territories were part of the Kingdom of Cambodia, and they are still inhabited by over half a million Khmers who remain deeply attached to their culture, religion, customs, traditions and ancestral land. When the odds became unequal in 1854, the reigning Khmer ruler, King Ang Duong, found it necessary to appeal to a Power of the Western world, namely France, for...

It is a little slice of Long Beach, Calif., brought here by a former gang member by way of a federal prison, an immigration jail and then expulsion four years ago from his homeland, the United States, to the homeland of his parents, Cambodia. The former gang member is Tuy Sobil, 30, who goes by the street name K.K. The boys are Cambodian street children he has taken under his wing as he teaches them the art he brought with him, break dancing, as well as his hard lessons in life. K.K. is not here because he wants to be....

Escaping the Killing Fields by: Jesse Masai, November 10, 2008 He survived the cruelties of Communism in Cambodia and later emerged to be one of the most influential opinion-leaders in modern America. Golden Bones is the title of Sichan Siv’s memoir, the story of a Cambodian-born immigrant to the United States. His journey, as the Director of the Asian Studies’ Center at Heritage Foundation Walter Lohman put it, is “an extraordinary journey from hell in Cambodia.” He said: “While the United States battled the Communists of North Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, the neighboring country of Cambodia was attacked...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Tensions between Thailand and Cambodia over a border area near a historic temple erupted in a deadly gunbattle, prompting officials on both sides to quickly call for resolving the conflict through talks, not bullets. Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said military officials from both sides would meet Thursday in Thailand to discuss the previous day's clash, which killed at least two Cambodian soldiers and wounded a total of eight from both sides. Thailand's Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat pledged to "use peaceful means." "If there is violence, we have to negotiate," Somchai said. Wednesday's clash was the first...

DARRA ADAM KHEL, Pakistan — The Taliban fighters were sitting in the back of a pickup, parked right outside the army fort in Darra Adam Khel, a wild town in Pakistan's troubled northwest that's famous for its arms bazaar. The Islamic militia, linked with al Qaida, has controlled Darra for about six months. Wrapped in head scarves, with just their eyes showing, and bristling with weaponry, its members patrol the streets and impose their own austere rules. They've become such a routine sight in the town that no one pays them any attention. The security forces, when they emerge from...

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (AHN) - The former social welfare minister and the most powerful woman in the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Thirith, 76, on Wednesday appeared for the first time at a U.N.-backed genocide court in Cambodia. Thirith is facing charges of crimes against humanity during Khmer Rouge's brutal four-year reign in Cambodia in the late 1970s that had killed an estimated three million people from torture, starvation and forced labor. She has filed for bail on the charges, but the court has yet to decide on her petition. Earlier, the genocide court denied the petition for bail of three of...

Prosecutors say Chhun could face life imprisonment A US court has convicted a Cambodian-born man of masterminding a failed coup attempt against the Cambodian government eight years ago. Chhun Yasith, 52, was found guilty of four charges relating to the failed attack in November 2000. Dozens of armed men attacked government buildings in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, in a bid to overthrow Prime Minister Hun Sen. Several people were killed but the prime minister escaped unhurt. The court in Los Angeles found Chhun guilty of three charges of conspiracy and one of planning a military expedition against a...

There are some names in the obituary columns that say more than the voices of the living. Such is the name of Dith Pran, who died in New Brunswick, N.J., March 30 at age 65. He was the Cambodian photographer who somehow survived the collection of killing fields that his country became after the Americans abandoned it. And who somehow made his way to the United States to tell the world about it. Millions of his countrymen lost their lives after the Khmer Rouge swept into Phnom Penh and began rounding up unreliable types — i.e., just about anyone who...

A recently disclosed memo gave U.S. interrogators the ability to use harsh methods -- what many call "torture" -- to extract information from terrorist suspects after 9/11. Around the world, critics saw it as another blow to American prestige and moral authority. The 2003 document also invokes wartime powers to protect interrogators who violate the Geneva Conventions, for example, by the use of waterboarding -- when a prisoner is made to think he is drowning. Half a world away, the divisive debate over whether waterboarding constitutes torture comes into sharp relief at the infamous S-21, Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom...

Two very different stories surfaced this week that add to the hundreds of examples we have of liberalism’s failures and lies. The first involves southeast Asia. Those who lived through the Vietnam War and its aftermath remember how often the left-wing politicos and supporters constantly ridiculed the idea of a domino effect (mass murders throughout southeast Asia) if we left Vietnam abruptly – and have spent the last 32 years denying the killing fields of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand – as well as in Vietnam itself. It is the current generation of these same liars who are calling for an...

Dith Pran... used to say: "I'm not a hero - I'm a messenger." ...[He was] a tenacious survivor of the 1975-79 Cambodian holocaust, when the communist Khmer Rouge slaughtered 1 million people- nearly a third of the nation's population- while the world looked on. He devoted the rest of his life to telling the story- best known through the 1984 film "The Killing Fields." Dith, a translator-photographer for Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, remained behind after the fall of Phnom Penh to help report the Khmer Rouge takeover. But when Western journalists were forced to leave, Dith became a prisoner, spending...

"He was 'the most patriotic American photographer I've ever met, always talking about how he loves America,' said Associated Press photographer Paul Sakuma, who knew Dith through their work with the Asian American Journalists Association." "The regime of Pol Pot, bent on turning Cambodia back into a strictly agrarian society, and his Communist zealots were blamed for the deaths of nearly 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million people."

NEW YORK (AP) -- Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday, his former colleague said. Dith Pran founded an awareness project dedicated to educating people about the Khmer Rouge regime. Dith, 65, died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago. Dith was working as an interpreter and assistant for Schanberg...

Dith Pran, a Khmer Rouge survivor whose experiences in Cambodia were adapted into the award-winning movie The Killing Fields, died early on Sunday at the age of 65, his friend and former New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg said. Dith, who had been battling pancreatic cancer since January, died in the early hours at a hospital in New Jersey, with his ex-wife at his side. "Pran was a special person, a very special person. Messages are pouring in from people who met him only once saying that he made a deep impression on them. And he did, on everybody," Mr...

'Killing Fields' survivor Dith Pran dies By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday, his former colleague said. Dith, 65, died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago. Dith was working as an interpreter and assistant for Schanberg in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, when...

CHOEUNG EK, Cambodia (Reuters) - The chief torturer under the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" regime wept and prayed on Tuesday as he led the judges who will try him for crimes against humanity around the mass graves for some of its victims. Duch, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, accompanied 80 judges, lawyers and other officials of a U.N.-backed tribunal to the 129 graves, uncovered after a Vietnamese invasion sent the Khmer Rouge back to the jungles in 1979. "I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rouge soldiers smashed children to death," a policeman told reporters...

SETBO VILLAGE, Cambodia - Being responsible parents, rice farmer Khuorn Sam Ol and his wife might not be expected to be keen on having their child play with a 16-foot-long, 220-pound snake. Yet they are unflustered that their 7-year-old son, Uorn Sambath, regularly sleeps in the massive coil of a female python, rides the reptile, kisses it and even pats it down with baby powder. "There is a special bond between them," Khuorn Sam Ol explained. "My son played with the snake when he was still learning to crawl. They used to sleep together in a cradle." The boy and...

Saving ancient Angkor from modern doomsdayScientists warning on pumping water for tourist hotels Ker Munthit, Associated Press Sunday, February 17, 2008 (02-17) 04:00 PST Siem Reap, Cambodia -- By destroying vast tracts of forest to enlarge their farm land, inhabitants of the wondrous city of Angkor lit the fuse to an ecological time bomb that spelled doom for what was once the world's largest urban area. So believe archaeologists engaged in groundbreaking research into the ancient civilization of Angkor. And they are warning that history could repeat itself through reckless, headlong pursuit of dollars from tourists flocking to see Angkor's...

17th century Japanese village uncovered in Cambodia Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 07:01 EST PHNOM PENH — A site of a Japanese village dating back to the 17th century has been found in the outskirts of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, a Japanese archaeologist said Wednesday. Hiroshi Sugiyama, chief research fellow at Japan's National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, said that based on research since 2004 and analyses of excavations and documents, the site in Ponhea Lueu Commune, about 25 kilometers north of Phnom Penh, is a Japanese village dating back to the 17th century. Based on on-site research, excavations and...

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Pol Pot's right-hand man, Nuon Chea, appeared before Cambodia's "Killing Fields" tribunal on Wednesday to request bail, arguing he was not a flight risk and would not try to influence potential witnesses. The octogenarian former Khmer Rouge guerrilla, charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, also said fears for his safety were overblown as he had been living for years in "peace and harmony" at his home in the jungle along the Thai border. "I have no desire to leave my beloved country," he told a courtroom packed with reporters. "No one is worried about...

Japan team finds ancient Cambodian water siteTuesday, Jan. 22, 2008 SNAY VILLAGE, Cambodia (Kyodo) Japanese archaeologists said Monday they have found a man-made water channel in northwest Cambodia used for rituals as far back as the first century. The archaeologists said they discovered sacred mounds or altars at the ruins in Snay village in Banteay Meanchey Province under a two-year project that began last January. "Before, it was said that Khmer civilization started from the seventh to ninth century AD, but based on our research here, Khmer civilization went back to the first century AD," said Yoshinori Yasuda, a professor...

UN-Backed Genocide Tribunal Arrests Former Khmer Rouge Head Of State Khieu Samphan In Cambodia The U.N.-backed genocide tribunal in Cambodia arrested the former Khmer Rouge head of state Monday following his release from a hospital in the capital, officials said. Khieu Samphan, 76, was the fifth senior Khmer Rouge official to be detained by the long-delayed tribunal ahead of trials that are expected to begin next year. The arrests come almost three decades after the group fell from power, with many fearing the aging suspects might die before they ever see a courtroom. Police escorted Khieu Samphan from the hospital...

Cambodian police have arrested former head of state Khieu Samphan in a hospital in the capital Phnom Penh. The 76-year-old former leader will be the fifth suspect to be tried by the Cambodia Tribunal. Khieu Samphan is accused of being co-responsible for the killing of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians during the years in which the Khmer Rouge ruled the country, from 1975 until the beginning of 1979. Khieu Samphan says he never knew how much the Cambodian people suffered under the regime of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. He says it was never the Khmer Rouge’s intention to kill...