Cambodians mark start of genocide

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapc....ap/index.html


CHOEUNG EK, Cambodia (AP) -- Cambodians gathered Sunday at mass graves
where 8,000 of their countrymen perished under the Khmer Rouge, praying
with Buddhist monks for the victims on the 30th anniversary of the
genocidal regime's seizure of power.

The 30 monks -- one for each year since the fall of the capital, Phnom
Penh -- chanted prayers for the victims, some of whose skulls lay piled
one on top of another in a two-story tower nearby.

Some survivors -- mostly women -- stood up to talk about their lost
loved ones. One woman, speaking about her husband, broke down twice.

Another woman, 61-year-old Sam Kim Tha, said her father, a monk, and
her husband were killed by the Khmer Rouge and she's still angry about
what the communist soldiers did. She comes to Choeung Ek every year to
pray.

An estimated 1.7 million people died from execution, starvation, ill
health and overwork during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 brutal rule.
None of the regime's top leaders has been brought to trial, although
the government has signed a deal with the United Nations to create a
U.N.-backed tribunal.

Following a brutal, five-year war between the Khmer Rouge guerrillas
and a U.S.-backed government, the victors marched into Phnom Penh April
17, 1975, driving its residents into the countryside at gunpoint to
become rice farmers and slave laborers.

The Khmer Rouge victory preceded that of communist forces in Vietnam
which captured the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, on April 30, and
forced remaining U.S. personnel to flee the country as they had earlier
in Cambodia.

Sunday's memorial, attended by more than 100 people, was organized by
the opposition political party, the Sam Rainsy Party. Acting party
leader Kong Korm said Cambodians couldn't forget the date.

"On the one hand, to respect the dead, but on the other, to say to the
world and as much to Cambodians, don't allow this type of regime" to
return, he said in French. "We have to respect, completely and totally,
human rights in Cambodia."

Choeung Ek, marked by craters and signs noting the number or types of
victims, made headlines in Cambodia in recent weeks when the Phnom Penh
city government signed a deal with a Japanese company, giving it the
right to manage the site for 30 years. This drew opposition from one of
the country's leading genocide researchers.

The site is located about 12 kilometers (seven miles) outside Phnom
Penh.

It often figures in the debate about the practice of maintaining skulls
and bones of Khmer Rouge victims as monuments, since many Cambodians
believe the souls of the dead linger on earth because their remains
have not received a traditional Buddhist cremation.