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Cambodians â€œknow little about Khmer Rouge trialâ€

09 June 2011 04:53 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Nine out of 10 Cambodians are unable to name the Khmer Rouge suspects held by Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes court, a survey showed Wednesday, just weeks before the start of a major genocide trial, APA reports quoting AFP.
Five ex-Khmer Rouge members are in detention, one of whom has already been sentenced in the tribunal’s landmark first trial.
A second trial is to start on June 27 and involves the 1975-79 regime’s four most senior surviving leaders -- including "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea -- who face charges in connection with the deaths of up to two million people.
The tribunal is the only war crimes court in the world to try its suspects in the country where the crimes took place and one of the court’s main goals is to get Cambodians involved and interested in the trials.
Yet a quarter of respondents reported knowing nothing about the tribunal, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, who questioned 1,000 Cambodians about their knowledge of the court.
That figure was, however, down from 39 percent in 2008, thanks largely to media coverage of the first case.
One of the study’s authors said despite some progress, educating Cambodians about the upcoming second trial would be "a key challenge" for the court.
"It’s a more complex trial than the first one and it will be more difficult for the population to understand what’s going on," Patrick Vinck told AFP.
A court spokesman said the study showed improvements in Cambodians’ knowledge about the tribunal but admitted more work needed to be done.
"We are looking into ways of increasing outreach and public information programmes. That is a key priority for the court for the second trial," said Lars Olsen.
The survey was carried out in December, nearly six months after former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was sentenced to 30 years in jail for overseeing the deaths of some 15,000 people.
More than half of respondents (54 percent) knew Duch had been tried but 91 percent did not know the verdict was under appeal.
Among those who had followed the trial, half believed "the court gave too much time to Duch to explain himself".
The hardline communist Khmer Rouge movement oversaw one of the worst horrors of the 20th century, wiping out nearly a quarter of the population through starvation, overwork and execution in a bid to forge an agrarian utopia.