Skulls show brutal Khmer Rouge executions
February 20 2004 at 07:27AM
By Ker Munthit
Phnom Penh, Cambodia - Some prisoners were smashed in the face with machete blows and died in agony, while some died quickly from a single bullet shot to the head.
These are among the forensic findings about execution methods of the Khmer Rouge who terrorised Cambodia during their 1975 to 79 rule. They go on display next week in the form of 10 skulls in hopes they will provide evidence at a trial of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders and help educate the public.
Youk Chhang, director of a centre documenting Khmer Rouge atrocities, said language is inadequate to explain the cruelty and violence that the fanatical movement inflicted on its own people.
'The skull is crying out for justice'
The skulls - of nine males and one female aged between 20 and 55 - were collected from five of 80 memorial sites across Cambodia. Four skulls have gunshot wounds. The other six have holes caused by impacts from hard objects or machete blows.
The exhibit is part of a $50 000 (about R300 000) forensic study funded by the American state department that was recently completed with help from two Canadian forensic experts, Youk Chhang said.
Its goals were to identify physical evidence, such as mass graves, useful for the proposed trial of Khmer Rouge leaders and "to educate the public about the trauma and how people died", he said.
The Khmer Rouge are blamed for the deaths of at least 1,7 million Cambodians through starvation, disease, overwork and execution before 1979, when a Vietnamese invasion toppled the ultra-communists.
But none of its surviving leaders has been put on trial. Its supreme leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998, but a handful of his ageing lieutenants are still living freely in Cambodia.
'You can imagine what kind of pain the victims had to endure before they died'
After five years of negotiations, Cambodia and the United Nations agreed last June on plans for a UN-assisted tribunal. But the agreement has been stalled by an ongoing Cambodian political crisis.
The exhibit will open next Thursday at Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a former interrogation and torture centre turned into a grim tourist site. Up to 16 000 so-called enemies passed through its gates before they were murdered.
Each of the 10 skulls will be accompanied by an explanation of how the wounds were inflicted. The skulls will be placed in transparent boxes on black wooden stands with slats to allow the spirit associated with each skull to move about freely, he said.
"The skull is crying out for justice," he said, pointing to one in his office at the Documentation Centre of the Cambodia Genocide Programme, administered by Yale University.
As bullets were costly, he said it was quite difficult to find skulls with bullet wounds at execution sites.
"If they (Khmer Rouge) used bullets, the victim might have been someone of high rank," he said, referring to the regime's bloody internal purges.
But skull wounds revealed only some of the regime's inhuman acts, he said, noting cases he has seen in which ankle bones had deep cuts indicating a victim's tendons had been cut.
"When you see a piece of bone that was chopped right here (at the tendon), it quickly forms into a visual of people trying to run away" before they were killed, he said.
Youk Chhang said he was shocked to see one skull with a deep cut apparently inflicted by a powerful machete blow to the face.
"You can imagine what kind of pain the victims had to endure before they died," he said.
"I don't know what kind of anger they (the killers) had. But their brains perhaps didn't work the way they should," said Youk Chhang, whose sister died when the Khmer Rouge cut her stomach open to check for stolen rice. - Sapa-AP
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Again, we have half asleep baboons executing christians by the millions under the guise of marxism.
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