Cambodia marks end of a reign, prepares for trials

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Thirty years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the specter of the murderous regime still haunted Cambodia yesterday as victims remembered the countless dead and the country prepared to finally try the movement's leaders.

More than 40,000 people jammed Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium for speeches and a parade to mark the day Vietnamese troops entered the capital to oust the ultra-communists from power.

"On Jan. 7, my second life began," said a 59-year-old farmer whose father and sister died of starvation under the Khmer Rouge. "I want to see Khmer Rouge leaders prosecuted as soon as possible because they are getting old now."

She was one of millions who endured what many survivors said was "hell on earth."

Phnom Penh, the capital, was emptied at gunpoint, its citizens forced to work in vast slave-labor camps on starvation rations and under the constant threat of execution. Religion, marriages not approved by the state, money, and almost all entertainment were banned.

When it was over, 1.7 million or more Cambodians had perished during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule.

But none of the surviving leaders has yet faced justice.

One of the accused - Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, who headed the Khmer Rouge's largest torture center - will probably take the stand in March at a U.N.-backed tribunal, said co-prosecutor Robert Petit. He said the trial was expected to take three to four months.

But the four others, all of them aging and ailing, probably won't be tried until 2010 or later.

"Although in the past three decades Cambodia has made great progress, difficulties that are left by war and genocide have been far reaching and are yet to be completely removed," Senate President Chea Sim said in the keynote speech at the stadium.

He cited mental problems, a culture of violence, and lack of self-confidence as legacies of the Khmer Rouge.

"We needed 30 years to restore the country, because of the wrongful leadership of the [Khmer Rouge] leaders," Information Minister Khieu Kanharith told the Associated Press.

As thousands of victims listened, he recalled the three years, 8 months and 20 days when Cambodians were "robbed of their rights, freedom and were forced to be slaves in face of grisly punishments and killing."

Even the stadium had been one of the execution grounds, as Khmer Rouge victors against the U.S.-backed government entered Phnom Penh in 1975 to begin their reign of terror.