A “Living Hell”: Continued Testimony on Forced Evacuations

  • by Doreen Chen, Senior Consultant, Destination Justice, and LLM, Columbia Law School
  • — 24 Oct, 2012

Hearings in Case 002/1 continued on Wednesday, October 24, 2012, at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) with civil party Lay Buny concluding her testimony. After providing detailed comments on various evacuations that the witness was part of during the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime and life in cooperatives and security centers, the civil party concluded her testimony with a lengthy and moving statement of her suffering. Most memorably, she stated that:

“It was like living in hell. We do not understand why they treated us so inhumanely, why they put us in such a degrading situation. … I would like to ask the Court to search for the truth. I would like to know who was behind these heinous crimes. … I hope that the court will be able to find justice for us.”

Read more: CTM_Blog_10-24-12

Cambodia Tribunal Monitor’s Trial Observer posts are written according to the personal observations and opinions of the writer and do not constitute a transcript of ECCC proceedings or the views of Cambodia Tribunal Monitor and/or its partners. Official court transcripts for the ECCC’s hearings may be accessed at the ECCC website.

To access Trial Observer posts prior to 2013,
please visit our Archived Site.