Civil Parties Attend Justice and Genocide Education Tour

Since the start of the trial of Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch) in February, the court has welcomed over 20,000 visitors. The high number of visitors is due in large part to the outreach efforts of the tribunal as well as other non-profit organizations, most notably the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam). Approximately 10,000 people from over 5,000 villages have visited the ECCC as part of DC-Cam’s official outreach program. (Over the past ten years DC-Cam has been in contact with nearly 100,000 villagers. Detailed province-by-province maps of DC-Cam’s outreach efforts, current as of mid- May 2007, can be found at http://www.dccam.org/Projects/Maps/Outreach Maps.htm).

In its most recent large-scale outreach program, DC-Cam invited 186 district chiefs and 150 civil parties to participate in its 3-day Justice and Genocide Education tour in Phnom Penh on September 1, 2009. Unfortunately, invitations to the group of district chiefs were not received in time. Instead, the district chiefs are expected to visit the tribunal at the end of November to attend the closing arguments. Despite the absence of the district chiefs, the tour was very successful as the civil party participants learned about the history of Democratic Kampuchea and visited the tribunal that was established to prosecute senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge who were most responsible for the atrocity crimes that were committed during that period…

Read more: ctm_blog_9-9-2009