Genocide Trial: Survivors Still Live With Horrors of Khmer Rouge
CLANCY: Welcome back to YOUR WORLD TODAY. The United Nations suddenly, drastically cutting its estimate of the number of people worldwide infected with the virus that causes AIDS. But the good news does come with some controversy. The joint United Nations program on HIV/AIDS says the number of people living with HIV has leveled off, and that the rate of new infections is actually declining. The group's annual report revised the 2006 estimate downwards to 32.7 million cases worldwide. That's more than six million down from the 39.5 million announced earlier. The U.N. says the decline due in part to the impact of HIV education programs. But some reports say the U.N. has consistently inflated its AIDS estimates, especially in India. Some charge for political purposes or the purposes of fund-raising. They say that the decline represents progress on paper only.</s>MCEDWARDS: Well, the first public session of a U.N.-backed genocide tribunal convened in Cambodia's capital on Tuesday. And the first person to appear, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch. Protesters say he presided over a torture center at the heart of the Khmer Rouge regime. Sixteen thousand people died at that center alone. Duch is appealing his detention, pending a trial that's scheduled for next year. Four other Khmer Rouge leaders are also awaiting trial.</s>CLANCY: And for those survivors of that notorious regime, these trials cannot come soon enough.</s>MCEDWARDS: Yes, they have been long enough in the making -- decades later -- horrific bouts of torture, images of mass executions though still fresh in their minds. And as Hugh Riminton tells us, it's a pain they will live with for the rest of their lives.</s>HUGH RIMINTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The dead of the Cambodian genocide do not sleep easy. The killing fields outside the capital of Phnom Penh contain the most compelling witnesses for the prosecution as the five most senior surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge face, at last, a day in court. Even though he was always blindfolded back then, Cham Mai (ph) still remembers exactly his prison cell -- five steps on the left from the door. Here, during Cambodia's self-destruction, he lay, naked, shackled at the feet, hearing the cries of tortured prisoners and the nightly trucks carrying the doomed away to execution. "It was very painful," he said, "because through all of it, I never knew what I had done wrong. What mistake could I have made that they could hit me and torture me? I still don't know." The Cambodian nightmare remains inexplicable, a nation that destroyed itself. As the U.S. was scrambling through neighboring Vietnam, Pol Pot, Paris-educated, but inspired by Maoist China, seized Cambodia in a civil war. His vision was of a purified peasant state. His Khmer Rouge fighters, often children, emptied the cities, killed professionals, intellectuals, anyone who wore glasses. Purged with such numbing ferocity, in four years almost a quarter of the population was slaughtered. This was Tuol Sleng, prison S-21, the largest and most notorious torture center of the Khmer Rouge. Seventeen thousand people came through here -- men, women, children. Only seven emerged alive. Cham Mai's (ph) photo is here, one of those seven. One of only three still alive today. He was tortured in this classroom, beaten once for 12 days straight. His toenails were torn out. But he says there was something worse. "They put electricity through my ears," he says. "I heard a noise of a machine. I felt like fire was exploding out of my eyes. I was unconscious for a long time after that." His torturers wanted to know of his links with the CIA and the KGB. He was a simple mechanic, he says. He has never even heard of them. He told them anything, anything he could think of. And he focused his thoughts on his beloved wife, Sawar (ph), pregnant when he had last seen her. And he prayed. (on camera): In early 1979, as Vietnamese forces were moving in, Cham Mai (ph) and the few other remaining prisoners who could still walk were ordered to move to another prison. As they were moving through the city, they linked up with another group of prisoners from another center. And incredibly, among their number was Cham Mai's (ph) wife and the baby son he had never seen. It was 7:00 in the morning. (voice over): At midnight that night, he says, he learned the guards had orders to shoot them all. He and his wife made a run for it. In a burst of fire, his wife and their son were killed. He wants the United Nations now to bring him justice, but he doesn't trust the process. And he's outraged at the pampered conditions the accused enjoy at the</s>CLANCY: Moving testimony, justice so long coming.</s>MCEDWARDS: Yes, absolutely. We have to take a short break here on YOUR WORLD TODAY, but when we come back, that labor strike in France. The president is vowing to stand his ground. How the French are dealing with a strike that's growing bigger by the day.</s>CLANCY: Also, we are learning more details of a controversial rape case in Saudi Arabia where the female victim is punished harshly.