"DAY OF ANGER" HONOURS KILLING FIELDS VICTIMS

(20 May 2012) Cambodians on Sunday remembered the victims of the notorious Khmer Rouge regime during the country's annual "Day of Anger".
More than a thousand people gathered at the Choeung Ek genocide memorial, south of the capital, Phnom Penh.
The isolated area of "killing fields" was used by the Khmer Rouge regime as a place of execution for its perceived enemies.
The Choeung Ek ceremony included a performance depicting torture and execution of Cambodian people under the Khmer Rouge.
Performers acting as security forces wore black uniforms, the standard attire of the Maoist-inspired movement, as they pretended to execute other actors.
The re-enactment of the killings brought several in the crowd of onlookers to tears.
It was staged near where the skulls of Khmer Rouge victims are displayed as a grim reminder of those who died at the hands of the regime.
An estimated 1.7 (m) million people died from starvation, disease, overwork and execution during the Khmer Rouge's reign from 1975 to 1979, due to its fanatical efforts to create a utopian society.
Though the movement's notorious supremo, Pol Pot, died in 1998, several other top figures still survive.
Cambodia's UN-backed tribunal is holding a trial for four senior officials of the regime accused of genocide and crimes gainst humanity.
They include Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologue, former head of state Khieu Samphan, former Foreign Affairs Minister Leng Sary and his wife, former Social Affairs Minister Leng Thirith
In 2010, the tribunal court convicted Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He was the former prison commander of S-21, a notorious security centre in Phnom Penh where thousands of people were detained and tortured before being killed.
Duch was sentenced to serve life imprisonment.


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