PHNOM PENH, May 27 – Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (photo) on Monday appealed to parliament to enact a law to convict those who say the Democratic Kampuchea or Khmer Rouge regime had not executed victims during its rule from 1975 to 1979, Xinhua news agency reported.
“I’d like to appeal to the lawmakers of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and Funcinpec Party to enact a law, like in Europe, to punish someone who says that Cambodia had neither the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime nor Tuol Sleng prison and torture centre,” he said during the inauguration of new achievements at Langka pagoda in Phnom Penh.
Phnom Penh’s former Tuol Sleng prison was the main torture centre at which around 14,000 people were killed during the Khmer Rouge regime. In February 2012, the Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) sentenced the ex-chief of Tuol Sleng prison, Kaing Guek Eav, to life imprisonment for overseeing the deaths.
Hun Sen’s appeal was made after Kem Sokha, vice president of the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, has repeatedly and publicly said that the Tuol Sleng prison and torture centre was an “artificial killing place”.
“The Vietnamese set up this place with pictures of victims. The Khmer Rouge would have demolished it before they left, not kept it as a museum to show tourists. If the Khmer Rouge killed a lot of people, would they keep it to show to everyone?” Sokha said in a speech on May 18 at the party’s public forum in Prey Veng province.
On Saturday, survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime’s Tuol Sleng prison held a press briefing inside the grounds of the former Tuol Sleng prison to demand Kem Sokha to apologise for his comments.
-BERNAMA
