(video) Phnom Penh, Cambodia (GenevaLunch.com, agencies) – Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was sentenced Monday 26 July to 35 years in prison with five years off for time served. Duch, age 67, was the man who ran Cambodia’s notorious S-21 prison where some 15,000 people died under the Khmer Rouge regime that saw one-quarter of the country’s population killed. He was found guilty by a United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention.
“During the course of his 77-day trial [in 2009], he admitted to heading Toul Sleng, a top secret detention center for the worst “enemies” of the state,” reports the New Zealand Herald. CNN cites the court spokesperson as saying more than 10 million Cambodians were expected to watch the court’s decision on television Monday.
Comrade Duch, as he was known under the Communist Khmer Rouge regime, was a mathematics teacher before he became active in the Communist party. He is the only former Khmer Rouge leader who has pleaded guilty to serious charges, and he is the first to have stood trial. He has angered many Cambodians, however, by asking for an early release from prison, saying that although he was responsible for his actions, he was only following orders.
The Geneva Conventions signed before 1949 are a series of treaties that protect military personnel and prisoners of war. The fourth convention, signed in 1949, protects the civilian population. The Geneva Conventions as a whole “contain the most important rules limiting the barbarity of war”, according to Geneva-based International Red Cross (ICRC), and they are at the core of international humanitarian law.
Links to other sites: Case information sheet from the courts of Cambodia, Guardian on French scholar François Bizot’s imprisonment by Khmer Rouge, ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) on the Geneva Conventions
Update 12:10 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The US intends to negotiate a legally binding protocol on cluster munitions under the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), says Harold Hongju Koh, legal advisor to the US Department of State.
Missing persons, working with families: Peru (image: © 2009 B Heger / ICRC)
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Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – When the second world war came to an end in 1945 it was clear to witnesses of the more than six years of massive abuses of human rights that the world needed to banish the idea of “total war” and find a way to protect non-combatant victims of war. The four Geneva Conventions were signed 12 August 1949 in Geneva, sixty years ago today, cementing and extending earlier conventions to protect military people, prisoners, and civilian populations in times of war. They became the legal basis of humanitarian protection during war, around the world. Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the ICRC (International Red Cross) in Geneva, an organization whose history is closely intertwined with that of the Conventions, called on governments to better respect the treaties. “The lack of respect for existing rules remains, as ever, the main challenge,” he told a gathering in Geneva. The ICRC is the custodian of the Conventions.
The Geneva Conventions, with additional Protocols to the Conventions, are in fact a series of treaties, ratified by 194 countries, making them the most widely embraced treaties after the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Bosnia, 10 years later: identifying bones (image: © 2009 B Schaeffer / ICRC)
“They aimed to abolish the concept of ‘total war’ as witnessed during the second world war by establishing a legal framework to place limits on how war is waged. Today, they continue to constitute the bedrock of international humanitarian law, or IHL, and are among the most important treaties governing the protection of victims of armed conflict,” Christine Beerli, vice-president of the ICRC (International Red Cross) told a group in London in July.
