DC-CAM APPEALS FOR THE RELEASE OF ARCHIVES

FOR THE KHMER ROUGE TRIBUNAL

Today, on the thirtieth anniversary of the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power, the Cambodian people are still awaiting justice. The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) asks that governments, organizations, and individuals help our country attain justice by providing materials they possess on the regime to the Extraordinary Chambers, which will be set up to try former Khmer Rouge leaders. These materials include documents, testimony, and other materials (such as photographs and audio recordings) from the period April 17, 1975-January 6, 1979.  In addition, we are seeking the return of important film footage taken during the Khmer Rouge regime. This body of information would make a valuable contribution to truth and justice for Cambodians by vastly enlarging the tribunal’s knowledge base.

Several governments had embassies in Cambodia during Democratic Kampuchea, while others followed events from embassies in Thailand, China, Vietnam or Laos. We hope that all these governments will search their diplomatic, military and intelligence (including signals intelligence) archives for materials that might be useful in establishing a full legal and historical accounting of the crimes committed during this period. We hope they will declassify these materials when necessary, transmit them to the Extraordinary Chambers, and make them public.

We also hope that journalists, scholars and other individuals who may be holding relevant materials will make them easily accessible to the court and the Cambodian public. DC-Cam would like to thank Dr. Steve Heder of the University of London and former Officer in Charge of the Cambodia Office of the United Nations Centre for Human Rights David Hawk for providing us with their Khmer Rouge-related files in anticipation of the tribunal. We hope others will follow their lead.

DC-Cam recognizes that people will have legitimate concerns about protecting the confidentiality of certain sources. But we believe that viable solutions can always be found to such problems.

Time is of the essence. Governments in particular should begin to gather and declassify relevant documents now so they will be ready when the tribunal is established. By doing so, those holding valuable materials can do their part to ensure that the Khmer Rouge tribunal is a fair and thorough legal process.

Youk Chhang, Director

Documentation Center of Cambodia

April 17, 2005