Cambodian villagers find KR mass grave
Source: Agencies |
August 7, 2012, Tuesday
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VILLAGERS in northwest Cambodia unearthed what could be a mass grave from the Khmer Rouge era with about 20 skulls and some leg bones bound with rope, officials said yesterday.
The village is near a former Khmer Rouge prison and the site is said to be one of the "killing fields" from the regime's brutal 1970s rule. It wasn't yet known if Saturday's discovery of skulls and other skeletal remains involved more than 20 victims.
The Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has collected evidence about Khmer Rouge atrocities, had identified the area in 1998 as having several mass graves based on interviews with hundreds of villagers but it was never excavated, said Youk Chhang, director of the center.
About 1.7 million people - about one in five in the small Southeast Asian country - died of torture, starvation, medical neglect, hard labor and execution during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 reign.
The discovery of a new mass grave would be the first since a United Nations-backed tribunal put five former top Khmer Rouge officials on trial for genocide and other crimes beginning in 2009.
The village is near a former Khmer Rouge prison and the site is said to be one of the "killing fields" from the regime's brutal 1970s rule. It wasn't yet known if Saturday's discovery of skulls and other skeletal remains involved more than 20 victims.
The Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has collected evidence about Khmer Rouge atrocities, had identified the area in 1998 as having several mass graves based on interviews with hundreds of villagers but it was never excavated, said Youk Chhang, director of the center.
About 1.7 million people - about one in five in the small Southeast Asian country - died of torture, starvation, medical neglect, hard labor and execution during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 reign.
The discovery of a new mass grave would be the first since a United Nations-backed tribunal put five former top Khmer Rouge officials on trial for genocide and other crimes beginning in 2009.
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