Meeting with ECCC Victims Unit

We just returned from meeting with the ECCC Victims Unit -- to speak with the staff, discuss with them their role in preparing for the second trial and facilitating victim outreach, and deliver the nearly 200 victim information forms collected from members of the Cambodian diaspora community in the United States. Overall, our impressions were quite positive, and we were impressed with their ability to process the over-7000 victims currently signed up to participate in the trial. More importantly, the Victims Unit staff was quite excited to receive the submissions, and appears more than capable of handling and communicating with victim participants.

With the deadline to file for civil party status in the second trial rapidly approaching, the Victims Unit seems incredibly busy, and is scrambling to facilitate the registrations of hundreds of additional participants before the late-January deadline. Even as we entered our meeting, a large crowd was waiting outside the building to complete victim information forms and register for participation in the upcoming trial. The Victims Unit staff further indicated that they will be making rounds through various provinces over the next weeks to register as many additional victims as possible.

Interestingly, our meeting coincided with the ECCC’s recent announcement that they had concluded their investigation preceding the second set of prosecutions, which should mean that the actual trial will begin by the end of the year. Under Cambodian law, the defendants -- former Khmer Rouge officials -- can only be held before trial for three years, and with the three-year limit rapidly approaching, the court needed to bring formal charges and prepare for trial. This however means that the work of the Victims Units will only further ramp up over the next months as they make sure that all civil parties are properly registered and represented, and all complainants’ information properly (and confidentially) distributed to the prosecution.

More information on the Victims Unit’s work to follow. We are however relieved to have delivered the victim information forms, and to know that they are now in good hands.