Phnom Penh - Public radio spots to educate and reassure the
Cambodian public of the role of the tribunal to try former top Khmer
Rouge leaders will be available for broadcast as of this week, the
court's public affairs section said Monday.
A media officer for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of
Cambodia (ECCC), Reach Sambath, said in a press release that the four
public service announcements will highlight the same themes as a
poster series published earlier this year.
The spots are designed to address the most common public concerns
and are entitled 'All decisions must have the support of both
national and international judges,' 'Everyone can be a part of the
process,' 'Only senior leaders and those most responsible will be
tried,' and 'It's time to set the record straight.'
'It is hoped that Cambodian radio stations will broadcast these
information spots to complement radio programs on the Khmer Rouge
trials, as well as to help provide the people of Cambodia with
information about the court,' Sambath said in the statement.
The Khmer-language radio spots have been provided for free to all
the radio stations in the Phnom Penh area and will be made available
for download from the ECCC website, and will be disseminated both
within and outside of Cambodia to any interested parties, the
statement said.
The long awaited 56-million-dollar joint UN-Cambodian hearings to
try a handful of aging former leaders of the Khmer Rouge finally made
a breakthrough last week with the adoption of the internal rules
necessary to govern the court after months of wrangling between
international and Cambodian judges.
Up to 2 million Cambodians are believed to have perished under the
Khmer Rouge's brutal 1975 to 1979 Democratic Kampuchea regime when
the ultra-Maoists attempted to turn the country into an agrarian
utopia devoid of money, markets or social classes.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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