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Met a young man who says he used to be an insurgent, recruited from his village to fight what he and his comrades considered an occupying force: the Thai State in his Malay Muslim land. After being arrested, he attended a military-run re-education program and now disavows his past.
One of the problems here in Thailand's southern provinces is the number of arbitrary arrests and elongated detentions of young men suspected of being insurgents. 70 year old Maeyo Kuta tells me soldiers took her son away four years ago and she still doesn't know what he was charged with.
Visited the Buddhist village of Khok Krabue, which has lost a dozen of its residents to insurgent attacks and now must live under constant army protection. The village chief himself stands watch with a shot gun. "They want us to leave the area, but we won't", he tells me.
Despite many concerns over the success of the Khmer Rouge tribunal, still a momentous occasion to see "Brother Number Two", Nuon Chea, take the stand this morning.
The BIR is starting the new year filming in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. For the last five years, a hybrid UN-Cambodian court has been trying senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge for genocide and other major charges. Will this tribunal bring justice to the millions of victims here?