Ly Kimseng sat inside the monk’s dining hall in Pailin province’s Sala Krao district, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold nestled between Battambang and Thailand. To her left was an assortment of Buddha statues. And to the right, the temple’s morgue where her late husband lay waiting to be cremated.
“He was a person with integrity, honesty, and a pleasant being and he had never been arrogant both at home and outside,” Ly Kimseng, 84, told VOA Khmer last Thursday.
Near the morgue was a small area decked in traditional colored blue and gold cloth, and a large framed photograph of an aged man, pictured wearing dark glasses and a warm coat. The image will be familiar for observers of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia – a hybrid tribunal constituted to investigate and prosecute crimes under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s.
