REPORTER: GINNY STEIN
There is no escaping Cambodia's dark past.
SON NGAN, GENOCIDE SURVIVOR (Translation): This is a skull bone.
Evidence of the handiwork of the genocidal Khmer Rouge can be found in the most unexpected places.
CHHIT BUN HOEU, GENOCIDE SURVIVOR (Translation): All around this pagoda there were lots of bodies. They buried 10,000, 20,000, 30,000. In one hole there were 10 bodies, in others 20 or 30.
It was 25 years ago that the Khmer Rouge fled this temple in Kampong Chenang province.
SON NGAN (Translation): After they fled from this pagoda, we found a list of names of more than 30,000 people who had been killed around here.
A mere fraction of the up to 2 million people killed during the Khmer Rouge's reign. Almost a quarter of the population wiped out in five years either from disease, overwork, starvation or execution. None of the Khmer Rouge's leadership has ever been brought to trial, but after years of delays that is about to change.
Youk Chhang is the director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which has been collecting information on the Khmer Rouge and its leaders. And he says when it comes to one of the surviving leaders who will be called to account, there is plenty of evidence.
YOUK CHHANG, CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE DOCUMENTATION CENTRE: There's just plenty of information about Khieu Samphan.
Khieu Samphan, the regime's former head of state, surrended in 1998. At that time he faced the press but any acceptance of responsibility for the past was not forthcoming. Let bygones be bygones was his message to Cambodians.
KHIEU SAMPHAN, FORMER HEAD OF STATE (Translation): I'm sorry, very sorry.
This was not the first time Khieu Samphan had attempted to return to society. Respected as a politician prior to the Khmer Rouge's reign, his return to the capital in 1991 provoked a violent attack. Survivors of the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror are keen for a trial to begin.
CHHIT BUN HOEU (Translation): I really want to see it. Those people committed crimes. They fed the people like they would feed a cat. They use human beings for the purpose of killing them. If someone did not die, they were killed.
SON NGAN (Translation): When I see this pile of bones, I think they are my mother, or father or children. I heard about the Khmer Rouge trial by listening on the radio, on a small radio.
But not all Cambodians want the former Khmer Rouge brought to trial. This is Pailin. A remote dusty gem town on the north-west border with Thailand. More than half the town's population is ex-Khmer Rouge. The guns fell silent in Pailin almost a decade ago, but people here live with the past. It's a close knit community that protects its own. One of those is Khieu Samphan. With the trial on the horizon, Khieu Samphan agreed to speak with Dateline. His first television interview in recent years.
KHIEU SAMPHAN: I think that this is the matter for lawyers but not for me. Second, given the fact that I was president of democratic Kampuchea it seems that I may have some responsibility vis-a-vis my compatriots.
While Khieu Samphan belatedly admits he must share some of the blame, he still maintains he knew nothing about the true extent of the atrocities committed by his regime.
KHIEU SAMPHAN: I don't know such a killing.
REPORTER: Not at all?
KHIEU SAMPHAN: Not at all.
REPORTER: How is it that you as president, as head of state, then as prime minister, as someone who sat on the central committee meetings, how could you not know?
KHIEU SAMPHAN: First, you may know already that in any communist regime it's the party who retain the monopole, the absolute monopole of power. Second, I must tell you that this so-called central committee is not comparable to the central committee of oldest communist party in the world.
Youk Chhang says while there may be no evidence to show Khieu Samphan killed with his own hands, that does not make him innocent.
YOUK CHHANG: As a perpetrator, he still have hope that in the last split second he will convince us to believe but he cannot do so because we are human being and memory is still with us about what happened.
Chhit Bun Hoeu lives with his memories and he finds it impossible to believe that Khieu Samphan knew nothing about the massacres.
CHHIT BUN HOEU (Translation): I don't believe you could be a leader and not know that people under your supervision were killing people.
REPORTER: How are you going to convince Cambodians, let alone a war crimes tribunal, that you simply did not know?
KHIEU SAMPHAN: If I didn't, they cannot believe, I understand, because in the world, in the Western country, for instance, the head of state held the power, real power, but in the communist regime, and particularly in the Khmer Rouge regime, the head of state is under the discipline of the party as all the members of the party.
MARK DAVIS: Khieu Samphan - apparently rehearsing the defence he'll use when he faces court in the near future.
There is no escaping Cambodia's dark past.
SON NGAN, GENOCIDE SURVIVOR (Translation): This is a skull bone.
Evidence of the handiwork of the genocidal Khmer Rouge can be found in the most unexpected places.
CHHIT BUN HOEU, GENOCIDE SURVIVOR (Translation): All around this pagoda there were lots of bodies. They buried 10,000, 20,000, 30,000. In one hole there were 10 bodies, in others 20 or 30.
It was 25 years ago that the Khmer Rouge fled this temple in Kampong Chenang province.
SON NGAN (Translation): After they fled from this pagoda, we found a list of names of more than 30,000 people who had been killed around here.
A mere fraction of the up to 2 million people killed during the Khmer Rouge's reign. Almost a quarter of the population wiped out in five years either from disease, overwork, starvation or execution. None of the Khmer Rouge's leadership has ever been brought to trial, but after years of delays that is about to change.
Youk Chhang is the director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which has been collecting information on the Khmer Rouge and its leaders. And he says when it comes to one of the surviving leaders who will be called to account, there is plenty of evidence.
YOUK CHHANG, CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE DOCUMENTATION CENTRE: There's just plenty of information about Khieu Samphan.
Khieu Samphan, the regime's former head of state, surrended in 1998. At that time he faced the press but any acceptance of responsibility for the past was not forthcoming. Let bygones be bygones was his message to Cambodians.
KHIEU SAMPHAN, FORMER HEAD OF STATE (Translation): I'm sorry, very sorry.
This was not the first time Khieu Samphan had attempted to return to society. Respected as a politician prior to the Khmer Rouge's reign, his return to the capital in 1991 provoked a violent attack. Survivors of the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror are keen for a trial to begin.
CHHIT BUN HOEU (Translation): I really want to see it. Those people committed crimes. They fed the people like they would feed a cat. They use human beings for the purpose of killing them. If someone did not die, they were killed.
SON NGAN (Translation): When I see this pile of bones, I think they are my mother, or father or children. I heard about the Khmer Rouge trial by listening on the radio, on a small radio.
But not all Cambodians want the former Khmer Rouge brought to trial. This is Pailin. A remote dusty gem town on the north-west border with Thailand. More than half the town's population is ex-Khmer Rouge. The guns fell silent in Pailin almost a decade ago, but people here live with the past. It's a close knit community that protects its own. One of those is Khieu Samphan. With the trial on the horizon, Khieu Samphan agreed to speak with Dateline. His first television interview in recent years.
KHIEU SAMPHAN: I think that this is the matter for lawyers but not for me. Second, given the fact that I was president of democratic Kampuchea it seems that I may have some responsibility vis-a-vis my compatriots.
While Khieu Samphan belatedly admits he must share some of the blame, he still maintains he knew nothing about the true extent of the atrocities committed by his regime.
KHIEU SAMPHAN: I don't know such a killing.
REPORTER: Not at all?
KHIEU SAMPHAN: Not at all.
REPORTER: How is it that you as president, as head of state, then as prime minister, as someone who sat on the central committee meetings, how could you not know?
KHIEU SAMPHAN: First, you may know already that in any communist regime it's the party who retain the monopole, the absolute monopole of power. Second, I must tell you that this so-called central committee is not comparable to the central committee of oldest communist party in the world.
Youk Chhang says while there may be no evidence to show Khieu Samphan killed with his own hands, that does not make him innocent.
YOUK CHHANG: As a perpetrator, he still have hope that in the last split second he will convince us to believe but he cannot do so because we are human being and memory is still with us about what happened.
Chhit Bun Hoeu lives with his memories and he finds it impossible to believe that Khieu Samphan knew nothing about the massacres.
CHHIT BUN HOEU (Translation): I don't believe you could be a leader and not know that people under your supervision were killing people.
REPORTER: How are you going to convince Cambodians, let alone a war crimes tribunal, that you simply did not know?
KHIEU SAMPHAN: If I didn't, they cannot believe, I understand, because in the world, in the Western country, for instance, the head of state held the power, real power, but in the communist regime, and particularly in the Khmer Rouge regime, the head of state is under the discipline of the party as all the members of the party.
MARK DAVIS: Khieu Samphan - apparently rehearsing the defence he'll use when he faces court in the near future.