Khmer Rouge prison chief Dutch

Dutch, 67, whose full name is Kaing Guek Eav, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

He had admitted overseeing the torture and execution of thousands of men, women and children at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, and asked for forgiveness.

Prosecutors had asked the judges for a 40-year prison sentence. However, Dutch will not serve the full 35 allotted years as judges reduced the sentence by five years because he had been held illegally, and reduced it by a further 11 years for the time already served behind bars.

Only about a dozen people who were held at Tuol Sleng are thought to have survived, three of whom are still alive. Up to 17,000 people are believed to have died there.

1942 Kaing Guek Eav born in Cambodia’s central province of Kampong Thom
1962 Studies at the prestigious Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh. After graduating in mathematics – and coming second in the entire country – he studied for a teaching certificate
1960s Becomes a secondary school teacher. Spends months in detention for leftwing activity
1969 Joins Khmer Rouge, the communist movement fighting Cambodia’s US-backed government
1970 King Sihanouk of Cambodia is deposed in a coup. General Lon Nol assumes power
1975 Khmer Rouge seizes power. Duch becomes head of Tuol Sleng prison. This serves as the foremost interrogation centre for “enemies of the regime”. As many as 17,000 people were interrogated and tortured there before execution
1979 Vietnamese forces topple Khmer Rouge regime. Remnants flee to Thai border and Duch goes into hiding
1999 Duch found living in a village in north-west Cambodia working for a US non-governmental institution under an assumed name and gets arrested
2005 Tribunal for surviving Khmer Rouge leaders gets UN approval after years of debate about funding
July 26 2010 Tribunal sentences Duch to 35 years in jail for his part in running Tuol Sleng

Victims of Khmer Rouge

Her family members have sought her in vain in numerous detention centres. They have since been forced to leave their village, having received threats from members of the security forces. Initially, as is the way in many such cases, the military denied holding Maina. Reports surfaced indicating that she had been tortured to death in detention. She was reportedly beaten, dunked in water and subjected to repeated electric shocks. Her injuries led to her death in detention. Following these reports, the military claimed that Maina had been killed while trying to escape from custody, and that they had returned her body to her family following a post-mortem examination. Her family has not received her body and there has been no evidence of any such post-mortem examination.

More recently, three members of the military were tried by a military court, but they have only received derisory punishment. Details concerning the investigation conducted by the “Court of Inquiry Board” (CIB) of a military court have just surfaced and clearly indicate that the military are responsible for Maina’s torture and subsequent death, and even identify the area in which her body has been buried. As with other cases of violations of civilians’ rights by members of the military in Nepal, they need to be investigated by the police and brought to trial before a civil court, if there is any chance of justice being achieved. Attempts by the police to investigate the case and to retrieve Maina’s body are currently being blocked by the army. Furthermore, the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Office (OHCHR) Nepal’s investigation is also thought to have been hampered due to the army’s non-cooperation and the government’s indifference.

The CIB reportedly concluded that a covert military team from the Birendra Peace Operations Training Centre in Panchkhal had arrested Maina on February 17, 2004 and that she had been killed by members of the army, as the result of severe torture. The CIB has indicated that Training Centre Chief Colonel Babi Khatri, Captains Niranjan Basnet, Sunil Adhikari, Amit Pun, Seargeant Major Khadak Bahadur Khatri, and soldiers Dil Bahadur Basnet and Shrikrishna Thapa were present during Maina’s interrogation and torture. The CIB also stated that the military, notably Babi Khatri, had taking steps to cover up her death by torture. He reportedly ordered Amit Pun to shoot a bullet into the back of Maina’s dead body, to make it look like she had been shot while trying to escape. Furthermore, Babi Khatri reportedly ordered Amit Pun to bury Maina’s body secretly and Niranjan Basnet to summon the police to prepare a report.

According to the information received, Amit Pun then ordered a member of the military called Surendra to dig a pit to the north-east of the officers’ mess, some 50 to 60 metres outside of the ‘concertina’ barbed-wire. It is reported that Amit Pun took a photograph of Maina’s body just before she was buried in the pit. For his part, Niranjan Basnet allegedly ensured that a false report was prepared by the Panchkhal Police Office concerning Maina’s death.

On September 27, 2005, the media in Nepal reported that Colonel Babi Khatri, Captains Niranjan Basnet and Sunil Adhikari had been ‘found guilty of not following the proper procedures when Maina was found dead in custody’. Colonel Khatri also reportedly had to pay Rupees 50,000 (approximately US$ 670) to the victim’s family and had any promotion blocked for two years. Captains Ameet Pun and Sunil Adhikari were each to pay Rupees 25,000 and had any promotions blocked for one year. Due to a lack of transparency of the military justice system, the AHRC and its sources have not been able to ascertain whether these persons have actually served any of their prison sentences. Regardless of this, the punishment given to these persons for having tortured a 15-year old girl to death is derisory and scandalous, both in terms of the length of imprisonment terms and of the amount of compensation. The family members have reportedly refused to accept this compensation and have the case closed, and are instead seeking justice through the civil courts. The fact that the alleged perpetrators remain in service in the military, with their prospects for promotion only slightly dented despite the grave nature of their crimes, is an indicator of the protection under which members of the armed forces can operate.

It is vital in this case that the alleged perpetrators in question be tried for murder before an independent, impartial court and that, if found guilty, they receive punishment that is proportional to their crimes, in line with international standards. Adequate compensation must also be awarded to the victim’s family for their loss.

As part of the trial before a civil court, further investigations are required. A First Information Report (FIR) has been lodged concerning this case demanding the criminal prosecution of the perpetrators. The police are required to investigate the case and then send their findings to the public prosecutor, who then takes the case before the courts. It is reported that the military are blocking the police’s attempts to investigate these events.

Update

Deputy Superintendent of Police (Dy.S. P.) Sanjaya Singh Basnet refused to register the case due to the involvement of the military, and that it was even too sensitive to explain why the case was being refused.  According to Nepalese law (State Cases Act) the police have to register any information regarding a crime of this nature and they have to provide the receipt of the registration to those who have provided the information.  The action of Dy.S.P.Sanjaya was in direct contravention of the State Cases Act and indicates the apparent disregard that state officials show concerning the law in the country.

Devi Sunuwar then went to the Chief District Officer (CDO) at the District Administrative Office who registered the complaint, but stated that it had no legal validity since according to the State Cases Act the complaint has to be registered by the police. This is not correct: under the provisions of the State Cases Act, if a police officer refuses to register a complaint, the complainant can go to a higher police authority or the CDO to have the complaint registered.

Additional Info

Details on persons reported to have been killed prior to Maina being abducted.

The plainclothes army forces shot two young girls, named Reena Rasaili and Subhadra Chaulagain, between midnight of 12 and dawn of 13 February 2004 in the in Pokahari Chauri-4 village, Kavre District in Nepal. It is alleged that a group of security personnel also raped Reena before shooting her. There was a report about another extra-judicial killing of a young boy named Tasi Lama, who lives in the same village by security personnel on that same day.

Several family members and relatives of the victims were also tortured. However, the next day (13 February), the national radio broadcasted news stating that the security forces killed three Maoist named Reena Rasaili, Subhadra Chaulagain and Tasi Lama during the encounter with the Maoist rebels. Pokahari Chauri-4 village is a very remote area without access to the city and its hospitals, and is located forty-five kilometers away from Dolalghat and almost 150 kilometers far from the Kavre district headquarter.

Nay Phone Latt’s colleague Thin July Kyaw was sentenced to two years imprisonment, Aye Than reported.

Another dissident, Saw Wai, was sentenced to two years in jail for publishing a poem mocking Than Shwe in the weekly Love Journal.

The first words of each line of the Burmese language poem spelled out the message “Senior General Than Shwe is foolish with power”.

Nay Phone Latt was arrested in January; the sentence delivered on Monday included 15 years for offenses under the Electronics Act, two years for “creating public alarm” and three and a half years for offenses under the Video Act, his mother said.

One of his offenses was apparently the possession of a banned video.

His blogs during the September 2007 uprising provided invaluable information about events within the locked-down country.

Aye Than said she was not allowed to attend the trial and Nay Phone Latt was not represented by his defence lawyer, Aung Thein, who began serving a four-month prison sentence for contempt of court last Friday.

“My son is a computer expert and he has not violated any criminal law. It is very unfair that he was given 15 years’ imprisonment under the Electronics Law for a crime he did not commit,” said Aye Than.

A spokesman for the opposition National League for Democracy party, Nyan Win, described Nay Phone Latt, a former party member, as “a young and intelligent blogger and computer expert.”

Spreading arrests

“The government is expediting the trials of political prisoners and many have been given lengthy prison sentences,” said Nyan Win.

Nyan Win said party youth member Tun Tun Naing, who was arrested last year, was given 19 years in prison on Friday.

Tun Tun Naing and Khin Maung Aye, of the privately-owned weekly News Watch, were arrested on 5 November and are being detained in Insein prison.

The media rights organizations Reporters Without Borders and Burma Media Association have demanded their immediate release, adding this brings to 10 the number of journalists arrested so far this year.

Irrawaddy magazine, an exile Burmese news organisation, said the current crackdown is also aimed at silencing legal attempts to ensure fair trials for dissidents now appearing before judges in closed court sessions.

Two weeks ago, three defense lawyers, Nyi Nyi Htwe, Aung Thein and Khin Maung Shein were imprisoned for between four and six months for contempt of court after complaining of unfair treatment.

Four other defense lawyers, Kyaw Hoe, Maung Maung Latt, Myint Thaung and Khin Htay Kyew have been barred from representing their clients, who include members of the 88 Generation Students group.

The US State Department has criticised the imprisonment of the four defense lawyers and urged the Burmese regime to drop all charges and release them.

President Bush announced that he will nominate one of his former senior Asia advisers as special representative for Burma.

‘No legitimacy’

The European Union said on Monday that multi party elections scheduled for 2010 in Burma will be seen as illegitimate unless the ruling military junta frees all political prisoners – particularly Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The 27 EU foreign ministers deplored the lack of progress in Burma since the violent repression of peaceful protests.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 19 years.

The junta has announced general elections in 2010 as part of its “road map to democracy”.

The junta came to power in 1988 after crushing a nationwide pro-democracy uprising, killing as many as 3,000 people. It organized multi party elections in 1990 but refused to honor the results after Suu Kyi’s party won overwhelmingl

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7721271.stm

“With just three months left to the Beijing Olympic Games, the authorities continue to jail people who express independent or critical views in different parts of the country,” the press freedom organization said. “Whether it is a Mongol journalist or a writer in Hubei province, they are silenced with the same determination. Far from view, the repression continues as the games draw near.”

Naranbilig, an independent journalist and human rights activist of Mongol origin, was arrested on 23 March at his home in Hohhot, the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. His family was not informed of his arrest until he was released on bail of 1,850 euros and placed under house arrest for one year beginning on 12 April. The police searched his home, confiscating his computer and many personal documents.

The author of dozens of books and essays about the Mongol minority, Naranbilig edited a monthly magazine called Golonte (“Family Hearth”) that was banned in 2006 after only five issues. An ambassador of Mongol culture and traditions, he represented the Southern Mongolian nomad community in the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous People (WAMIP).

According to the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), he was arrested in an attempt to suppress the issue of minorities in Inner Mongolia, as has already been done in Xinjiang, in the north, and Tibet, in the west. Inner Mongolia’s leading political prisoner, the Mongol journalist Hada, has been detained since 1995 and is serving a 15-year sentence for “separatism” and “spying.” His family recently complained about the appalling conditions in which he is being held and the deterioration in his health.

A writer and journalist aged 47, Zhou was arrested with his wife on 3 May in Zhongxiang, in the central province of Hubei, by the city’s State Security Bureau. According to the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, a writers’ association, he has not been seen since his arrest. His wife was released and placed under house arrest. It is impossible to reach their house by telephone.

Zhou was expelled from the Communist Party in 1992 after writing an article for a Voice of America publication. The authorities have often criticized him for raising social problems and government corruption in the hundreds of articles he has written. The Zhongxiang police say they have lots of evidence that would allow them to prosecute him on a charge of “inciting subversion of state authority.”

北京市人民检察院第一分院

起 诉 书

京一分检刑诉【2008】第48号

被告人胡嘉（别名：胡佳），男，1973年7月25日出生，身份证号码：110105197307254115，汉族，无业，户籍所在地：北京市朝阳区十里堡北里4楼421号，现住北京市通州区东果园BOBO自由城76号楼542号。因涉嫌犯煽动颠覆国家政权罪于2007年12月27日被北京市公安局刑事拘留，经本院批准，于2008年1月29日被北京市公安局逮捕。

北京市公安局对本案侦查终结，以被告人胡嘉涉嫌煽动颠覆国家政权罪，于2008年2月18日向本院移送审查起诉。本院受理后，于2008年2月18日已告知被告人有权委托辩护人，依法讯问了被告人，审查了全部案件材料。

经依法审查查明：

被告人胡嘉出于对我国人民民主专政国家政权和社会主义制度不满，于2001年6月至2007年10月间，通过互联网先后在“博闻社”等境外网站上多次发表《赶上民主列车时 东亚睡狮猛醒日》、《林牧老先生于今日下午14：00前后过世》、《郭飞雄和江伟与〈沈阳政坛地震〉》、《一国无需两制》、《中共十七大之前 中国政法系统大范围制造恐怖气氛》和《国庆及十七大来临 警方连续侵犯公民权利》等煽动性文章，并于其间（期间）接受境外媒体“希望之声”采访。胡嘉在其所写文章中及接收采访时，恶意造谣、诽谤：“中国的人权灾难天天爆发”；“专制体制的生存之道无非是不断地‘吃人’，在专制体制的土壤上只生长着贪婪、腐败、滥权；凭空捏造所谓的‘和谐社会’，然后再把大话、空话、套话、费（废）话、假话重复上千万遍，这完全是一剂毒药，执政党拿它来饮鸩止渴，再拉上整个社会大众殉葬”；煽动：“我们向这样一种专制的体制发起挑战”；“我真的为国家被这样一个组织统治而感到汗颜，预计它活不过百岁，不是分崩离析，就是悄然蜕变，共产党作为末代王朝该寿终正寝了”。胡嘉通过上诉煽动行为，妄图达到颠覆我国国家政权和社会主义制度的目的。

胡嘉的上述煽动性文章被境外多家网站链接和转载；采访录音资料被境外媒体制作成音频或整理成文字，以《胡佳谈高律师被绑架前后的情况》、《向专制体制发起和平的挑战》为题，登载在“大纪元”等境外网站。

被告人胡嘉作案后被查获归案。

认定上述事实的证据如下：

被告人供述与辩解，证人证言，现场勘验检查笔录，鉴定结论，物证，书证，视听资料等。

本院认为，被告人胡嘉目无国法，以造谣、诽谤等方式煽动颠覆国家政权、推翻社会主义制度，罪行重大，其行为触犯了《中华人民共和国刑法》第一百零五条第二款之规定，且犯罪事实清楚，证据确实充分，应当以煽动颠覆国家政权罪追究其刑事责任。依据《中华人民共和国刑事诉讼法》第一百四十一条之规定，本院提起公诉，请依法判处。

此致

北京市第一中级人民法院

检察员：张荣革

代理检察员：王翠杰

2008年3月7日

（公章：北京市人民检察院第一分院）

The judges adjourned the hearing and warned Verges over his behavior after he said he was unable to act for his client because court documents had not been translated.

16,000 pages of court documents had not been translated into French, one of the court’s three official languages, for Khieu Samphan’s appeal against his detention without bail.

“His detention is illegal because it has been ordered from a file to which his lawyers did not have access.” the lawyer, said after Khieu Samphan made his first public appearance before the UN-backed tribunal.

The judges said Verges and his Cambodian co-lawyer had given no indication of any such difficulties since filing their appeal on December 21, 2007, adding that all the relevant documents had been translated.

“As a consequence of the behavior of the international co-lawyer advising with effectively no notice that he will not continue to act in this appeal within the circumstances mentioned above, a warning is given to him,” they said in a statement on their decision to adjourn the proceedings to a date to be decided.

Verges, who was born in Thailand, reportedly befriended Khieu Samphan and other future Khmer Rouge leaders while at university in Paris in the 1950s.

Khieu Samphan, who was detained by the court in November on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, earlier listened stony-faced as head judge Prak Kimsan read out the background of the case against him.

He then told the court, which was set up to try former Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity during their brutal 1975-1979 rule, that he had lived in poverty for the past 10 years.

“I have had no job since leaving the jungle. (I have) only my wife, who struggles to feed me and my family,” Khieu Samphan said in Khmer, referring to his 1998 defection from the then-dying Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement based in the remote northwest.

Khieu Samphan, who court documents say is 76, was dressed in a light-grey shirt and trousers and spoke in a quiet, hoarse voice as he addressed the three Cambodian and two foreign judges, an AFP reporter at the court said.

According to the prosecution charges, Khieu Samphan aided and abetted the Khmer Rouge regime in policies which were “characterised by murder, extermination, imprisonment, persecution on political grounds and other inhumane acts.”

Defence lawyers argue that Khieu Samphan had no real power under the regime and in appeal documents lodged in December they petitioned for a dismissal of the detention order “because Mr Khieu Samphan is not guilty.”

“He was simply a head of state in name only,” they said in the documents.

Khieu Samphan, the last of five top regime leaders to be arrested and detained by the tribunal, has never denied the bloodletting under the Khmer Rouge but has repeatedly denied his involvement in the atrocities.

Up to two million people are believed to have been executed or died of starvation and overwork as the communist regime emptied Cambodia’s cities, exiling millions to vast collective farms in a bid to forge an agrarian utopia.

Cambodia’s genocide tribunal convened in 2006 after nearly a decade of haggling between the government and the United Nations.

Background

Hu supporter Teng Biao, a lawyer who has defended political dissidents, was released by the Chinese government last month after spending two days in custody. In September 2007, Teng and Hu wrote an open letter requesting that the international community investigate China’s promises to improve its human rights record. In November 2007, the rights group Dui Hua reported that the number of political arrests in China has more than doubled in 2006 . The country has been harshly criticized in recent months for cracking down on human rights activists and political dissidents ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

China Steps Up Crackdown in Tibet

China is intensifying its crackdown on Tibet after the largest anti-Chinese protests there in almost 50 years. Reports from remote Qinghai province this week state that authorities have arrested Tibetan feminist and writer Jamyang Kyi as well as five other Qinghai Tibetan community leaders.

The five are Golog Dape, a popular comedian, leader of the Gangchen performance group, and animal rights activist; Dolma Kyi, a singer, activist, and founder of the folk-music company Gangchen Metok; Palchen Kyab, principal of the private Mayul Dargye school, founded with donations from Tibetan nomads; Lhundrup, Mayul Dargye’s assistant principal; and Sonam Dorje, a teacher.

Golok prefecture State Security Bureau officers took the five into custody March 31, and are now being held in the provincial capital, Xining .

No information on charges against them was available. “No relatives have been allowed to visit them.”

The Accusations

Hu supporter Teng Biao, a lawyer who has defended political dissidents, was released by the Chinese government last month after spending two days in custody. In September 2007, Teng and Hu wrote an open letter requesting that the international community investigate China’s promises to improve its human rights record. In November 2007, rights group Dui Hua reported that the number of political arrests in China had more than doubled in 2006 and the country has been harshly criticized in recent months for cracking down on human rights activists and political dissidents ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing as well as for their actions in Tibet.

He was detained on Dec. 27 last year and later charged with “incitement to subvert state power,” an accusation based on six essays and interviews in which he criticized the Communist Party. He wrote a long, blistering essay detailing how the police had tortured two people who had protested the illegal seizure of their homes in Beijing. In that essay, he also criticized the party’s human rights record.
Mr. Hu posted the essay on his personal blog in advance of last fall’s 17th Party Congress, a major political meeting in which the new party leadership was announced.
Last year, Mr. Hu was also a co-writer of an article that contended that the Communist Party had failed to fulfill its Olympic promises to improve human rights before the Beijing Games, though that article apparently was not included as evidence.

Hu’s Sentence

Li Fangping, Mr. Hu’s lawyer, said the court showed leniency by sentencing him to less than the maximum five-year term. The sentence also forbids Mr. Hu to make any public political statements for one year after his release from prison. Mr. Li said that Mr. Hu continued to maintain his innocence, though he had acknowledged outside the courtroom that some of his comments were “excessive” in the context of existing law.
Mr. Hu has 10 days to decide whether to appeal the verdict. His health is also an issue; he has hepatitis B and also takes medication for a deteriorating liver condition. Mr. Li said Mr. Hu had the option of applying for medical parole if he chose not to appeal.

Government

While prosecutors in China rarely discuss cases after a verdict, Xinhua, the country’s official news agency, reported that Mr. Hu had confessed to the charges. “Hu spread malicious rumors and committed libel in an attempt to subvert the state’s political power and socialist system,” the court verdict stated. The state media also stated that Mr Hu has been treated “with leniency” because he had acknowledged wrongdoing.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said that his case had been handled “according to Chinese laws ” and urged people not to interfere in China’s internal affairs.
China’s subversion laws, like those for state secrets, are deliberately vague and grant prosecutors considerable leeway in determining subversive speech, although freedom of speech is included in the Constitution.

Hu’s wife, Zeng Jinyan

Hu’s wife, blogger and fellow activist Zeng Jinyan, was allowed to attend the hearing where the sentence was handed down. She rejected the court case against her husband.”They can use every tactic in the book to shut me up, but they can’t change the way I feel about this,”

“I’m very disappointed and very pained,” she said. “Yesterday, I thought he could be back home today.”
Zeng, who has been under house arrest with the couple’s four-month-old baby daughter since Hu ‘s arrest Dec. 27 , after spending months under virtual house arrest because of his civil rights lobbying on behalf of disenfranchised people affected by the Olympics.
She and daughter Hu Qianci have been the focus of a goodwill campaign by other Chinese bloggers and “netizens”, who have coordinated attempts on line to get baby formula delivered to the couple’s apartment in Bobo Freedom City in Beijing.
Zeng, an AIDS activist and blogger who won an award from Paris-based Reporters Without Borders alongside Hu Jia last year, has updated her blog sporadically from house arrest, despite a clampdown by national security police on her telephone and Internet access.

Hu’s mother

Hu’s mother described her son as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Chinese politics.
“I feel really wronged, in fact what Hu Jia did is good for society. After the trial, the judge asked family members to voice our opinions of the sentencing. I told him if you let people speak freely, the sky won’t fall.”
Hu appeared strained and worried in the dock during the hearing, and he wasn’t allowed to speak.
“They didn’t let him to say anything, not like last time,” his mother said. “I felt he was under great pressure. When he was led into court, he didn’t see us. After the trial, he didn’t look at us either,” she said.
Around 200 people congregated outside the court buildings to support Hu.

胡佳的律师李方平告诉本台，法庭认定的主要所谓罪行是胡佳零六零七年间的五篇文章以及接受海外媒体的两个采访，辩方律师认为判决不合理，胡佳无罪：“ 我们无法接受这一判决，因为胡佳发表的这些和平言论，内容都没有涉及国家政权层面，处以三年零六个月徒刑是不合适的。 ”

当天胡佳的母亲和妻子曾金燕出席了旁听，她们对结果表示非常失望和愤慨，胡佳的母亲说：“很失望，本来应该没罪的，现在弄了三年半还剥夺政治权利一年，就觉得太委屈了。实际胡佳做的都是对社会有益的事情。事后法官让家属留下，问我有什么看法，我说你让老百姓说话天塌不下来，不给人民言论自由，说什么就给扣帽子，我说胡佳就是做了政治祭坛上的羔羊，社会前进的牺牲品。”

据家人介绍胡佳在宣判庭上没有发言的机会 ，同时显得精神压力很大：“不让他说什么，就是宣判不让他说，不像上次开庭。我感觉胡佳精神压力很大，进去的时候是背着我们的，但出来他也低着头，没有看我们一眼。”

周四的宣判没有发放公众旁听证，而法院外有约两百名北京和各地的访民声援胡佳，其中周莉接受本台采访时说：“很多行人看到这么多人就问这里发生什么事情，在审判谁？访民就告诉他们法院在判一个帮助政府、为中国好的人。宣判结果令大家都很失望，心情很沉重，中国政府又犯了一个错误。　”

多家海外媒体一早就到法院大门外等候，法院设立采访区域，却安排胡佳家人从特别通道进出，媒体最终没能成功采访他们。

宣判过后律师曾短暂会见了胡佳，李方平当天告诉记者暂时还未对上诉与否有最终决定，十天上诉期限内他们会再次会见胡佳：“他也觉得判刑偏重，是否上诉他现在没有拿出最后决定性意见，我们还会继续就这个事情进行沟通，包括要考虑家属意见，尤其是他妈妈的意见。”

家人方面希望胡佳上诉，她们担心身患肝硬化的胡佳能否挺得过三年多的冤狱。胡佳的母亲说：“上诉还存在一线希望能够改判，看高等法院是否掌握政策方面好一点。主要是担心胡佳的身体，他的病不能转化，只能维持，原来大夫说过能有十年的寿命，这一折腾不就得减寿么？主要我怕。。也有先例。身体不好又不让保外就医，人可能死在里面。”

今年三十四岁的胡佳长期从事环保、艾滋病等领域的民间维权公益事业，因此成为当局长期打压的对象，从零五年开始不断遭受监控、软禁、羁押，长期没有自由的胡佳依然在家中从事人权工作，传递维权信息以及批评社会不公。当局去年底以涉嫌煽动颠覆的罪名将他逮捕以后，国际人权组织以及欧美各国官员纷纷呼吁当局放人，国内各界维权团体也不断进行声援，北京方面仍一意孤行将这位维权人士入罪。

以上是自由亚洲电台特约记者丁小的采访报道。

Relatives of those killed have still not received justice

A human rights group in Sri Lanka has blamed local security forces for the massacre of 17 aid workers in 2006 and accused the government of a cover-up.

The bodies of the Action Against Hunger workers were found in the north-eastern town of Muttur.

It was one of the worst attacks on humanitarian workers since the 2003 bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad.

The government has responded by saying that the killing of the workers is now the subject of a commission of inquiry.

“The public can share information information in relation to this incident with the commission and if it is helpful this will be used when it formulates its conclusions,” Minister for Human Rights Mahinda Samarasinghe told the BBC Sinhala service.

‘Cover-up’

The University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR) has named three people – a local home guard and two police constables as the killers of most of the 17 local aid workers in August 2006.

“The evidence shows state security forces, including police, killed them and that senior police officers covered it up,” said UTHR spokesman Rajan Hoole.

The aid workers’ bodies were exhumed

“The killing of civilians during time of conflict is a war crime. The perpetrators and their superiors should be brought to justice.”

The mainly ethnic Tamil workers were involved in rebuilding the north-east of Sri Lanka two years after the 2004 tsunami.

They were found lying face down with bullet marks in their heads in an Action Against Hunger compound in the predominantly Muslim town of Muttur.

The military said they were trapped in fighting between troops and rebels. It has blamed the Tamil Tigers for the murders.

The report said the brother of the home guard had been killed by a Tiger gunman the previous day and he wanted vengeance.

It said that there was a culture of impunity in Sri Lanka as the 2002 ceasefire collapsed into open war.

UTHR said publishing the report was risky, because three witnesses had already been killed, a fourth had gone missing and others had fled the country.

‘Serious abuses’

Meanwhile an international panel invited by Sri Lanka to observe the government’s probe into human rights abuses has shut down, three weeks after accusing Colombo of failing to tackle the issue.

The International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) was formed to observe an inquiry into 16 cases of serious rights violations, including the August 2006 massacre.

In a statement on Monday, the IIGEP said they were halting their efforts to determine whether the inquiries were being conducted “in accordance with internationally accepted norms and standards”.

Earlier this month, the group had accused the government of lacking the political will to investigate the incidents and said Sri Lankan authorities did not meet the basic minimum standards in investigating serious rights abuses.

The IIGEP’s final report is expected to be presented to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse next month and the panel’s office will formally close on 30 April, the statement said.

Mr Samarasinghe said that while the withdrawal was “regrettable”, he was confident that the inquiry into the Muttur killings – and another inquiry into the 2006 killing of five students in the eastern town of Trincomalee – would meet international standards.