Chhouk claims the ambush was an act of war, and not a breach of the law. ‘It was a war, not a kidnap or a robbery,’ he said.

As a feared Khmer Rouge warlord, Chhouk Rin was renowned for his charisma and battlefield prowess. But those days are gone. Now his time is spent battling illness and trying to overturn his conviction for a crime of which he says he is not guilty. Gone are the military fatigues, as he stepped from the darkness of his wooden home in the southern Cambodian province of Kampot, his hands held together in traditional Khmer greeting.

Pulling up a plastic chair on his concrete porch, he huddled slightly to protect himself from the relative cold. Reportedly a fan of karaoke and cock fighting, Chhouk appeared thin and fragile, with an abscess on his lower lip.

‘Some were starved to death, some died of disease, and some were shot,’ he recalled when asked about the Khmer Rouge. ‘All is different now as AIDS kills a lot of people.’ Clad in a loose green and white striped shirt, a toeless foot exposed through cheap plastic sandals, he said he is no longer well enough to drink alcohol and opts for tea instead.

Last November, Phnom Penh appeals court upheld Chhouk’s conviction for a 1994 train ambush, in which ten Cambodians were killed and three Western backpackers were taken hostage and later executed. Chhouk had previously been convicted for murder, terrorism and illegal detention, relating to the events. He arrived at the appeals court too late to hear that his November appeal had been rejected, he said, and remains free despite his life sentence.

The conviction, Chhouk says, has left him ostracised by the Cambodian government, which contains numerous Khmer Rouge defectors, including the Prime Minister, and reduced his stature in Kampot. ‘I’m like a bad smelling fish. If [politicians] touch me they will become bad smelling too.’ He said. ‘I used to be a leader. . . Nowadays I depend on the people in the [Phnom Voar] area.’

Chhouk was convicted for his role in the train attack after he confessed to sending 200 of his soldiers to participate in the ambush, and delivering the three backpackers – Briton Mark Slater, Australian David Wilson and Frenchman Jean Michel Braquet – to his Khmer Rouge superior. The three men, all in their 20s, were found buried in shallow graves several months later.

Chhouk does not accept the charges against him. ‘There is no evidence to charge me,’ he said. He claimed the ambush was an act of war, and not a breach of the law. ‘It was a war, not a kidnap or a robbery,’ he said.

Chhouk filed his final appeal at Phnom Penh Supreme Court December 15 but does not believe Cambodia’s notoriously corrupt legal system is able to deliver justice. ‘Foreigners and local people think the Cambodian court is not reliable at all,’ he said. ‘Even a simple person thinks it’s not reliable.’

Gary Benham, Vice Consul at the British Embassy, declined to comment on whether or not the Cambodian legal system was sufficiently thorough to achieve a just result for Chhouk. ‘We are just hoping that the case proceeds in a correct manner,’ he said. The embassy has been following the case and will be present for Chhouk’s final hearing.

Although Chhouk rejects his conviction, he said he would be happy to defend the Khmer Rouge at the UN tribunal, which he hopes will happen later this year. ‘I don’t worry even if I am summoned to the tribunal,’ he said. ‘I would be happy to stand in front of the court to explain the Khmer Rouge to foreigners.’

‘Yes, sometimes there were mistakes,’ he said of the regime, under which 1.7 million people died. ‘But [the Khmer Rouge] were right most of the time. ‘Some countries didn’t want the Khmer Rouge to be independent, so the Khmer Rouge said, “we don’t need you.” We wouldn’t follow anyone or serve anyone… But now our country has to beg money from other countries otherwise our country will die.’

The Khmer Rouge also protected the country form neighbouring Vietnam and Thailand, he argued. ‘You dared not come in.’ Chhouk called for the UN tribunal to be televised, and stressed the need for international monitoring to ensure justice.

But asked about the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge, he distanced himself from the regime, and called for the leaders to be called to account. He pointed the finger at Khieu Samphan, the president of Democratic Kampuchea, who is also living in freedom. ‘I want to know why Khieu Samphan killed three or four million Cambodians,’ Chhouk said.

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which collects records on the Khmer Rouge regime to be used during the tribunal, dismissed Chhouk’s defence of the regime. But he voiced a measured defence for Chhouk’s views, arguing that he was a product of rigorous indoctrination. ‘Most of the Khmer Rouge of his age joined at an early age,’ Youk Chhang said. ‘They are heavily influenced by Khmer Rouge ideology and he spent most of his life in the jungle.’

In the wake of his court case, Chhouk has been attempting to keep a low profile, and a wide berth from Nuon Chea, Brother Number 2 in the Khmer Rouge regime. Associating with the former Khmer Rouge leader could bring him further trouble, Chhouk said. ‘If I meet him, people will accuse us of doing something bad again’ he said.

Chhouk still maintains some popular support amongst Khmer Rouge defectors, many of whom object to seeing their leader charged with murder. But he does not plan to resist arrest if the authorities come for him. When the Supreme Court summons him for his final hearing, Chhouk is determined that this time he will arrive on time. ‘You have to believe that when [the appeal] begins, I will be there for sure.’

by William Shaw and Sam Rith

Although Vietnamese responses to the America of today are generally less bellicose than this, memories of the war with the US are still very prominent and animosity still lingers. It’s only been a few months since the government organised large scale commemorative celebrations for the 30th anniversary of the twelve day battle of Dien Bien Phu, when the North Vietnamese troops shot down 34 B52s over Ha Noi. Official posters appeared all over the city showing Vietnamese fists pounding the American bombers.

The war in Iraq has inevitably stoked up old memories; the North Vietnamese may be proud of their resistance to the American forces, but it was not something they wanted, and is certainly not something they want to see inflicted on anyone else.

Asked his opinion on the invasion of Iraq, one farmer in Thuong Tin district just outside Ha Noi pulls up his sleeve to reveal a deep scar running down the length of his forearm, which he says he sustained during an American bombing raid on the village. ‘Peace is good,’ he says. Condemnations of the invasion of Iraq have come from all sections of Vietnamese society, from elderly veterans to schoolchildren, who have shown their disapproval in both State-endorsed and spontaneous protests.

The ruling Communist Party have dubbed the war a ‘gross violation’ of international law, calling for international conflicts to be ‘settled peacefully on the basis of equality and mutual respect,’ and demanded that the invasion be terminated.

Anti-war demonstrations were taking place all over the country before the war began, though they were initially rather more orderly affairs than were seen in the rest of the world. Orchestrated by the Fatherland Front – an organisation that aims to ‘propagandise and mobilise people’ into performing the will of the State – protestors formed orderly lines and carried sombre banners handed to them by the authorities, proclaiming Iraq’s right to sovereignty. There were even rumours amid student circles that State universities were offering cash incentives to those who attended.

But as the war picked up pace, few would have doubted the sincerity of the protests. Shirts came off and the official banners disappeared, to be replaced with bare chests daubed with fake blood, peace slogans such as ‘Son of a Bush’ and skulls and cross bones as students chanted and beat drums and cymbals. One girl, who I shall name Hoanh Anh, studies just over the road from the American embassy where some of the non-State demonstrations have been taking place. Asked for her views on the war in Iraq, she doesn’t hesitate: ‘Bush is evil.’

Hoanh has attended every demonstration so far outside the embassy, where she shouted ‘Say no to war’ in Vietnamese and ‘Bush-dog’ in English until she lost her voice. She said she hoped Iraq wouldn’t lose the war.

By turning up at the embassy – an undesignated protest site – students are potentially taking a very big risk. The Vietnamese government may agree with their cause, but it has little tolerance for the unendorsed public airing of political views. Tran Van Luong learned this the hard way in 2001, when he was caught distributing human rights leaflets in the street. The government sentenced him to death, though this was later reduced to twenty years in prison after a human rights protest campaign.

This was not an isolated incident; The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development reports that the Vietnamese government frequently imprisons and tortures people who raise their voices on domestic political issues.

Predictably, it didn’t take long for the State to crack down on the demonstrations outside the embassy. Protests will continue to be tolerated, but as a police spokesperson said, students are advised to keep their activities to ‘parks, stadiums and cultural palaces.’ In case the students had any other ideas, security police were stationed outside the US embassy with large electric batons that crackled when they flicked the switches.

The protestors didn’t need telling twice – here in Vietnam at least, regime change does not begin at home.

Feeling somewhat disillusioned with the political ideologies currently prevalent in the West, I decided that now would be as good a time as any to travel further a field for a glimpse of political alternatives. Two months ago I arrived in Vietnam, one of the four last strongholds of communism, along with North Korea, China, and Cuba.

Needless to say, Vietnam’s situation is also alluring to anyone wondering about the affects that fighting a lengthy war with America might have on a developing nation. Have the Vietnamese continued to resist the values of the nation that led so many gratuitous bombing raids against them – or have they been swept away like so many others on a wave of Coca-Cola flavoured imperialism?

In the capital, socialism initially appears to be still in full swing – heavily armed statues of glorified workers still adorn the pathways of Lenin Park and a Lenin-style Ho Chi Minh still sits with a glazed expression in a heavily guarded glass box.

For a decade the Vietnamese people (though specifically those from the North) fought courageously at the cost of over 5 million lives for the right to be socialist, and needless to say many seem proud of their victory.

However, in 1986 the Communist Party was forced to open up its borders in response not to outside pressures, but to its own bankruptcy. Consequently, the communist values that have dominated the nation for the past decades began to subside. The changes permitted by the Party focused on greater personal freedom, more openness towards the West and – perhaps most significantly – the transition to a market economy.

Perhaps because free trade was forbidden under Communist rule until 1986, the Vietnamese cities seem to have embraced capitalism and corporate culture with a surprising zeal. On arrival in the capital I began work teaching at a commercial language centre in the heart of the city. The school is privatised and there are neither state scholarships nor statues of glorified workers here. Instead of quotes from Karl Marx adorning the walls, there are abstract and baffling nuggets of corporate wisdom such as ‘quality is tenacity of purpose’, alongside framed adverts for the hi-tech multi-nationals that sponsor the centre.

The centre recently put on a staged production of a popular fairy tale that was one of the first to be turned into a film by Disney. Rather than asking for parental assistance with the provision of costumes, they decided they wanted the show to be as impressive as money would permit, and turned straight to the corporation for sponsorship.

Property is clearly no longer theft in Hanoi, and the first two rows of the audience were the exclusive reserve of the business representatives without whom such a lavish production would not have been feasible. Immediately after the curtains came down on the final act, speeches were made in cordial thanks to the honoured commercial guests.

The influence of the powerful corporations is not only felt in the centre’s extra-curricular activities. In a detail that seems to surpass any of the predictions made for the West in Naomi Klein’s No Logo, one of the school’s classes is paid for by a leading Asian brewery, and carries the company’s name.

The language centre is flourishing and its success is no doubt providing those who can foot the bill with skills crucial to the country’s development. For those who cannot, around whom socialism is supposed to revolve, it is offering very little. America may have had its values defeated in Vietnam when it used more heavy-handed tactics during the 60s and 70s, but perhaps they will have the last laugh as Vietnam begins to move quickly and of its own accord towards an elitist era of free trade and capitalism.