On 30 March 2009, substantive proceedings began at Cambodia's UN-backed tribunal against Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, the former chief of S-21 prison. About five hundred people queued in the sun from shortly after dawn for places behind bulletproof screens. The line included people who had lost relatives under the Khmer Rouge and survivors carrying injuries from the period.
The case concerned mass killing at S-21 and the killing fields. This was not a crowd seeking spectacle, but an order of access to justice delayed for more than thirty years. Although proceedings were televised, sharing the room with the accused carried a different weight for survivors and bereaved families. The morning wait was short beside the decades before the trial began.