Published: Wednesday December 16, 2009
Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court has for the first time issued genocide
charges against two leaders of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, a tribunal
spokesman said Wednesday.
Former Khmer Rouge number two Nuon Chea and foreign minister Ieng Sary were
both charged over the hardline communist regime's slaughter of Vietnamese
people and ethnic Cham Muslims during the 1970s, spokesman Lars Olsen told
AFP.
"This week both Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary have been brought before the
investigating judges and informed they are being charged with genocide
against the Cham Muslims and the Vietnamese," Olsen said.
"This is the first time that anyone has been charged with genocide" at the
UN-backed tribunal, he added.
Estimates for the number of Chams who died under the Khmer Rouge range from
100,000 to 400,000, but it is not known how many Vietnamese were killed,
according to Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge murdered up to two million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979
in their blood-soaked drive to establish a communist utopia. But the mass
killing does not class as genocide, Olsen said.
"It is impossible to say it was an intent to destroy the Khmers. The
perpetrators were of the same nationalities as the victims," he said.
The United Nations defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious
group".
The court said last month that it was investigating Khmer Rouge incursions
into Vietnam as well as executions of Vietnamese and Cham minorities within
Cambodia.
Cham Muslims, who live mainly in central provinces, form 1.6 percent of the
population in the predominantly Buddhist country today.
Final arguments were heard last month in the case of regime prison chief
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, who was charged with war crimes,
crimes against humanity, torture and premeditated murder in the court's
first trial.
The verdict is expected early in 2010.
Both Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary have already been charged with war crimes and
crimes against humanity.
They are in detention at the court, awaiting trial in the tribunal's second
case along with Ieng Sary's wife, former social affairs minister Ieng
Thirith and former head of state Khieu Samphan.
Led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia's cities
and wiped out nearly a quarter of the population through starvation,
overwork, torture and execution.
The tribunal, created in 2006 after several years of haggling between
Cambodia and the UN, has faced accusations of political interference and
allegations that local staff were forced to pay kickbacks for their jobs.
Cambodian and international prosecutors have openly disagreed whether the
court should pursue more suspects, while the Cambodian investigating judge
has refused to summon high-ranking government officials as witnesses.
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About Me
- Duong Dara
- Dara Duong was born in 1971 in Battambang province, Cambodia. His life changed forever at age four, when the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975. During the regime that controlled Cambodia from 1975-1979, Dara’s father, grandparents, uncle and aunt were executed, along with almost 3 million other Cambodians. Dara’s mother managed to keep him and his brothers and sisters together and survive the years of the Khmer Rouge regime. However, when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia, she did not want to live under Communist rule. She fled with her family to a refugee camp on the Cambodian-Thai border, where they lived for more than ten years. Since arriving in the United States, Dara’s goal has been to educate people about the rich Cambodian culture that the Khmer Rouge tried to destroy and about the genocide, so that the world will not stand by and allow such atrocities to occur again. Toward that end, he has created the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, which began in his garage and is now in White Center, Washington. Dara’s story is one of survival against enormous odds, one of perseverance, one of courage and hope.
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