Khmer Rouge tribunal to tackle genocide charges

PHNOM PENH — The slow course of justice for the leaders of Cambodia’s murderous Khmer Rouge regime will inch forward again today, as a United Nations-backed tribunal holds an initial hearing against a pair of defendants, who are in their 80s, facing genocide and other charges.

Khmer Rouge head of state, Khieu Samphan, and Nuon Chea, right-hand man to the group’s late chief, Pol Pot, are among the few surviving top leaders of the brutal communist group that was responsible for about 1.7 million deaths from starvation, exhaustion, disease and execution when it was in power from 1975 to 1979.

It will be the second case for the defendants, who have already been tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to forced evacuations and a mass execution, one of the many massacres at sites around the country that came to be known as the “killing fields”. The verdict in that two-year trial is due next week. If found guilty, the two men could be put in prison for the rest of their lives.

The new trial brings additional charges of genocide, alleging that Pol Pot and other senior leaders intended to wipe out the members of the country’s Vietnamese and Muslim Cham ethnic minorities. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Vietnamese were forced into Vietnam and virtually all of those remaining were executed. Estimates of the number of Chams killed range from 90,000 to 500,000.

In today’s initial hearing, lawyers and judges will discuss which witnesses and experts will be called, the issue of requests for reparations and procedural legal objections. The judges expect the actual trial to begin in the last quarter of this year, said Mr Lars Olsen, a tribunal spokesman.

Ms Lyma Nguyen, an international civil party lawyer representing ethnic Vietnamese victims, said the trial represents not only a rare chance to shed light on the suffering caused by the alleged genocidal policies, but also on the long-standing harm they have inflicted until this day.

Those forced to flee retained no documentation proving their Cambodian origins, so when they returned they were plunged into statelessness.

Today, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Vietnamese remain undocumented, living on the fringes of society without access to proper schooling, health care, jobs or social services.

The trial also marks the first time rape and forced marriage will be addressed by the court as offences considered crimes against humanity.

After years of legal and political wrangling, the Khmer Rouge tribunal was established in 2006 to bring the ruthless regime to justice some 30 years after its reign of terror. Since then, however, the court has been plagued by corruption, mismanagement and financial woes. The hybrid structure of the court, in which UN-appointed international judges share the bench with Cambodian counterparts, has led to allegations of political interference and repeated deadlocks.

To date, only a single conviction has been obtained by tribunal. It sentenced Kaing Guek Eav, also known as “Duch”, the director of the infamous S-21 torture centre, to life imprisonment. Of four original top-level defendants, only Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan remain in the dock to hear next week’s verdict and attend the new trial. Ieng Sary, the Khmer Rouge foreign minister, died in March 2013, while his wife, social affairs minister Ms Ieng Thirith, was released in September 2012 after dementia made her unfit to stand trial. Experts say the second trial, which covers more cases and crimes, could take much longer.

Both ageing defendants are ailing in health. Khieu Samphan, 83, has been hospitalised for high blood pressure and breathing problems, while the health woes of Nuon Chea, 88, led to repeated trial adjournments during the last case. AP