Associated Press Writer
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Khieu Samphan, arrested Monday by Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal, was an intellectual who served as the head of state of the murderous Khmer Rouge movement in the late 1970s.
He became the fifth suspect detained by the tribunal.
The tribunal is seeking accountability for atrocities during the Khmer Rouge regime's 1975-79 rule that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.
Khieu Samphan has repeatedly denied responsibility for any atrocities. In a book published last week, he defended many of the policies of the ultra-communists although he has admitted that some killings took place.
Born July 27, 1931, the son of a provincial judge, Khieu Samphan won a government scholarship to study in Paris in the early 1950s. There he joined a Marxist circle of Cambodian students who formed the nucleus of what later became the Khmer Rouge.
After returning from Paris in the late 1950s he helped create the left-leaning French-language newspaper, l'Observateur. He also established his reputation as an honest intellectual and attracted a following among students at home.
His activities and popularity, however, alienated then-head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk, whose police stripped and beat him on the streets of the capital in July 1960 before detaining him for a month in August.
Khieu Samphan fled into the jungle to join Cambodian communists in 1967 to escape the government's stepped-up crackdown on the leftists.
In his 2004 memoir, he claimed that he was merely a "shell" for the Khmer Rouge, despite his title as the head of state he received a year after the group took power on April 17, 1975.
He said he had nothing to do with its radical policies to evict people from cities, abolish money and replace private ownership with communal cooperatives across the country.
The secretive Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown from power in January 1979 by a Vietnamese invasion.
Khieu Samphan re-emerged as its chief representative while the guerrillas conducted diplomatic and military campaigns to oust the Vietnamese occupation army and its satellite regime led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who is currently Cambodia's prime minister.
In late 1991, Khieu Samphan returned to the Cambodian capital as the chief Khmer Rouge representative under the Paris peace accord. He was met by a government-organized mob that almost lynched him. He and his entourage were rescued in an armored personnel carrier that drove them to the airport from where a plane flew them to Thailand, Cambodia's neighbor the Khmer Rouge used as an exit door to the outside world for nearly two decades.
The Khmer Rouge boycotted the 1993 U.N.-supervised election and resumed fighting a small scale guerrilla war.
Khieu Samphan retained his high profile through the group's clandestine radio broadcasts until the movement collapsed in 1999.
Until his arrest, he had lived in Pailin, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in northwest Cambodia, and spent some of his time tending ducks in his backyard.
He claimed he was awaken to the reality of his regime's brutality only after watching a 2003 documentary about the Khmer Rouge S-21 prison, where as many as 16,000 people are believed to have passed through its gates before being taken for execution. Only about a dozen are thought to have survived.
"When I saw the film, it was hard for me to deny (the killings). There's no more doubt left," Khieu Samphan said in an interview with The Associated Press at the time.
"Everything has to go the trial's way now, and there's no other way," he said. "But I also want the public to understand about me, too. I was not involved in any killings," he said at the time.
He became the fifth suspect detained by the tribunal.
The tribunal is seeking accountability for atrocities during the Khmer Rouge regime's 1975-79 rule that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.
Khieu Samphan has repeatedly denied responsibility for any atrocities. In a book published last week, he defended many of the policies of the ultra-communists although he has admitted that some killings took place.
Born July 27, 1931, the son of a provincial judge, Khieu Samphan won a government scholarship to study in Paris in the early 1950s. There he joined a Marxist circle of Cambodian students who formed the nucleus of what later became the Khmer Rouge.
After returning from Paris in the late 1950s he helped create the left-leaning French-language newspaper, l'Observateur. He also established his reputation as an honest intellectual and attracted a following among students at home.
His activities and popularity, however, alienated then-head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk, whose police stripped and beat him on the streets of the capital in July 1960 before detaining him for a month in August.
Khieu Samphan fled into the jungle to join Cambodian communists in 1967 to escape the government's stepped-up crackdown on the leftists.
In his 2004 memoir, he claimed that he was merely a "shell" for the Khmer Rouge, despite his title as the head of state he received a year after the group took power on April 17, 1975.
He said he had nothing to do with its radical policies to evict people from cities, abolish money and replace private ownership with communal cooperatives across the country.
The secretive Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown from power in January 1979 by a Vietnamese invasion.
Khieu Samphan re-emerged as its chief representative while the guerrillas conducted diplomatic and military campaigns to oust the Vietnamese occupation army and its satellite regime led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who is currently Cambodia's prime minister.
In late 1991, Khieu Samphan returned to the Cambodian capital as the chief Khmer Rouge representative under the Paris peace accord. He was met by a government-organized mob that almost lynched him. He and his entourage were rescued in an armored personnel carrier that drove them to the airport from where a plane flew them to Thailand, Cambodia's neighbor the Khmer Rouge used as an exit door to the outside world for nearly two decades.
The Khmer Rouge boycotted the 1993 U.N.-supervised election and resumed fighting a small scale guerrilla war.
Khieu Samphan retained his high profile through the group's clandestine radio broadcasts until the movement collapsed in 1999.
Until his arrest, he had lived in Pailin, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in northwest Cambodia, and spent some of his time tending ducks in his backyard.
He claimed he was awaken to the reality of his regime's brutality only after watching a 2003 documentary about the Khmer Rouge S-21 prison, where as many as 16,000 people are believed to have passed through its gates before being taken for execution. Only about a dozen are thought to have survived.
"When I saw the film, it was hard for me to deny (the killings). There's no more doubt left," Khieu Samphan said in an interview with The Associated Press at the time.
"Everything has to go the trial's way now, and there's no other way," he said. "But I also want the public to understand about me, too. I was not involved in any killings," he said at the time.
5 comments:
This guy honest but there two more guy behind him are not Sihaknuk and Vietnam are behind the killing field also why there no any potential to summon Sihaknuk and Vietcong? To be fair question them all
Well done! He has to respond to the crime that have been committed during the period 1975-79. It looks absurd to declare by himself innocent regarding the astrocity that has been happened.
You are guilty, because you were the head of the state that time.
Say, Dr. Lao. Since you said Khieu Samphan was one of your professor, could you share with us something good that you learnt from him then? Do you remember anything he taught you that was special to you?
I had a lot of confident that there are injustice on Samphan. He is gainst all governments in past 40 years. Sihanouk put him in jail. Lon Nol Look for him. Pol Pot put him as figure head. Now Hun sen put him jail again.
What wrong with these pictures.
I think everyone looking for a skape goat for the failures of the goverment.
pol pot, khiev samphan, and noun chea are not the real mass murderers during the killing field. but it was the lower level KR commanders and cadres like Hun Sen and Heng Samrin that did all the killing. And guess what, they are still killing cambodian people and take their lands as of today.
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