No remorse shown as Khmer Rouge leadership put on trial

Tuesday 28th June, 2011
Albuquerque Express

• Four major figures in the Khmer Rouge regime appeared together in court
• The crimes against them are serious and ghastly
• The trial will either resolve or agitate sensitive and painful memories

The Khmer Rouge leadership, appearing for the first time together in court, have complained about the proceedings of the UN-backed trial, pitting the will of prosecutors in the new Cambodian government, against the resentful leadership of the old.

The trial, known as Case Number Two, is a joint trial of key members of the Khmer Rouge leadership – Leng Sary, the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister and his wife, Leng Thirith, former social affairs minister for the regime; Khieu Samphon, the nominal head of state and Nuon Chea, the prime minister also known as Brother Number 2.

The infamous Pol Pot, known as Brother Number 1, was the head of the famously harsh dictatorship, but died in 1998 before the creation of the UN-backed court to prosecute Khmer Rouge officials.

All the defendants are over the age of 77 and this was a factor used by the defendants to delay proceedings; 84-year-old Nuon Chea, through his attorney, asked the court to allow him to wear his warm hat and sun glasses to keep warm in the air-conditioning and protect his eyes from the glare of court lights.

The court agreed. Such an agreement would not have been made in a Khmer Rouge court.

The four defendants are charged with devising the policies that made the Khmer Rouge regime one of the most hated and feared in the world, a dictatorship so barbaric its legacy has become part of the fabric of history in the world’s imagination.

The most serious crimes they face are instigation of torture, genocide and war crimes, all of which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Cambodia during its brief reign from 1975 to 1979.

Despite the charges, the defendants appeared to show little remorse, with Nuon Chea attacking the court proceedings through his counsel. The former prime minister’s defendants called for the proceedings to be terminated due to the “harmful” and “unfair” nature of the investigations into his clients actions as prime minister.

The defense for Leng Sary said the case against him should be dismissed, on grounds of double jeopardy – he was convicted in 1979 by the Vietnamese after they drove out the Khmer Rouge and was later pardoned in 1996 by the Cambodian King.

Many legal experts have accused the court of not going far enough in its investigations in the former leadership of the Khmer Rouge. The International prosecutor wants to try several more defendants in cases 003 and 004, but the Cambodian government, eager to put the trials to bed, wants Case Number Two to be the last of the Khmer Rouge trials.

The decision is likely to arouse public anger in a country struggling to come to terms with its history.

“They killed so many of people, so they have to be punished,” said 79-year-old Pem Song, a Cambodian monk who was enslaved by his own government and forced into farm labour during a famine created by the regime’s enforcement of new and ineffective farming techniques.