ABC Radio Australia
The case against four surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement has been underway in Cambodia all week.
One of the key issues to be raised in the early parts of the trial has been a controversial amnesty and pardon granted to the regime's former foreign minister Ieng Sary.
Reporter: Robert Carmichael
Speakers: Michael Karnavas, defence lawyer for Ieng Sary; William Smith, deputy international prosecutor; Clair Duffy, observer for Open Society Justice Initiative.
CARMICHAEL: In 1996 the Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary defected to the Cambodian government. His move precipitated the end of the Khmer Rouge movement.
Ieng Sary's decision was timely -the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 meant that proxy players in the Cold War struggle, such as the Khmer Rouge, ran out of patrons like the United States. Ieng Sary had seen the writing on the wall.
His defection was sweetened by the Cambodian government. Ieng Sary received a royal pardon for the death penalty that a 1979 tribunal in Phnom Penh had handed down to him in absentia. That tribunal had been established in 1979 by the new Cambodian government just months after it drove the Khmer Rouge from power.
The remnants of Pol Pot's movement had fled west to the Thai border, where they found sanctuary and support during the final decade of the Cold War.
As part of that 1996 deal, Ieng Sary received a second sweetener an amnesty from prosecution under a law that made membership in the Khmer Rouge a criminal offence.
This week the international tribunal where Ieng Sary is on trial with three other surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, heard arguments for and against that amnesty.
Ieng Sary's defence team argued that the UN-backed court was essentially a national court, and therefore had to abide by the law that granted his client that amnesty.
Michael Karnavas is Ieng Sary's international defence lawyer.
KARNAVAS: Mr. Ieng Sary has abided by all of the conditions of the amnesty, and the amnesty itself as I have indicated brought fruit the very fruit that it was intended to bring - Peace to Cambodia - because as after that, the rest either put down their arms or just gave up.
CARMICHAEL: Ieng Sary's defence team said their client's 1996 defection was contingent upon no further prosecutions - and therefore he should not be on trial. Karnavas also cited the example of Sierra Leone in support of amnesty. He said the United Nations had not objected to amnesties agreed in that West African state when it established a tribunal for crimes against humanity committed there.
KARNAVAS: And I mention this and I highlight this because it demonstrates that even for the crimes for which Mr Ieng Sary is charged, even for these sorts of crimes national jurisdictions are permitted to grant amnesties and there is no international prohibition, or customary international law, prohibiting this.
CARMICHAEL: Unsurprisingly, the prosecution disagrees. Deputy international prosecutor William Smith listed a number of reasons why Ieng Sary's amnesty was invalid, adding that international precedent compelled that the judges set it aside.
In summary, said Smith, the 1996 deal was never intended to provide an amnesty for genocide and other serious crimes.
SMITH: Again for arguments sake, if your honours found it did, this chamber has the discretion to reject such an amnesty on the basis that it did not comply with international treaty obligations and customary international law on the issue. It should also be rejected because of this court's obligation as an internationalized court to uphold principles in treaties and conventions, the purpose of which is to protect humanity.
CARMICHAEL: Clair Duffy, who monitors the trial for the Open Society Justice Initiative, said the prosecution's arguments against the amnesty were compelling.
DUFFY: The full reason that we set up courts like this is to end impunity for international crimes. And from what we've seen, many other courts have read these kinds of amnesty provisions down for that very reason.
CARMICHAEL: The UN-backed tribunal estimates that between 1.7 million and 2.2 million people died during the Khmer Rouge's rule of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The three other accused in the dock with Ieng Sary are party ideologue Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two; former head of state Khieu Samphan; and the former Social Affairs minister Ieng Thirith.
This week's hearings are preliminary, and are dealing with procedural issues approving witness lists, for instance, and determining various other aspects of the trial such as the validity of Ieng Sary's amnesty. Later this year, the court will issue its decisions ahead of the start of the trial proper - with witnesses and evidence. The chances are that Ieng Sary will be back in court. This is Robert Carmichael in Phnom Penh.
3 comments:
Please don't grant diese killers.
Please don't grant diese killers.
While acknowledging the mass atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime, we should never forget the level of atrocities committed during the US secretive bombing of Cambodia from 1968-1973. A declassified telephone discussion between Henry Kissinger and General Alexander Haig, Nixon's deputy assistant for national security affairs, recorded that Nixon had ordered a “massive bombing campaign in Cambodia [to use] anything that flys [sic] on anything that moves”.
The map of US bombing targets released by Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Program shows that more than half of the country was affected by the indiscriminate bombings. Professor Ben Kierman, director of the program, puts the casualties figure from the bombing at 150,000 deaths, while Edward Herman, a professor of Wharton School, and Noam Chomsky put the toll at 600,000 using figures provided by a Finnish Commission of Inquiry.
Based on this, we can never naively claim that US bombing led to the mass executions by the Khmer Rouge or refuted the regime's mass atrocities. But, to certain extent, the blanket bombing, which directly led to the destruction of livestock and agricultural land, could have definitely played a role in the mass starvation.
From new data released during the Clinton administration, Taylor Owen, a doctoral student at Oxford University, and Professor Kierman noted that 2,756,941 tons of bombs were dropped on Cambodia.
To put the figure into perspective, just over 2 million tons of bombs were dropped by the allies during all of World War II. The bombs dropped in Cambodia represented about 184 Hiroshima atomic bombs combined, making Cambodia the most bombed nation in the world. Based on the new data, Professor Kierman also stressed that the casualties might be much higher than his earlier predicted 150,000
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