Closing Order of Case 002 against Senior KR Leaders Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith

In light of the HISTORIC (!) start of MOST COMPLEX (sic!) trial hearings beginning on   27 June 2011 and again ANOTHER HISTORIC (!) START of this same MOST COMPLEX (sic!) on 21 Nov. 2011 of Case 002 against the surviving Khmer Rouge senior leaders Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, KI Media is posting installations of the public document of the Closing Order of Case 002 (or, Indictment). The Closing Order of the Co-Investigating Judges forms the basic document from which all the parties (co-prosecutors, lead co-lawyers for all civil parties, defense lawyers) make their arguments before the Trial Chamber judges (one Cambodian President, 2 Cambodian Judges, 2 UN judges). Up until now, the hearings involving these four surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders have been in the Pre-Trial Chamber over issues of pre-trial detention and jurisdictional issues. Beginning in June November 2011, the Trial Chamber is hearing the substantive (sic!) arguments over the criminal charges   (genocide against Buddhists, genocide against Vietnamese, genocide against Cham Muslims, crimes against humanity at the 200 prisons, mass crimes in countless killing fields, Eastern Zone purges, penal code of 1956, etc.) of only the Phase I Movement in April 1975.

 
 Available in Khmer, English and French. Contact the ECCC for a free copy.  

 

CLOSING ORDER (or, INDICTMENT)

 

of Co-Investigating Judges You Bunleng and Marcel Lemonde

15 September 2010

 

IX. ROLES OF THE CHARGED PERSONS

D. IENG THIRITH

 

Participation in the Common Purpose

Movement of Population

1226.       Through her various roles in the CPK, Ieng Thirith participated in the movement of the population from towns and cities to rural areas, as well as from one rural area to another.

1227.       The movements of the population from towns and cities to rural areas were discussed in CPK publications⁴⁹⁹⁰ which Ieng Thirith would have read and distributed within her Ministry.⁴⁹⁹¹

Phase 1

1228.       Ieng Thirith was not in Cambodia when the evacuation of Phnom Penh and the first movements of the population were planned and implemented.⁴⁹⁹²

1229.       Ieng Thirith is likely to have known about the evacuation of Phnom Penh before she returned to Cambodia in around June 1975.⁴⁹⁹³ In any case, she later admitted that she was not surprised by the evacuation when she arrived "because the leaders explained about the reasons, economical, political and military reasons" ⁴⁹⁹⁴

1230.       On 10 June 1976, Ieng Thirith attended a meeting where the adverse consequences of the evacuation of Phnom Penh on the population were discussed, in particular the fact that people carried cholera after they were moved from Phnom Penh to rural areas "making lives of our people dangerous" ⁴⁹⁹⁵

1231.       After the end of the DK regime, Ieng Thirith endorsed and defended the movement of the population from Phnom Penh. She stated that the people who had been evacuated from Phnom Penh were "not satisfied" because nobody had explained to them the underlying "policy" and that this was "only temporarily and that after we have enough to eat they will come back and resume their old jobs" ⁴⁹⁹⁶

Phase 2

1233.       Ieng Thirith explained that she visited the Northwest Zone in 1976.⁴⁹⁹¹ This visit occurred after or during the movement of people from the Central (Old North), Southwest, West and East Zones to the North and Northwest Zones. It is likely that during that visit she was made aware that a large number of people had been moved throughout the country.

Phase 3

1234.       This phase of the movement of the population was linked to the East Zone purge which took place, in part, because of CPK fears that the Vietnamese had infiltrated its ranks in the East Zone in order to stage a coup d'etat. The involvement of Ieng Thirth in the purge of the East Zone is described below. In particular, during the time Ieng Thirith was Minister of Social Affairs, a number of people were transferred through her Ministry. From late 1977 to late 1978, those of her staff members who were originally from the East Zone were targeted to be removed from the Ministry and its related units⁴⁹⁹⁸ and replaced by workers from Kampong Chhnang province⁴⁹⁹⁹ or Srae Ambel salt fields.⁵⁰⁰⁰