Ieng Thirith's biography

Foreground: Ieng Thirith and Ieng Sary

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ieng Thirith (born 1932, Battambang Province)[1] was a member of the Khmer Rouge Central Committee.

Early years

Born Khieu Thirith in northwestern Cambodia's Battambang Province, she came from a relatively wealthy and privileged family, and was the second daughter of a Cambodian judge who abandoned the family during World War II, running off to Battambang with a Cambodian princess.[2]

Thirith graduated from the Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh, and while still in Cambodia, she became engaged to Ieng Sary, who attended Lycée in the year above her. She went on to Paris with her sister where she studied English Literature majoring in Shakespeare at the Sorbonne. She became the first Cambodian to achieve a degree in English Literature. Thirith married Ieng Sary in the town hall of Paris' 15th arrondissement the summer of 1951 and took her husband's name, becoming Ieng Thirith.[2] Her older sister, Khieu Ponnary, later became the wife of Pol Pot. Together the two sisters and their husbands later became known as 'Cambodia's Gang of Four', a reference to the radical group led by Jiang Qing the widow of Mao Tse-tung.[3]

Midlife

She returned to her native Cambodia in 1957 and worked as a professor before founding a private English school in 1960.[1]

She was a senior member of the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime. From 1975 to 1979 Thirith was Minister of Social Affairs and Action and Head of Democratic Kampuchea's Red Cross Society.
Later years

Thirith lived with her husband Ieng Sary in a luxurious villa on Street 21 in southern Phnom Penh.[4] Until her arrest, she was rarely seen in public.

By 2006, Ieng Thirith and her husband had retained foreign legal counsel to assist with their defense as the Cambodia Tribunal made progress with courtroom preparation and judge selection. [4] She was arrested, along with ailing Ieng Sary,[5] on November 12, 2007, at their home in Phnom Penh, after being indicted by the Cambodia Tribunal.[6] She was arrested for crimes against humanity:[7] "planning, direction, coordination and ordering of widespread purges ... and the unlawful killing or murder of staff members from within the Ministry of Social Affairs."[1]

References

• a b c Ker Munthit, Associated Press (November 11, 2007). "Ieng Thirith: A pioneer among female leaders of the Khmer Rouge". msnbc.msn.com. Retrieved on 2007-11-15.
• a b David P. Chandler (1999). "Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot" (ISBN 0813335108). p.32. Westview Press. Retrieved on 2007-11-15.
• Securing Allegiance: Elite’s Children Find Love in a Hot Political Climate, Cambodia Daily Weekend Edition Saturday, January 17-18, 2004
• a b Michael Sheridan (February 19, 2006). "Pol Pot's in-laws face trial". timesonline.co.uk. Retrieved on 2007-11-15.
• Ian MacKinnon, South-east Asia correspondent (November 12, 2007). "Leading Khmer Rouge figures arrested". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved on 2007-11-15.
• "ECCC detains Ieng Sary, wife for questioning", Xinhua, November 12, 2007.
• "Ex-official of Khmer Rouge and wife arrested for crimes against humanity", Associated Press (International Herald Tribune), November 12, 2007.
• Philip Short. Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare. Henry Holt and Company, 2005.

The End of Cambodia's Family Affair

Ieng Sary (at left) and his wife Ieng Thirith at a funeral for Thirith's sister, Ponnary, the first wife of the late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, July 3, 2003 (Photo: Khem Sovannara / AFP / Getty Images)

Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2007
By Kevin Doyle / Phnom Penh
Time Magazine (USA)

Behind every strong man, as the saying goes, stands an even stronger woman, and in Cambodia's recent tumultuous history few strong women stand out more than the Khieu sisters. Daughters of a judge and among the country's first female intellectuals, Ponnary and Thirith were sent to study in Paris in the 1950s where they met and later married two other Cambodian students — creating a foursome that went on to form the nucleus of one of the world's most brutal regimes. The elder Khieu sister, Ponnary, married Pol Pot, leader of the fanatical Khmer Rouge movement which fought its way to bloody victory in Cambodia in 1975 and then established a regime under which an estimated 1.7 million people died by 1979. Her younger sister, Thirith, wedded Pol Pot's confidant and Khmer Rouge foreign minister, Ieng Sary; she also served as the regime's minister of social action and education.

Monday marked one of the last chapters in this dark family history as Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith were arrested on charges of crimes against humanity, to be brought before a U.N.-backed tribunal set up to try the surviving leaders of Pol Pot's regime. Gendarmes and police special forces sealed off the area around the couple's large villa down a leafy side street in Phnom Penh, where they had lived as macabre local celebrities since striking surrender deals with the Cambodian government in 1996.

The tribunal's co-investigating judges released a statement Tuesday confirming the formal charges against the couple and announcing that the Iengs' lawyers have requested time to prepare their clients' defense ahead of a hearing on the question of pre-trial detention. That hearing will take place Wednesday; in the meantime, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith are being held in custody at the ECCC, the judges said. The Iengs have also said that they cannot afford to pay for attorneys to represent them at the tribunal; the court will cover their legal costs while it assess their claim.

Since defecting to the government in 1996, Ieng Sary has regularly denied any knowledge of the regime's policies of extermination. Ieng Thirith has been even more vocal: several years ago, she made a withering written attack on Youk Chhang, Cambodia's foremost genocide researcher, claiming his years of research into the alleged crimes of Khmer Rouge regime had found not a shred of incriminating evidence and that his work was nothing "but lies and defamation."

Youk Chhang, for his part, says Ieng Sary was considered one of the "untouchable" Khmer Rouge leaders. His arrest and that of his wife have sent powerful messages to the Cambodian people that the tribunal is truly working to find justice for the victims of the regime. "[Ieng Thirith] was minister of social action and education," Youk Chhang says. "She will have a lot to tell us [in court]."

The Iengs' arrests are the third and fourth of five former Khmer Rouge leaders targeted by the co-prosecutors at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) — the official name of the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal established in Phnom Penh. Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the regime's chief jailer and torturer, was the first suspect to be detained in July. Second-in-command Nuon Chea was arrested in September. Khieu Samphan, the regime's one-time head of state, is the last surviving senior leader at large and many believe that his is the fifth name on the prosecutors' list. ECCC officials expect that trials will begin early next year.

Neither Ponnary nor Pol Pot lived long enough to see the tribunal established; Ponnary was bed-ridden and suffering from insanity when she passed away peacefully in 2003 at the age of 83. She had lived out her final years in the Iengs' villa, with its manicured lawns and small ornamental pond, oblivious of the fact that Pol Pot had remarried many years earlier. Pol Pot himself died in 1998, denounced by his own followers, in a jungle shack near the Thai border.

As court and police officers prepared the Iengs for the drive to the tribunal's detention center on the outskirts of Phnom Penh Monday, neighbors came out to wish them good riddance. "They killed many people and they must be prosecuted," says Pouk Salonn, 57, the owner of a small shop near the Iengs' villa who lost her parents during the regime. But with the passage of some 30 years since the Khmer Rouge regime committed its crimes, the arrest of the elderly pair — Sary is 82 and Thirith is 75 — was little consolation. "Why are you only coming to ask questions now?" she asks, noting that there seemed to be more media attention on Pol Pot's terrifying reign now than there was when he was actually in power. "[The regime] was a long time ago already."

Ieng Thirith: A pioneer among female leaders of the Khmer Rouge ... who is suddenly hit by dementia at the approach of her arrest

Ieng Thirith: A pioneer among female leaders of the Khmer Rouge

2007-11-12
By KER MUNTHIT - Associated Press Writer

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Ieng Thirith, part of the small circle of French-educated intellectuals who formed the leadership of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, has become the first woman detained by a genocide tribunal seeking justice for the group's atrocities.

Social affairs minister under the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Thirith was arrested Monday with her husband, Ieng Sary, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister of the communist regime blamed for the death of some 1.7 million people in the late 1970s.

Deeply entwined in the group's leadership, she was the sister-in-law of Pol Pot, the top Khmer Rouge leader who died in 1998. Her sister, Khieu Ponnary, Pol Pot's first wife, died in 2003.

Her birth date is uncertain, though according to a document filed by tribunal prosecutors, she was born in Battambang province in northwestern Cambodia around 1932.

Given the name Khieu Thirith, she was the daughter of a provincial judge, allowing her and her sister lives of relative privilege. She adopted Ieng Sary's surname when they married, as students, in Paris in the 1950s.

Ieng Thirith was among the first Cambodian women to achieve academic prominence, graduating in English literature in Paris, then working as a professor after returning to Cambodia in 1957. Three years later she founded a private English school in the capital Phnom Penh.

But at the same time she was a member of an underground circle of Cambodian leftists, and she followed her husband into the jungle to flee government repression in 1965. The communist movement then became a guerrilla force that triumphed over the pro-American government in 1975, putting Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge into power.

As minister of social affairs, Ieng Thirith toured Cambodia's northwestern region in 1976 to investigate health conditions, which she reported - accurately - were disastrous.

Reportedly «shocked» by what she saw during her trip, she told Pol Pot that «foreign agents were infiltrating our ranks» to undermine the revolution, according to research done by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent organization that gathers evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities. The center is not connected with the tribunal.

Based on Ieng Thirith's report, Pol Pot ordered a purge of Khmer Rouge cadres in the northwest whom he considered enemies of the revolution - one of several bloody episodes reflecting the regime's extreme paranoia and inability to recognize the problems its own policies were causing, according to the documentation center.

Those purged were arrested and taken to the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, according to the prosecutors' filing to the tribunal, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.

Up to 16,000 alleged enemies of the regime were tortured then executed at the prison. Only about a dozen detainees are thought to have survived the prison ordeal.

Ieng Thirith's participation included the «planning, direction, coordination and ordering of widespread purges ... and the unlawful killing or murder of staff members from within the Ministry of Social Affairs,» the prosecutors claimed.

After the ouster of the regime in 1979, the Khmer Rouge continued to fight from the countryside.

Ieng Sary defected to the government in 1996, effectively prompting the movement's complete downfall two years later. Since his surrender, Ieng Sary and his wife have lived quietly in Phnom Penh.

Cambodian newspapers recently questioned the state of Ieng Thirith's mental health, reporting that she showed signs of dementia - a condition that could ensure she is considered unfit to stand trial.

ECCC detains Ieng Sary, wife for questioning

PHNOM PENH, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) here on Monday detained former Democratic Kampuchea (DK) leader Ieng Sary and his wife for questioning.

Police and tribunal officials arrived at his home in Phnom Penhat about 06:00 a.m. local time, the earliest permissible time for arrests under ECCC rules, and both of them were taken to the court in the suburb four hours later.

Charges haven't been issued against them, sources at the court told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

However, this may be an indication that the couple will be become the third and fourth DK leaders to face trials, the source added.

Ieng Sary is DK prime leader Pol Pot's brother-in-law and worked as foreign minister for the regime. His wife Ieng Thirith once served as DK's education and social affairs minister.

His deputies Nuon Chea and Duch, who served respectively as DK's chief ideologist and chief of the Tuol Sleng torture center, have already been detained by the tribunal to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

ECCC was co-installed by the United Nations and the Cambodian government to try former DK leaders, whose regime from 1975 to 1979 was widely held responsible for the death of some 1.7 million people over starvation, torture and lack of medicine.