Death Stirs Critics of Khmer Rouge Trials

KR victims (Photo: Reuters)

March 14, 2013
By CHUN HAN WONG
The Wall Street Journal

The tribunal "has squandered the opportunity to bring about an acceptable degree of justice," said Theary Seng, a human-rights activist whose parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge. "What has been happening there in the last few years is farcical to an unacceptable degree," she said.

The death of a co-founder of Cambodia's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime before a verdict in his trial for crimes against humanity has revived criticism of a tribunal long decried for its slowness.

Thursday's death of 87-year-old Ieng Sary, the regime's foreign minister, has heightened fears that other aging Khmer Rouge leaders could escape punishment over the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians during their rule from 1975 to 1979.

Officials at the United Nations-backed tribunal, which has secured just one conviction since it was launched in 2006, say proceedings will continue against the two remaining defendants—Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologue and second-in-command to leader Pol Pot, and Khieu Samphan, head of state under the regime. But victims and activists worry that the court may not be able to overcome the political obstruction and funding woes that have hampered its work.

"The whole future of the tribunal is currently in limbo, and the possibility that hundreds of millions of dollars will have been wasted is now a very real threat," said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. The remaining cases "need to be expedited urgently so that justice can be served."

Ieng Sary died in a Phnom Penh hospital Thursday morning, said Lars Olsen, a spokesman for the tribunal, formally called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. While the cause of death wasn't immediately clear, he had been hospitalized since March 4 for "digestion problems," Mr. Olsen said. Ieng Sary suffered from heart problems and other ailments.

Mr. Nuon Chea and Mr. Khieu Samphan, both in their 80s, have also been in and out of hospital since the three men's trial began in 2011 on charges of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes—allegations they all denied.

"I hope that the passing away of Ieng Sary will focus minds on the necessity for a stable funding platform for the court so we can finish [the case] without further delays or uncertainty," said Andrew Cayley, the tribunal's chief international co-prosecutor.

Born Oct. 24, 1925, in southern Vietnam, Ieng Sary was among dozens of Cambodians, including Pol Pot, who won state scholarships to study in France during the early 1950s. Many of them were influenced by Communism during this time, forming the core of what would become the radical Maoist-inspired Khmer Rouge movement.

Ieng Sary and Pol Pot, his brother-in-law, led the Khmer Rouge to power in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and sought to create an agricultural utopia.

The Communist group killed many educated citizens and forced urban residents to relocate to rural collectives, many of which failed spectacularly. About one-fifth of the Southeast Asian nation's population at the time perished from starvation, disease, overwork and executions.

After their defeat by Vietnamese forces in 1979, the Khmer Rouge retreated into the jungle where they fought a long guerrilla war, controlling a large swath of northwestern Cambodia. In 1996, Ieng Sary became the first of the movement's inner circle to surrender, taking with him thousands of fighters in a move that hastened the Khmer Rouge's final collapse and brought him a royal pardon. Messrs. Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan surrendered in 1998, after the death of Pol Pot earlier that year.

After living for years in relative comfort along the border with Thailand, all three men were arrested in 2007 along with Ieng Thirith, a former government minister and the wife of Ieng Sary. Ieng Thirith was charged before the tribunal along with her comrades but was released this past September after the court ruled that she was unfit to stand trial because of severe dementia.

Their trial is only the second to be brought by the tribunal, which started work in 2006 after years of wrangling between international donors and the Cambodian government over the court's powers and composition.

Its only conviction so far came in 2010, when former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav—also known as "Duch"—was found guilty of crimes against humanity and handed a 19-year jail sentence, after credit for time already served. The tribunal's top chamber last year revised Duch's sentence to life imprisonment, after an appeal and widespread complaints that the original punishment was too lenient.

The tribunal, composed of Cambodian and international jurists, has also courted controversy because some former Khmer Rouge figures remain in government, including Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was a field officer under the regime but later defected. Although the prime minister isn't under any suspicion of involvement in atrocities, it is possible the tribunal's investigations could implicate other officials or politicians, and the Cambodian government has long sought to narrow the terms of who could be liable for crimes.

The tribunal is "more or less a foreign-policy exercise rather than a domestic moral cleansing," according to Wolfgang Sachsenroeder, a researcher at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. "If the accused die in time, the deficit of 'justice' will be easier to hide."

Many observers had hoped that the current proceedings could shed considerably more light on the Khmer Rouge's inner workings, given the seniority of the accused. But they also fear that this trial is the last chance for justice—while prosecutors are investigating five more unnamed suspects, Mr. Hun Sen has publicly opposed further indictments.

The tribunal "has squandered the opportunity to bring about an acceptable degree of justice," said Theary Seng, a human-rights activist whose parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge. "What has been happening there in the last few years is farcical to an unacceptable degree," she said.