Saturday, 16 March 2013
Cambodia - Justice delayed..................
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Cambodia - wheels of justice
More than 30 years after the Cambodian genocide of the late 1970’s, three people accused of plotting it have appeared at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh.
Nuon Chea, now aged 84, was second-in-command to the notorious Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, and known as Brother Number Two. The other two are the former head of state, Khieu Samphan, and the ex-social affairs minister, Ieng Thirith. Also awaiting trial is Ieng Thirith's husband Ieng Sary, who was the Khmer Rouge foreign minister.
The defendants have been in detention since 2007. A date for the trial has not yet been set, but it is due to begin by the middle of this year. The court which was set up in 2006 has so far tried only one person, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Comrade Duch, who ran the notorious Tuol Sleng ‘special interrogation centre’ in the Cambodian capital. Of 15,000 people held there, only seven are thought to have survived. Duch was found guilty of crimes against humanity.
The latest trial is expected to last for three years, and there are worries about how it will be funded. (See also my blogs of 7 Jan, 4 March, 29 June, and 22 Nov, 2009, and 16 Sept, 2010.)
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Another Khmer Rouge trial
Less than two months after the conviction of former Khmer Rouge prison boss Comrade Duch (see my blog of July 26), another four of its leaders have been indicted for genocide and torture in Cambodia in the 1970’s.
Duch was the first person convicted by the UN-backed war crimes court. Now Nuon Chea, deputy to the notorious KR leader Pol Pot, former head of state Khieu Samphan, former foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith will come before it. All of them deny the charges.
Justice has been a long time coming. The events to which the charges relate took place more than 30 years ago. The defendants have all been held since 2007, and the trial is not expected to start before the middle of next year. All of them are now elderly, and Ieng Sary is in poor health.
The Cambodian genocide was one of the most vicious in history, accounting for perhaps one in four of the country’s people. Apart from those who were murdered – “bourgeois” elements such as lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and their families - many others died from hunger or overwork, as Pol Pot’s Maoist fanatics emptied the cities and drove people out into the countryside.
(See also my blogs of Jan 7, March 4, June 29 and Nov 22, 2009.)