Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes court has for the first time issued genocide charges against two leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, a tribunal spokesman said yesterday.
Former Khmer Rouge No. 2 Nuon Chea and foreign minister Ieng Sary were both charged over the regime’s slaughter of Vietnamese people and ethnic Cham Muslims during the 1970s, court spokesman Lars Olsen said.
“This week both Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary have been brought before the investigating judges and informed they are being charged with genocide against the Cham Muslims and the Vietnamese,” Olsen said.
“This is the first time that anyone has been charged with genocide” at the UN-backed tribunal, he said.
Estimates for the number of Chams who died under the Khmer Rouge range from 100,000 to 400,000, but it is not known how many Vietnamese were killed, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge murdered up to 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979 in their drive to establish a communist utopia. But the mass killing does not class as genocide, Olsen said.
“It is impossible to say it was an intent to destroy the Khmers. The perpetrators were of the same nationalities as the victims,” he said.
The UN defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
The court said last month that it was investigating Khmer Rouge incursions into Vietnam as well as executions of Vietnamese and Cham minorities within Cambodia.
Cham Muslims form 1.6 percent of the population.
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