Khmer Rouge victims yesterday welcomed the indictment of four top regime leaders for war crimes and genocide, but some observers voiced concern about potential political interference in the case.
A UN-backed tribunal said on Thursday that the four most senior surviving Khmer Rouge members would face trial in connection with the deaths of up to about 2 million people from starvation, overwork and execution between 1975 and 1979.
“I am really happy with the indictment,” said Chum Mey, one of just a handful of survivors of the Khmer Rouge’s main torture prison, Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh.
The accused are “Brother No. 2” Nuon Chea, former foreign minister Ieng Sary, his wife and former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith and former head of state Khieu Samphan.
Mey, who heads an organization that speaks on behalf of Khmer Rouge victims, warned that the court should waste no time in bringing the ailing defendants, who are in their late 70s or early 80s, to justice.
“They are all very old. If they die halfway through the trial, there will be no one to testify at the court and it will be difficult to find justice,” Mey said.
The genocide charges in the case relate to the deaths of Vietnamese people and ethnic Cham Muslims under the regime.
Farina So, who works with Muslim groups at the Documentation Center of Cambodia, said the Cham Muslims she had spoken to welcomed the indictments.
“They suffered tremendously during the Khmer Rouge time and they have been longing for this trial,” she said.
The trial — expected to begin early next year — follows the landmark July conviction of former Tuol Sleng prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known as “Duch,” for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
However, his trial was marred by claims that staff paid kickbacks for their jobs and allegations of interference by a government with many former Khmer Rouge figures within its ranks.
An uncrewed Chinese spacecraft has acquired imagery data covering all of Mars, including visuals of its south pole, after circling the planet more than 1,300 times since early last year, state media reported yesterday. The Tianwen-1 successfully reached the Red Planet in February last year on the country’s inaugural mission there. A robotic rover has since been deployed on the surface as an orbiter surveyed the planet from space. Among the images taken from space were China’s first photographs of the Martian south pole, where almost all of the planet’s water resources are locked. In 2018, an orbiting probe operated by the European
QUARANTINE SHORTENED: A new protocol detailing risk levels and local policy responses would be ‘more scientific and accurate,’ a health agency spokesman said China’s revised COVID-19 guidelines, which cut a quarantine requirement in half for inbound travelers, also create a standardized policy for mass testing and lockdowns when cases of the disease flare, showing that the country still has a zero-tolerance approach to the virus. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) solidified the position during a trip to Wuhan, where the pathogen first emerged in 2019, saying that China is capable of achieving a “final victory” over the virus. The “zero COVID-19” policy is the most effective and economic approach for the country, Xi said during the trip on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported. The first
‘TOO RISKY’: Palau’s president said deep-sea mining, in which rocks are sucked off the ocean floor, increases the vulnerability of the seabed floor and marine life Concerned about the potential effects of deep-sea mining on ocean biodiversity, the Pacific islands of Palau and Fiji on Monday launched an “alliance” to call for a moratorium of the nascent industry. The backing of a moratorium comes amid a wave of global interest in deep-sea mining, but also growing pressure from some environmental groups and governments to either ban it or ensure it only goes ahead if appropriate regulations are in place. Deep-sea mining uses heavy machinery to suck up off the ocean floor potato-sized rocks or nodules that contain cobalt, manganese and other metals mostly used in batteries. Speaking to a
A flight test of a hypersonic missile system in Hawaii on Wednesday ended in failure due to a problem that occurred after ignition, the US Department of Defense said, delivering a fresh blow to a program that has experienced stumbles. It did not provide details of what took place in the test, but said in an e-mailed statement that “the department remains confident that it is on track to field offensive and defensive hypersonic capabilities on target dates beginning in the early 2020s.” “An anomaly occurred following ignition of the test asset,” Pentagon spokesman US Navy Lieutenant Commander Tim Gorman said in