Two top leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime were found guilty of genocide yesterday in a landmark ruling almost 40 years after the fall of a brutal regime that presided over the deaths of one-quarter of the population.
The Khmer Rouge’s former head of state Khieu Samphan, 87, and “Brother No. 2” Nuon Chea, 92, are the two most senior living members of the ultra-Maoist group that seized control of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.
The reign of terror led by “Brother No. 1” Pol Pot left about 2 million Cambodians dead from overwork, starvation and mass executions, but yesterday’s ruling was the first to acknowledge a genocide.
The defendants in 2014 were handed life sentences over the violent and forced evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975.
However, the judgement at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) also found Nuon Chea guilty of genocide against the ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslim minority group, among a litany of other crimes.
“The chamber finds that Nuon Chea exercised ultimate decisionmaking power with Pol Pot and ... therefore finds Nuon Chea is responsible as a superior for all the crimes,” presiding judge Nil Nonn said. “This includes the crime of genocide by killing members of Cham ethnic and religious group.”
Khieu Samphan was also found guilty of genocide against ethnic Vietnamese, although not against the Cham, he added.
Both were sentenced to “life in prison,” Nil Nonn said.
“The verdict is essentially the Nuremberg judgement for the ECCC and thus carries very significant weight for Cambodia, international criminal justice and the annals of history,” said David Scheffer, who served as the UN secretary-general’s special expert on the Khmer Rouge trials from 2012 until last month.
The verdict read out by Nil Nonn presented a society where minorities were targeted and killed, Buddhist monks forcibly defrocked and groups of people executed, while men and women were coerced into marriages and forced to have sex to produce children for the regime.
The atrocities fell under the additional list of charges, of which the men were also found guilty.
Defense lawyers said they were planning to appeal.
“Khieu Samphan did not have power to make any decision, so the verdict to me is very confusing,” said his lawyer, Kong Sam Onn.
Youk Chhang, head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia — a research organization that provided the court with evidence — said the verdict would “affirm the collective humanity of the victims and give recognition to the horrible suffering.”
“It can provide a sense of closure to a horrible chapter in Cambodian history,” he said.
However, the verdict is also “bitter justice,” Amnesty International said.
“Decades after the crimes and 13 years after it was established, the ECCC should have achieved much more,” regional director Nicholas Bequelin said.
The hybrid court, which uses a mix of Cambodian and international law, was created with UN backing in 2006 to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders.
It has convicted only three people so far and cost more than US$300 million.
Many believe yesterday’s decision would be the last for the tribunal, which has been marred by allegations of political interference.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen — himself a former Khmer Rouge cadre — has repeatedly said he would not allow more investigations to proceed, citing vague threats to stability.
The court has launched investigations into four more Khmer Rouge cadres, although one was dismissed in February last year, highlighting the difficulties of bringing lower-level members to justice.
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