Top Khmer Rouge Leaders Finally On Trial

[Guest fountainhall]

The painfully slow business of bringing Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leaders to court has taken an inordinate amount of time. Comrade Duch, the warden of the infamous Tuol Sleng Prison where of more than 15,000 'convicts' who entered, only seven escaped the Killing Fields, was finally found guilty and imprisoned last year.

 

Now the United Nations-backed trial of the three most senior surviving leaders has started in Phnom Penh. They are Nuon Chea, also known as Brother Number Two - he was the right-hand man of supreme leader Pol Pot, who died in 1998, Khieu Samphan, the regime's former head-of-state, and Ieng Sary who was foreign minister and the international face of the murderers. Even though they are all in their ‘80s and have said they will not testify, their trials remain vitally important so that the full depth of their crimes against humanity can be revealed to the world.

 

"I feel very happy. I came here because I want to know the story and how it could have happened," 75-year-old farmer Sao Kuon, who lost 11 relatives under the Khmer Rouge, told the AFP news agency.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15814519

 

Photos: Tuol Sleng Regulations and Hanging Bar

 

Killing Fields Memorial

 

[Guest]

Well, I hope the guilty get the appropriate punishment and spend the rest of their lives in the most uncomfortable prisons Cambodia can find.

[Rogie]

The painfully slow business of bringing Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leaders to court has taken an inordinate amount of time.

 

Now the United Nations-backed trial of the three most senior surviving leaders has started in Phnom Penh.

Is that why it's taken so long? . . . because of the UN.

 

I seem to recall the Khmer Rouge took a long time to be finally rooted out; they hung on in pockets for years. Maybe that explains the delay as by the time they were finally defeated I would imagine there was little or no stomach left in a country whose morale had been thoroughly sapped, and the moment for 'instant' retribution had long passed (see below).

 

However, to quote Fountainhall again:

Even though they are all in their '80s and have said they will not testify, their trials remain vitally important so that the full depth of their crimes against humanity can be revealed to the world.

I agree they are important but looking back, it would have been better for the country if Pol Pot and his 'comrades' had been subject to a speedy trial, almost certainly ending in the death penalty as per Saddam. Although part of me would love them to have been torn asunder as per Gaddafi, which would have appeased the short-term blood lust of a nation eager for rapid closure, in the longterm it is better that a civilised response occur. However, to have had to wait this long is quite ridiculous.

[Guest fountainhall]

Is that why it's taken so long? . . . because of the UN

Given that the Khmer Rouge take-over happened in 1975 during what was still the Cold War, with America still suffering the open sores of its lengthy escapade in Vietnam and international condemnation for its illegal, undeclared war on Cambodia (which, along with all its other interference in the politics of the country, unquestionably aided in the rise of the Khmer Rouge), with that very country - Vietnam - having been the liberators of Cambodia, needless to say political pressures from a variety of sources delayed judicial proceedings to almost glacial intensity.

 

Part of the problem, as you hinted, is that the Khmer Rouge did not just disappear following their defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese forces in 1979. A ten-year civil war ensued which resulted in many hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fleeing to camps across the border here in Thailand. China, the US and the Soviet Union were inevitably caught up in it.

 

The catalyst for the delay was probably Vietnam’s role in liberating the country and then running it, for Vietnam was a still a dirty word to most westerners – and even to its neighbours. Thailand actually provided “key support” to the Khmer Rouge.

 

In the light of what was even then known, are not the following statements totally incomprehensible?

 

In 1985, Thailand's Foreign Minister described Pol Pot's deputy, Son Sen, as a "very good man." In 1991, General Suchinda Krapayoon, who had seized power in Thailand through a coup, told a U.S. senator that he even considered Pol Pot a "nice guy" . . . After meeting Pol Pot in 1991, Suchinda pleaded to the media that Pol Pot had no intention of regaining power any more and it was time to treat him 'fairly.'

Then there was China, for Pol Pot was actually Deng Xiao Ping’s protégé. And what of the ol’ US of A which had humiliatingly withdrawn from Vietnam? It turned to China.

 

Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recalls that in 1979, "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could." According to Brzezinski, the United States "winked, semi-publicly" at Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge. At the same time, international aid to the Khmer Rouge on the Thai border was pushed through by United States officials.

 

In the 1980s, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz opposed efforts to investigate or indict the Khmer Rouge for genocide or other crimes against humanity. Shultz described as "stupid," Australian Foreign Minister Bill Hayden's 1983 efforts to encourage dialogue over Cambodia, and in 1986 he declined to support Hayden's proposal for an international tribunal. In 1985, Shultz visited Thailand and warned against peace talks with Vietnam, allegedly telling ASEAN "to be extremely cautious in formulating peace proposals for Kampuchea because Vietnam might one day accept them . . . the American ambassador in Thailand stated that the Khmer Rouge could not be excluded from any future government of Cambodia. The Bush Administration's Secretary of State, James A. Baker, proposed the Khmer Rouge be included."

From my reading of history, only Australia played an honourable role in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge.

 

In the 1980s, respectable non-government international legal bodies rejected numerous invitations to send delegations of jurists to Cambodia to investigate the crimes of the Khmer Rouge and possibly initiate official legal action. The American Bar Association, LawAsia, and the International Commission of Jurists all refused.

 

Only the Australian branch of the International Commission of Jurists showed interest, in the late 1980s. Powerful U.S. media outlets also campaigned to derail the attempt to document Khmer Rouge crimes.

 

But, at Cambodia's request in 1997, the U.N. set up a Group of Experts to investigate, headed by former Australian Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen. Its report recommended an international tribunal to try Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide, other crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

China certainly comes out of the debacle with no credit. But we should not forget the historical enmity between the two countries; nor that in early 1979, Vietnam and China had fought a border war. (I recall this vividly because I arrived in Asia at exactly that time. My Cathay Pacific flight from Bangkok took an extra hour because planes could not fly over Vietnamese airspace).

 

"I do not understand why some people want to remove Pol Pot," said China's Deng Xiaoping in 1984. "It is true that he made some mistakes in the past but now he is leading the fight against the Vietnamese aggressors."

 

China provided the Khmer Rouge forces with $100 million in weapons per annum all through the 1980s, according to U.S. intelligence.

Above quotes from

http://www.historyplace.com/pointsofview/kiernan.htm

 

Then there was the role of the UN.

 

By 1999, the UN had finally agreed to the 1997 request for a Tribunal, but wanted it held in Manila, Canberra or The Hague! So yet more time was lost, and in the meantime Pol Pot had died and most of the Khmer Rouge leaders had been captured or had surrendered.

 

But there is more to this desperately sad saga.

 

The Reagan administration schemed and plotted to have Khmer Rouge representatives occupy Cambodia's UN seat, even though the Khmer Rouge government ceased to exist in 1979. This was a sad effort to grant Pol Pot's followers international legitimacy.

 

This helped restore the Khmer Rouge as a fighting force based in Thailand, which destabilized Cambodia for more than a decade.

 

In 1982, the US and China, supported by Singapore, invented the Coalition of the Democratic Government of Kampuchea, which was neither a coalition, nor democratic, nor a government, nor in Kampuchea. Rather, it was what the CIA calls "a master illusion." Cambodia's former ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was appointed its head; otherwise little changed. The Khmer Rouge dominated the two "non-communist" members, the Sihanoukists and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front. From his office at the UN, Pol Pot's ambassador, the urbane Thaoun Prasith, continued to speak for Cambodia. A close associate of Pol Pot, he had in 1975 called on Khmer expatriates to return home, whereupon many of them "disappeared."

 

The United Nations was now the instrument of Cambodia's punishment. In all its history, the world body has withheld development aid from only one Third World country: Cambodia. Not only did the UN at US and Chinese insistence deny the government in Phnom Penh a seat, but the major international financial institutions barred Cambodia from all international agreements on trade and communications.

http://www.taxivantha.com/1_Cambodia/116c.htm

 

After its years of darkness and the genocide of up to 2 million of its people, the world’s great powers tossed a small country and its lovely people back into the meat grinder of international politics. Goodness knows how many more died, how many more lives were shattered, prior to the signing of the 1991 Peace Accords.

 

Never was William Gladstone’s epithet more telling: “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Cambodia is the world’s shame.

[Rogie]

That masterful account of why it's taken so long to bring some of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders to trial had me spluttering into my morning bowl of cornflakes.

 

I know this won't happen, but honestly I'd love to see some of those men (and they were all men) you mentioned in your post Fountainhall held accountable . . . (even though some of them are dead now) . . . if the lazy and inept UN can be summoned out of their lethargy at last, why can't they be?

 

Hall of Shame

 

Zbigniew Brzezinski

 

 

George Shultz

 

 

The un-named American ambassador in Thailand (1985)

 

 

James A. Baker

 

 

Deng Xiao Ping

 

 

Thaoun Prasith

 

 

Thailand's Foreign Minister (in 1985)

 

 

General Suchinda Krapayoon

 

 

And not forgetting the cast of thousands - those faceless morons behind the scenes opting for expediency at the expense of justice.

[Guest fountainhall]

I'd love to see some of those men (and they were all men) you mentioned in your post Fountainhall held accountable

The 'supporting' cast might all have been men, but the Khmer Rouge did have a number of women in the leadership. A fourth defendant at the present trial should have been Ieng Thirith, the wife of Ieng Sary, and the regime's Minister for Social Affairs (whatever that meant). She is now 79 and was ruled unfit to stand trial last week because she suffers from Alzheimer's disease.

 

I guess the problem with the UN is that it can only do what its members will it to do. With the US and China against action, their vetos, along with those of countries over which they exercised leverage, were clearly more than enough to stall action.

 

But the real devils in this saga were, I regret, the US and its agencies. It was Nixon and Kissinger who engineered the 1970 overthrow of the Head of State, Prince Sihanouk (himself no innocent in what was going on), and the establishment of a puppet government under General Lon Nol that brought war to the country. Indeed, the US waited only one month before invading and starting Nixon’s secret undeclared war that Congress knew nothing about. Lon Nol himself was a brutal dictator. His actions helped lead to growing anti-American sentiment in the country - thereby playing right into the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

 

Like many dictators, Lon Nol used his connections to escape execution at the hands of the victorious Khmer Rouge. He fled, finally settling in Hawaii and then California. He died in 1985 - by all accounts a peaceful death, unlike that of so many of his countrymen.

 

Anyone interested in the Cambodian tragedy really should read the book ,“Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia” by writer and broadcaster William Shawcross. Shawcross, son of one of the advocates at Nuremburg, was one of the first to raise awareness of what was happening under the Khmer Rouge with an article in the New York Review of Books in April 1978. For “Sideshow” he interviewed hundreds of people and extensively researched US archives. It is a superb but chilling read that will make your blood boil!

 

Sideshow excels . . . It has the sweep and shadows of a spy novel as it portrays the surreal world of power severed from morality - John Leonard, The New York Times

[Guest fountainhall]

I'd love to see some of those men (and they were all men) you mentioned in your post Fountainhall held accountable

A related point to Rogie’s post. Perhaps because I did not name him in my post, you do not mention Henry Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Adviser and later Secretary for State. There seems no doubt that Henry Kissinger would have been indicted for war crimes many years ago – if the USA was a party to the International Criminal Court, which it is not.

 

There is an excellent small book by Christopher Hitchens, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger”. Some do not approve of Hitchin’s style and/or his politics. But his arguments in this book are both forceful and pretty horrifying. He argues that on at least one occasion, Kissinger conspired to commit murder, and on numberous other occasions he was the primary force behind certain acts that should be termed 'war crimes'.

 

The “murder” was the kidnapping and murder of the Commander in Chief of the Chilean army, General Rene Schneider. Schneider was opposed to the rumoured coup against Socialist President Allende. Hitchins details Kissinger's direct involvement in the direction, planning, financing, and general support by the organs of the U.S. Government in the plot to remove General Schneider which resulted in his death.

 

Generals Viaux and Valenzuela were given U.S.$120,000, machine guns and tear gas grenades by the CIA for the kidnapping of Schneider. The first two attempts failed but Kissinger insisted on a third which resulted in Schneider's murder on October 22, 1970. Kissinger told the Senate in 1975 that he "turned off" the kidnapping on October 15 but a recently declassified CIA cable dated October 20 shows that he continued to press for Schneider's elimination.

http://www.asadismi.ws/kissinger.html

 

As Hitchens himself writes –

 

Here one must pause for a recapitulation. An unelected official in the United States is meeting with others, without the knowledge or authorization of Congress, to plan the kidnapping of a constitution-minded senior officer in a democratic country with which the United States is not at war, and with which it maintains cordial diplomatic relations. The minutes of the meetings may have an official look to them (though they were hidden from the light of day for long enough) but what we are reviewing is a "hit" - a bit of state-supported terrorism.

The war crimes are too numerous to detail, Suffice to say that his participation in the secret illegal wars in Laos and Cambodia are extremely well documented. Others involve his approval of the Indonesian conquest of East Timor (which resulted in the death of 200,000 - one third of the country's population); genocide, a coup and the assassination of Sheik Mujibur Rahmann, West Pakistan's constitutionally elected leader; as well as others in Cyprus and Greece.

 

Also interesting is an historical point Hitchins makes about the US.

 

As Hitchens points out, prior to the advent of the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon "realist"; school of foreign policy, the United States had opposed such acts of international military aggression, even when conducted by close allies against communist clients, such as the 1956 Suez War that Britain, France, and Israel conducted against Egypt. In other words, the United States had attempted to live up to its own legal and ethical standards before the Nixon/Kissinger criminal gang ascended to power.

http://www.spectacle.org/0501/kissinger.html

 

This of course does not absolve administrations of other countries who have been involved in dirty deeds. But Kissinger's hands are particularly dirty; yet he is all but revered in certain circles around the world. These do not include the many hundreds of thousands of families whose lives his bloody hands have touched.

[Rogie]

The 'supporting' cast might all have been men, but the Khmer Rouge did have a number of women in the leadership. A fourth defendant at the present trial should have been Ieng Thirith . . . She is now 79 and was ruled unfit to stand trial last week because she suffers from Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's? Well at least she won't be able to gloat over her exploits any longer.

 

It's unusual for women to become murderers, and I'm putting Madame Thirith in that category - I don't know if she ever killed anybody with her own hands but by association she must be considered a murderer.

 

Women murderers like Myra Hindley (along with Ian Brady, one half of the infamous so-called Moors murders), Rosemary West (wife of serial killer and sadist Fred West) are thankfully of the highest rarity. Female killers often operate as part of a team alongside a male partner-in-crime, or kill because they are under the thumb of a man or have been abused by men in the past. However killers operating alone such as Beverly Allitt, a registered nurse in Britain, are unusual.

 

http://www.toptenz.n...ale-killers.php

 

Anyone interested in the Cambodian tragedy really should read the book ,"Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia"

Nixon and his sidekick Kissinger duly added to the Hall of Shame!

 

______________________________________________________________

 

A related point to Rogie’s post. Perhpas because I did not name him in my post, you do not mention Henry Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Adviser and later Secretary for State. There seems no doubt that Henry Kissinger would have been indicted for war crimes many years ago – if the USA was a party to the International Criminal Court, which it is not.

Ah, you posted that whilst I was getting carried away reading up about female killers! I'd already added Kissinger

Edited November 22, 2011 by Rogie

[Guest fountainhall]

Back to the Khmer Rouge trial. Yesterday, former Head of State Khieu Sampan accused the prosecution of telling "fairy tales . . . based mainly on unreliable old news reports and books!" He then added -

 

"Regardless of whether you like or dislike it, the majority of Cambodian people gave their support to us for our opposition to the Lon Nol regime."

 

That part is probably correct - but only at the time of the Lon Nol coup. His lawyer, however, a Frenchman Jacques Verges whose activity as defence attorney for some of the world's most infamous criminals, including the Nazi Klaus Barbie, Saddam Hussein, Carlos the Jackal and Slobodan Milosevic, has resulted in his being called 'The Devil's Advocate', told the Court: "They suffered and made mistakes, but to paint them as monsters totally responsible for the situation is totally unreasonable." He also urged the judges to remember that the accused are "human beings".

 

Human beings? Oh, really, Monsieur Verges? What other human beings are responsible for the deaths of up to 2 million of their countrymen? What other human beings condone the killing of innocent babies by having them bashed mercilessly against trees. May these crimnals rot in hell!

[Rogie]

His lawyer, however, a Frenchman Jacques Verges . . .

Verges is no spring chicken. He's 86 now. He was born in Ubon (eastern Thailand) - to a French father and Vietnamese mother.

 

Wiki has an intriguing entry, especially here:

 

From 1970-78, Vergès disappeared from public view without explanation. To this day Verges refuses to comment about those years remarking in an interview with Der Spiegel that "It's highly amusing that no one, in our modern police state, can figure out where I was for almost 10 years". Vergès was last seen on 24 February 1970. He left his famous wife, Djamila, and cut off all his ties, leaving friends and family to wonder if he had been killed. His whereabouts during these years have remained a mystery. Many of his close associates of the time assume that he was in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge, a rumor Pol Pot (Brother #1) and Ieng Sary (Brother #2) both denied. There have also been claims that Vergès was spotted in Paris as well as in various Arab countries in the company of Palestine Liberation groups.

http://en.wikipedia....ues_Verg%C3%A8s

 

Later

 

The interview in Der Spiegel is well worth reading. Here is an except regarding Cambodia - bear in mind the interview was conducted almost exactly 3 years ago:

 

SPIEGEL: Your latest client is Khieu Samphan, the former head of state in the infamous realm of the Khmer Rouge, a man to whom you are connected by an astonishing past. You met him in Paris more than 55 years ago, where you both belonged to a communist group. Khieu Samphan is scheduled to go on trial in Phnom Penh soon, where he will face charges of genocide.

 

Vergès: There was no genocide in Cambodia.

 

SPIEGEL: Really? About 1.7 million people died in less than four years as a result of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror.

 

Vergès: These numbers are exaggerated. There were many murders, and some of them are unforgivable, which is something my client also says. And there was also torture, which is inexcusable. Nevertheless, it is wrong to define it as deliberate genocide. The majority of people died as a result of starvation and disease.

 

SPIEGEL: But the regime bore sole responsibility for these hardships.

 

Vergès: That, precisely, was not the case. It was a consequence of the embargo policy of the United States. The history of Cambodia didn't begin when the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975. There was a bloody prologue to this process: The Americans, under President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, subjected Cambodia's civilian population to a brutal bombardment in the early 1970s.

 

SPIEGEL: You could summon Henry Kissinger as a witness in the Khmer Rouge trial.

 

Vergès: And I reserve the right to do so, but I doubt he would appear. Besides, I'm not even sure that the trial in Phnom Penh will even take place.

SPIEGEL: How can you say that? The United Nations and the Cambodian government have already spent more than $50 million (€39 million) on preparations for the tribunal. The trial of Kang Kek Iew, also known as Comrade Duch, who ran the worst torture prison of the Khmer Rouge, is set to begin soon.

 

Vergès: It may be that the trial against Duch will begin soon, but not the trials against the other four prisoners: the former Khmer Rouge second-in-command Nuon Chea, the former ministers Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, and the former head of state, Khieu Samphan. The case will not even come to trial, because the tribunal in Phnom Penh has already gambled away its credibility and legitimacy.

http://www.spiegel.d...,591943,00.html

[Guest fountainhall]

Following an appeal by the prosecutors, Cambodia's Supreme Court has increased the sentence of Comrade Duch from 19 years to life in prison, according to The Guardian (see post #1). Now 69, Duch was never likely to see out his prison term. But the increased sentence must surely be some little comfort to the surviving family members of all those thousands he killed.

 

http://www.guardian....tence-cambodian