PHNOM PENH: Two former Khmer Rouge leaders began their second trial at a UN-backed court in Cambodia yesterday on charges including genocide of Vietnamese people and ethnic Muslims, forced marriages and rape.
The complex case of the regime’s two most senior surviving leaders has been split into a series of smaller trials, initially focusing on the forced evacuation of people into rural labour camps and related crimes against humanity.
The first trial against “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, 88, and former head of state Khieu Samphan, 83, was completed late last year, with the verdict -- and possible sentences -- set to be delivered on August 7.
At the opening hearing of the second trial, judge Nil Nonn read out the charges against suspects, including genocide and other crimes against humanity, as more than 300 people watched the proceedings from the public gallery.
Nuon Chea did not attend for health reasons, while Khieu Samphan sat in court alongside his defence team. Anne Heindel, a legal adviser to the Documentation Centre of Cambodia which researches the country’s bloody history, said the second trial was “immensely important for survivors.”
“The subject matter of the first proceeding was quite limited, discussing only a narrow set of events that occurred while or shortly after the Khmer Rouge took power.
“(This new trial) focuses on crimes that occurred after Khmer Rouge were entrenched and implementing long-standing plans for transforming Cambodian society, yet for which no one has ever been held accountable,” she said.
The mass killings of an estimated 100,000 to 500,000 ethnic Cham Muslims and 20,000 Vietnamese form the basis of the genocide charges against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan.
Before these charges were filed, the treatment of the minority Muslim group and Vietnamese community was rarely discussed.
Kob Tiyum, a 65-year-old Cham survivor of the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-1979 regime, said the trial would “recognise our suffering.”
She lost two of her children, her father and her brother who died of starvation while working at a labour camp under the regime.
AFP
