Khmer Rouge Leaders Found Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity
Monday 1 September 2014 @ 1.58 p.m. | Crime | Legal Research
Last month, a UN-backed Tribunal found two Khmer Rouge leaders to be guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced them to life imprisonment. BBC News has reported that they are “the first top-level leaders to be held accountable for its crimes”, in which
“[u]p to two million people are thought to have died… of starvation and overwork or executed as enemies of the state”.
The Court
The cases are being heard in a specially constituted court, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), which was set up in 2006. It is an ad hoc Cambodian court which is being assisted by the United Nations. Australia is one of the court’s major donors, alongside Japan, the USA, Germany, the UK, the EU, France, Norway and Sweden. The ECCC is the “first internationalized tribunal using the Civil Law system”.
The Court is designed to “provide fair trials in conformity with international standards of justice, and may apply both national and international law”, but also aims to “bring justice to Cambodians, strengthen rule of law in the country and promote national reconciliation”. It allows victims to participate in the judicial proceedings as either Complainants (who “inform the Co-Prosecutors about crimes they believe have been committed”) or Civil Parties (“those who have suffered harm directly from the crimes investigated by the court and wish to seek “moral and collective” reparations).
The Verdicts
The two leaders who were convicted are former Deputy Secretary of the Communist party Nuon Chea, and former Head of State Khieu Samphan. According to BBC News,
“Nuon Chea was seen as an ideological driving force within the regime. Khieu Samphan was its public face.
Prosecutors argued that they formulated policy and were complicit in its brutal execution.”
The two men had both argued their innocence. The Guardian reported that Khieu Samphan argued he was merely “a state figurehead” who had no real power. Both were found guilty of “crimes against humanity in relation to the evacuation of Phnom Penh in 1975. BBC News reported that the summary of charges against them ran for 90 minutes.
The trials have been plagued by problems, not least of which are the age and health of those on trial. Both the defendants have been hospitalised for various periods since the trial began. The case originally involved two more defendants; Ieng Sary, who died during the process, and Ieng Thirith, who was found unfit to stand trial due to dementia.
In an article on The Conversation, Peter Manning from the London School of Economics, notes that:
“In 2013, with one eye on the ailing health of defendants, the ECCC began a process of expediting its prosecutions against former leaders by breaking proceedings into more manageable “mini” cases…
The guilty verdicts offered today are the outcome of proceedings that were increasingly winnowed and hastened in order to work as a “mini” trial.
They therefore reflect and acknowledge only a small part of Cambodia’s experiences of the Khmer Rouge.”
The next section of the trial for the two men focuses on the crimes of genocide and is due to be started later this year. Their lawyers also told The Guardian that they would be appealing the verdict and sentence.
Peter Manning noted that although there are certainly difficulties with the court proceedings,
“it is worth reminding ourselves that all international criminal proceedings will always be symbolic and incomplete. For all its limitations – limitations that we should be at pains to remind ourselves of – the ECCC has offered verdicts today that will begin to help a nation draw a line under a terrible period in its history.”
A Khmer Rouge survivor told BBC News that although the decisions was “a little too late for many”, it was still vital:
“It's important for the young population to learn this lesson so that we can prevent such atrocity from occurring anywhere, not just in Cambodia.”
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