JAKARTA - On December 29, 1998, the Khmer Rouge leaders, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, apologized for their actions in the terror that claimed the lives of 1.7 million Cambodians. Nuon Chea said that the death happened because he wanted to win the war. He also apologized for the lives of the fallen animals.
Citing The Guardian, the two Khmer Rouge leaders are known to receive amnesty and will have impunity. They defected from another Khmer Rouge leader, Ta Mok, after Cambodian Prime Minister (PM) Hun Sen promised impunity by saying 'we have to dig a hole and bury the past.'
Prime Minister Hun Sen has said that he supports the demands of an international tribunal to try Khmer Rouge war criminals. But on the other hand, he said the tribunal might lead to a return to civil war.
Both his party and the main opposition party, Funcinpec, sought support from defected Khmer Rouge units. Hun Sen said that the two men wanted to rejoin society and should be greeted not with handcuffs but with a "bouquet of flowers."
Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea have their respective duties. Khieu Samphan led the force that spearheaded the eviction of Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975. He also became president and head of the armed forces and has the same rank as Pol Pot.
Meanwhile, Nuon Chea, controls the Cambodian Communist Party, and is referred to as 'Brother Number Two' or number two after Pol Pot. Within weeks of the Khmer Rouge's victory, he delivered a speech ordering party officials to 'purify' the country. It was known to be a passphrase to kill anyone suspected of having ties to the previous government.
The survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime's 'killing fields' rejected the apology. They called for the perpetrators of the bloodshed to be brought to justice. Thomas Hammarberg, UN Special Representative for Human Rights in Cambodia, said it would be "very sad" if they both escaped court.
However, on 19 September 2007, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea were detained by the authorities for crimes against humanity and received life sentences. His lawyers immediately announced that they would appeal the verdict. Apart from crimes against humanity, the two were also tried in separate trials on charges of genocide.
Khieu Samphan was found guilty on November 16, 2018 of the crime of genocide against the Vietnamese people. The ruling stressed that Khieu Samphan "encourages, incites and legitimizes" a criminal policy that causes civilian deaths "on a large scale" including millions of people forced into forced labor camps to build dams and bridges and the mass extermination of Vietnamese people. Nuon Chea died on August 4, 2019.
Khieu Samphan on trial in 2011 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
The Khmer Rouge was a radical communist movement that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The Khmer Rouge managed to rule after winning power through guerrilla warfare. It is said that the Khmer Rouge was founded in 1967 as the armed wing of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.
Citing Britannica, in April 1975, Khmer Rouge forces launched a victorious assault on the capital city of Phnom Penh and established a national government to rule Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge military leader, Pol Pot, became the new prime minister.
The Khmer Rouge's reign over the next four years was marked by some of the worst excesses of any Marxist government of the 20th century. It is estimated that 1.7 million and some even call it up to 2 million people, died as a result of being massacred. Most of them are professionals and scientists in the country.
The Khmer Rouge government was overthrown in 1979 when it attacked Vietnamese troops, who had a puppet government backed by aid and experts in Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge then withdrew to remote areas and resumed guerrilla warfare and operated from bases near the border with Thailand and obtained assistance from China.
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