Khmer Rouge tribunal takes message to the movement's heart

September 29, 2010
ABC Radio Australia

Last week, the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal in Cambodia, visited the border town of Pailin in the country's west.

The trip was to explain the court and its workings, to an audience of 250 people - most of whom are former members of the Khmer Rouge. The week before, the tribunal had indicted four former Khmer Rouge leaders - all of whom used to live in Pailin.

Presenter: Robert Carmichael

Speakers: Mey Mak, deputy governor of Pailin; Andrew Cayley, international co-proscutor; Lars Olsen, legal affairs spokesman, ECCC

Listen: Windows Media

CARMICHAEL: The town of Pailin in the hilly countryside of western Cambodia near the Thai border is well-known for its association with the Khmer Rouge.

The communist movement that brought Cambodia to its knees in the 1970s, and which fought on from bases along the Cambodian-Thai border after that, finally collapsed in the late 1990s. Pailin played a central role in precipitating that collapse when the regime's foreign minister, Ieng Sary, defected to the Cambodian government with several thousand fighters in 1996. In return Ieng Sary received a royal pardon and an amnesty. His timing was good. Within a few years the Khmer Rouge was finished. But over the next decade Ieng Sary's luck turned. In 2003 the government and the United Nations agreed to establish a tribunal to try those most deeply implicated in the regime's crimes. Amnesties were declared null and void.

In 2007 both Ieng Sary and his wife, the former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith, were arrested. Earlier this month the tribunal indicted both for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indicted along with them were former head of state Khieu Samphan, and the man known as Brother Number Two, Nuon Chea. In most of Cambodia, their indictments are seen as long overdue. But not here.
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