Aug 6, 2010
By Jared Ferrie
Asia Times Online
PHNOM PENH - As an award-winning documentary about the Khmer Rouge makes its way across the United States, most Cambodians have been denied the chance to hear revelations made in a series of rare interviews with the genocidal regime's former chief ideologue.
In Enemies of the People, Nuon Chea, often referred to as "Brother Number Two", admits publicly, for the first and only time, that he ordered the executions of tens of thousands of political opponents. And he promises to explain at his upcoming war crimes trial the internal struggles that consumed the Khmer Rouge, which in the film he claims accounted for much of the killing during the regime's four-year rule from 1975-79.
The story he plans to tell during testimony, which is hinted at in the film, is one that contradicts the commonly held version of the regime's history, including its responsibility for over 1.7 million deaths. It could also tarnish the reputations of members of the current government who were former Khmer Rouge, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, Senate President Chea Sim and National Assembly president Heng Samrin. All three politicians rode into power on the wave of a Vietnamese-backed invasion that ousted the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
Observers have suggested this explains the government's ambivalence to the United Nations-backed tribunal. For example, the Open Society Justice Institute in a July report cited the refusal of six high-ranking government officials to testify to investigating judges, despite being issued legally binding orders, as evidence of political interference in the judicial process. A government spokesman said publicly that foreign court officials who were displeased could "pack up their clothes and return home"
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