Nuon Chea, has blamed Vietnam for the mass killings that characterised the nearly four-year rule of Pol Pot’s ultra-Maoist movement from 1975-79. Its most senior living cadre was the first to speak in the trial of three surviving Khmer Rouge leaders before the special war crimes tribunal in Cambodia.

By Robert Carmichael, Phnom Penh

85-year-old Nuon Chea showed no inclination to take any responsibility for the policies that the leadership of the Khmer Rouge movement devised, as he gave evidence on Monday and Tuesday this week. The policies led ultimately to the deaths of up to 2.2 million people - one in four of Cambodia’s population.

Instead the man known as Brother Number Two for his position as deputy secretary-general of Cambodia’s communist party pinned the blame on Cambodia’s eastern neighbour Vietnam. A nation, he said, that had long had designs on “swallowing” his homeland.

The seeds of Cambodia’s destruction lay in the years following World War II, when Vietnam’s communist revolutionaries worked with their counterparts in Cambodia and Laos to rid the region of its French colonial masters. After France pulled out, they worked to overthrow the national governments that had replaced Paris.

But Nuon Chea said Vietnam’s insistence on being the “older brother” to Laos and Cambodia annoyed and angered Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and others, and sparked the beginning of their vitriol against their former allies in Hanoi.

And, said Nuon Chea, Vietnam was the guilty party. Not the leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

“Everything was under the control of Vietnam, from the Hanoi headquarters, from the Ho Chi Minh headquarters,” he told the tribunal. “So these crimes – war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide – were not (committed by) Cambodian people. It was Vietnam who killed Cambodians.”

Nuon Chea reserved a smaller amount of blame for “bad elements” in the Khmer Rouge movement, renegades, he claimed, who had donned the black garb of the Communist movement in order to tarnish its reputation.

And he said he wanted future generations to understand what he claimed was “the truth” contained within his version of events: “I don't want (the next generations to think) that the Khmer Rouge are bad people, are criminals. Nothing is true about that.”

Motivations
It was vintage rhetoric from the man regarded as the chief ideologue of the Khmer Rouge, and who delivered many similar anti-Vietnamese diatribes during his period as deputy of the Cambodian communist party from 1960 onwards.

Nuon Chea, who was born in 1926, also told the court of his motivations in joining the revolution.

“When I was young I lived under the French colony (and) I witnessed with my own eyes the mistreatment of the French toward Cambodian people,” he said. “People were beaten, arrested and imprisoned, and I also witnessed (how) the rich (Cambodians) mistreated other people (and) treated them as slaves.”

Nuon Chea said he became aware of Vietnam’s true intentions while studying in Hanoi in the early 1950s. It was there that he realised the python of Vietnam wanted to swallow the “young deer” of Cambodia.

“I was so disappointed to hear that, because I was fighting very hard against the French for independence, but what would be independence under the control of another country?” he asked.

Contradiction and forgetfulness
Later in the week the court heard from a former aide to fellow-defendant Ieng Sary, who was the Khmer Rouge’s foreign minister, and who also stands accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In his testimony Long Norin, who worked for Ieng Sary before, during and after the Khmer Rouge’s rule, denied he had communicated with his former boss after 1979, even though he was a spokesman for Ieng Sary into the 1990s.

Long Norin also contradicted a written statement he had provided to court investigators in December 2007, and claimed he was unable to remember the answers to numerous questions put to him by the prosecution.

All of that led assistant prosecutor Dale Lysak to question whether Long Norin, who lives in a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in western Cambodia and who appeared by video-link to testify, had decided not to speak out against his former boss.

“We’ve seen on the part of this witness so far a clear reluctance to testify,” Lysak told the bench.

“No, no, I am not at all reluctant,” Long Norin replied. “If I could recall, I would tell all that I can remember.”

Long Norin also provided contradictory statements about his time at the foreign ministry when fellow employees disappeared during purges of suspected enemies of the revolution. Asked what happened to foreign ministry staff who were considered traitors, Long Norin replied: “At that time, nothing noticeable happened.”

But later he admitted that staff who were taken away for “study sessions” – a euphemism for being arrested and then executed – did not reappear. That caused staff to “tremble” when Ieng Sary gave speeches at the ministry in which he talked about their colleagues being KGB or CIA operatives.

In his written statement from 2007, Long Norin told the tribunal’s investigators that Ieng Sary “spoke about those who had been arrested and brought in, what mistakes they had made”.

“He never mentioned names, but he only said that now they were afraid like rats fallen into the water,” he told investigators in 2007, according to the statement read out in court by Lysak.

But on the stand, Long Norin proved less forthcoming: “I don’t remember,” he said of that comment. “It’s been a long time.”

Judges wrangling
In related court business, the new co-investigating judge, Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, ran into a firestorm with his controversial Cambodian counterpart You Bunleng, after he issued a press statement to announce he had taken up his role.

Swiss national Kasper-Ansermet replaced German co-investigating judge Siegfried Blunk, who quit in October after months of criticism. Numerous observers accused Blunk and You Bunleng of judicial misconduct for failing to conduct a proper investigation of Case 003 against two senior Khmer Rouge military cadres.

That shoddy investigation came after the Cambodian government said Case 003 and the court’s final case, known as Case 004, would not be permitted to go ahead, and cemented fears that Phnom Penh was interfering in the work of the tribunal, which is meant to be independent.

Kasper-Ansermet is thought more likely to ensure a proper investigation of the two cases, which reportedly involve hundreds of thousands of deaths. In his statement Kasper-Ansermet he said he would endeavour to keep the Cambodian public properly informed of progress in Cases 003 and 004, and would “undertake any necessary investigative/judicial actions”.

His words were followed within the hour by a statement from You Bunleng, who complained his new colleague had failed to consult him before releasing his statement. And, he added, since Kasper-Ansermet had not been officially approved by the Cambodian government’s judicial body to his post, any work he did “was not legally valid”.

Decision on Khmer Rouge First Lady postponed
Also this week the UN-backed court postponed by one week its decision on what to do with Ieng Thirith, the movement’s former First Lady, who has been declared unfit for trial due to dementia.

Ieng Thirith’s lawyers have called for her release, but the prosecution said the tribunal should keep her under observation for six months to see whether her condition improves. However Cambodia lacks psychiatric facilities.

The court said it would issue its ruling on December 13.

"The Supreme Court chamber has decided that exceptional circumstances exist in the present case, including the complexity arising from the unprecedented legal and practical issues involved," the tribunal said in a statement released December 6.

The 79-year-old was charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes along with the other three defendants. Tribunal observers consider it highly unlikely that Ieng Thirith will ever face trial.