The trial of three surviving Khmer Rouge leaders began Monday at the UN-backed Cambodia tribunal in Phnom Penh. The prosecution is laying out its opening arguments over the first two days, after which the defence gets to have its say.

By Robert Carmichael, Phnom Penh

It has been more than 30 years since the alleged crimes took place, but on Monday the UN-backed court in Phnom Penh finally opened proceedings into its most important case – that of the three leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

Prosecutors accuse the three defendants, who were present in court, of creating “a living nightmare” for Cambodians during their movement’s rule of the country between 1975-79 when as many as 2.2 million people died.

“They took from people everything that makes life worth living,” said international co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley as he outlined the ultra-Maoist movement’s crimes, which among other things included forcing the urban population into the countryside, enslavement, genocide, and mass killings.

“They sought out perceived enemies of the fledgling state everywhere,” he added. The regime’s paranoia led it to arrest, torture and execute tens of thousands of imagined opponents of the revolution.

“They even banned love between human beings – that one noble quality that comes to the human heart more naturally than any other,” Cayley said. “This is the tragic legacy that these three elderly people represent.”

Brutal and horrific
Earlier his Cambodian counterpart Chea Leang said the defendants, who stand charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, were leaders in a regime that had proved to be “one of the most brutal and horrific in modern history” after it took power in April 1975.

“In the three years, eight months and 20 days that followed the 17th April 1975, the Communist Party of Kampuchea enslaved the entire Cambodian nation. And it caused the deaths of one in every four people living under its rule,” said Chea Leang.

The three elderly defendants are: Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two, and considered the movement’s chief ideologue; Khieu Samphan, who was head of state; and Ieng Sary, who was the foreign minister.

The octogenarians are effectively on trial for devising the policies that led to so many deaths from execution, starvation, disease and overwork.

Chea Leang told the judges that Cambodia had become a “massive slave camp” with the population forced to work in atrocious conditions on huge agricultural projects.

“The scars that this country bears will take generations to heal,” she said. “One of the tragic consequences of the crimes committed by the CPK regime is the fact that hundreds of thousands of victims remain buried in unidentified locations.”

Genocide
Among the mass killings, which the prosecution believes amount to genocide, were the Khmer Rouge’s actions against two minority populations: the Muslim Chams and ethnic Vietnamese.

The Cham Muslims, said Chea Leang, had been identified by the leadership of the Khmer Rouge as “the biggest enemy who must be totally smashed before 1980”.

“And the massacres were planned by and reported to the highest echelons,” she said.

As for the ethnic Vietnamese – of whom there were 450,000 at the start of the decade – deportations and mass killings meant none were left in Cambodia by January 1979.

“Leaders knew what was happening”
The prosecution said that it would produce evidence to disprove the assertions of the accused that they did not know what was happening on the ground.

Instead, said Chea Leang, those cadres who tortured and killed had done so “strictly within the orders and policies of the accused”.

“These accused not only (ordered the actions) but were kept informed of conditions on the ground by regular visits and a system of reporting,” she said.

The prosecution outlined five main areas of criminal behaviour: the forced movement to rural areas of people living in cities; the enslavement of the entire population; the use of violence and security centres to eradicate perceived enemies; targeting certain groups such as Buddhist monks, Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese who were seen as threats; and forcibly marrying people in order to increase the population to 20-30 million.

Passing the buck
Andrew Cayley cited the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi leaders in 1945-46, during which those on trial pinned the blame for the regime’s crimes on the dead, including on Hitler.

He said the defence in this case would undoubtedly try to persuade the court that Brother Number One Pol Pot, who died in 1998, was solely responsible.

“These three men were actors with Pol Pot, they planned and schemed for years with Pol Pot as to what they would do when they took control of the country,” he said.

He said the court was embarking on “an unprecedented legal journey – in most respects unprecedented in scale, but also in that the victims have waited for more than a generation for the wheels of justice”.

Given that one in four Cambodians died, said Cayley, that proportion “has no parallel in the modern era”.

And although none of the accused had sullied their hands by killing people themselves, “each of them, either alone or together with others long dead (devised policies) that unleashed an ocean of blood in this country”.

“And let us also be clear that the criminality was not accidental nor did it just happen. The plans that led to the deaths of two million people (were laid) long in advance of 1975.”

Structure
The complexity of Case 002, as the trial of the leaders is known, and the advanced years and health conditions of the defendants led the court to conduct a series of mini-trials rather than risk running one lengthy trial with the chance that one or more defendants died without a ruling on their guilt or innocence. That decision means it can hand down judgements as the trial proceeds.

The first mini-trial will deal primarily with the crimes against humanity committed during the two forced movements of population in 1975 – the initial one when the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities, and the second when they ordered people moved around the country to areas where labour was needed. Tens of thousands died, says the prosecution.

In its first case the court last year sentenced the Khmer Rouge’s security chief, Comrade Duch, to 30 years after finding him guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity over his role in the deaths of more than 12,000 people. Duch appealed his conviction, and his verdict will be handed down on February 3 next year.