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ពត៍មានក្នុងប្រទេសMay 21, 2008 1:08 pm

Ex-Khmer Rouge minister in court


Ieng Thirith in court on 21 May 2008
Ieng Thirith was the most powerful woman in the Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge’s former social welfare minister has made her first appearance at Cambodia’s UN-backed genocide court.

Ieng Thirith, 76, is seeking bail on charges of crimes against humanity relating to the regime’s brutal four-year rule in the late 1970s.

Three of the five former Khmer Rouge leaders held by the court have already had their requests for bail denied.

One of them, 76-year-old Khieu Samphan, was taken to hospital on Wednesday morning with high blood pressure.

A spokesman for the tribunal, Reach Sambath, said that his condition not urgent "but necessitated attention".

The former head of state’s efforts to write a book had led to stress, he said.

Starvation

Ieng Thirith was one of the Khmer Rouge’s founding members and its most powerful woman.

WHO WERE THE KHMER ROUGE?
Maoist regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979
Founded and led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998
Abolished religion, schools and currency in a bid to create agrarian utopia
Up to two million people thought to have died from starvation, overwork or execution

Her husband, Ieng Sary, was foreign minister and her sister was married to the movement’s leader, Pol Pot.

Prosecutors say that as social welfare minister, she knew that tens of thousands of people were dying from starvation and disease on brutal collective farms - but did nothing to stop the disaster.

Ieng Thirith denies any wrongdoing. In court her lawyer argued that she required regular treatment for both mental and physical conditions.

A ruling on bail is expected next month. The trials themselves are expected to begin later in the year.

The Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. During this period an estimated 1.7 million people died from starvation or overwork as leaders tried to create a classless agrarian society.

Hundreds of thousands of the educated middle classes were tortured and executed.
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ពត៍មានក្នុងប្រទេស 1:02 pm

KRouge minister appears in Cambodia’s genocide tribunal

Former Khmer Rouge minister Ieng Thirith, 76 (centre) at Cambodia’s UN-backed genocide tribunal in Phnom Penh

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — A former Khmer Rouge government minister, known as the "first lady," appeared for the first time Wednesday before Cambodia’s UN-backed genocide tribunal.

Ieng Thirith, the former social affairs minister, was arrested last November along with her husband, Ieng Sary, the ex-foreign minister in the murderous regime that unleashed widespread horror in Cambodia.

Her lawyers are expected to appeal for her release, arguing that the 76-year-old is mentally ill. Court officials, however, have said doctors have deemed Ieng Thirith fit to stand trial.

She has rejected the charges against her as "100 percent false," claiming she was helping to repair hospitals and produce medicines during the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-79 rule.

The court has said its suspects she is a flight risk and her detention is necessary to protect her against possible revenge attacks from Khmer Rouge victims, along with concerns about pressure on witnesses.

The intelligent daughter of a well-off judge studied literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she met her future husband in a ballroom in 1951.

After returning to Cambodia, the pair, along with Pol Pot and his wife Khieu Ponnary — Ieng Thirith’s older sister — became the ideological centre of the nascent communist movement that decades later would sweep through Cambodia.

Up to two million people died from overwork, starvation, torture or execution under the Khmer Rouge as it sought to create an agrarian utopia. The joint Cambodia-UN tribunal was established in 2006 after nearly a decade of haggling to try former Khmer Rouge senior officials for genocide and crimes against humanity. The trials of five surviving leaders detained by the court are expected to begin later this year.

Khmer Rouge head Pol Pot died in 1998

 

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