News and Analysis - Growing Frustration over Khmer Rouge Tribunal Delays, 04 Feb 2007

Cambodia: Almost three decades since the Khmer Rouge (KR) were driven from power, there has yet to be an accounting for the suffering they brought to the Cambodian people. Of the senior most leadership, responsible for between one to two million deaths, three of the top four remain free and living in Cambodia’s northwest: Noun Chea, commonly referred to as Brother Number Two, formerly the Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (Pol Pot, who died in 1988 was known as Brother Number One); Ieng Sary, formerly the Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) as Cambodia was then known, and Khieu Samphan, the State Presidium Chairman of the KR government.

In late 2004, the UN and Cambodia finalized the agreement that established the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) that would be the mechanism to investigate crimes committed during the KR period (1975-1979), and prosecute those determined responsible. Now, over two years later, the rules of ECCC are still being debated and international members of the court are reaching a point of great frustration. Robert Petit, the UN’s appointed co-prosecutor, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying his team has already gathered substantial evidence and eyewitness testimony and is prepared to start issuing indictments “tomorrow.”  The international judges, of whom there are four, have threatened to walk out of the Tribunal altogether if an agreement on the procedures governing the Tribunal cannot be codified by April. There are three main issues inhibiting progress: one, the use of independent international lawyers as defense attorneys for the to be determined accused; two, independent roles for the prosecutors, and three, a secure witness protection program. The two sides are set to meet again in March to try and iron out these differences. (Comment – Two of these are tough points of contention and run directly against the need for control over the process that the Cambodia government feels it must exert. The Hun Sen administration believes that it is necessary to limit the scope of investigations as many of the most senior members of the government and ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) were former KR cadre, including Party Secretary Chea Sim, Prime Minister Hun Sen, Deputy Prime Minister and, National Assembly President Heng Samrin, Minister of Finance Keat Chhon, and Cambodia’s former monarch, Norodom Sihanouk. Hun Sen’s redline is to ensure that the Tribunal does not act as lightning rod against his administration by the opposition parties and to protect his closely knit patron-client relationships. Secondly, China, which over the past several years has made substantial grants and loans to the government and is Cambodia’s largest foreign investor, does not want its role as the primary foreign backer of the Khmer Rouge Regime and military brought to light in an international forum, thus it has quietly but persistently been pressuring the Cambodian government to limit the extent and scope of the Tribunal. These two issues have acted as a counterweight to international and internal pressure to bring closure, by means of the Tribunal, to the genocide and terror that the Khmer Rouge inflicted on the Cambodian people during the years they were in power. These issues will be brought to a head over the next several months as resistance on the part of government appointed Cambodian judges and attorneys rub against increasing pressure on the part of UN appointed members to get past the administrative formalities and move forward with the investigations and identification of those to be prosecuted. ) [slr]

The official website of the ECCC is located at: http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english/default.aspx