World

Cambodia Passes Tribunal Bill

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

April 29, 2000 / 10:44 PM EDT / CBS

Cambodia's Senate on Monday approved a law on creating a tribunal to try Khmer Rouge leaders, and a Cabinet minister said the court will spare no leader of the murderous regime.

All 51 deputies present in the 61-seat upper house of parliament voted to pass the U.N.-sponsored draft law, which calls for a tribunal comprised of Cambodian and international judges and prosecutors.

The law was passed by the lower legislative house earlier this month but still needs approval from the Constitutional Council and King Norodom Sihanouk. Prime Minister Hun Sen expects the tribunal to start work this year.

An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died of starvation or disease or were executed during the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge rule, which strove to create an agrarian utopia through terror.

The United States has pushed hard for a trial that would meet international standards of justice.

"For the sake of justice it's very important that this process be implemented in the days ahead, and we'll be following that process closely," House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said Monday in Cambodia, where he was meeting with Hun Sen and Sihanouk. Gephardt, D-Mo., led a delegation of nine representatives in the latest in a series of high-profile U.S. visits to Cambodia.

Earlier this month, the United Nations had objected to some parts of the draft law, apparently fearing that they do not meet international standards and that they try to put some Khmer Rouge leaders out of the tribunal's purview. Senators also expressed worries that some leaders might be omitted from prosecution.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Monday in New York that the United Nations didn't know which, if any, of the changes U.N. lawyers proposed to address those concerns were incorporated into the law adopted by the Senate.

AP
Former Khmer Rouge
military chief Ta Mok,
seen here in his jail
cell at the Cambodia
Military Prosecution
Center in March, 1999

An agreement between the government and the United Nations must be signed before a tribunal can be convened.

Critics argue that the Cambodian legal system, which is seen as highly politicized and corrupt, has too much influence over the planned tribunal.

Under the tribunal formula, Cambodian judges would have a one-person majority at each level of the proposed court. But at least one international judge must side with them before a binding judgment can be made.

Eckhard has said some of the discrepancies between the two sides were substantive but that he didn't think any were "deal-breakers." He has stressed, however, that they must be resolved before the United Nations could enter into a formal agreement with Cambodia.

Hun Sen has said the government is ready o apprehend anyone the court indicts but has cautioned against prosecution of the late Pol Pot's former foreign minister and brother-in-law, Ieng Sary, saying that could lead to war. However, Cabinet minister Sok An, who is responsible for the tribunal, assured the Senate that Ieng Sary could also find himself under its scrutiny.

"When the law is approved everybody must be under the law," Sok An said.

Many deputies of the ruling Cambodian People's Party, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, are former members of the Khmer Rouge who defected before the regime was ousted by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979. The tribunal is not likely to target lower-level members of Khmer Rouge, including the current lawmakers, since the draft law requires the prosecution of only those "most responsible" for the atrocities.

After the Vietnamese invasion, the Khmer Rouge survived as a rebel group along the Cambodian border with Thailand until 1998.

Ieng Sary led the defection of some 10,000 troops and civilians in 1996, which crippled the movement. He was given immunity and now lives freely along with other top Khmer Rouge in their former stronghold in northwestern Cambodia.

Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were tried in absentia after Vietnam ousted the Khmer Rouge, but it was widely regarded as a show trial not meeting reasonable standards of justice.

Only two senior Khmer Rouge figures are in custody: longtime military leader Ta Mok, and Kaing Khek Iev, better known as "Duch", the director of the Khmer Rouge torture center in Phnom Penh.

Hun Sen said the tribunal could reach two other top figures. Khieu Samphan, 68, the movement's nominal leader, and political ideologue Nuon Chea, in his early 70s, left the Khmer Rouge not long before its final collapse in late 1998. Both live modestly and freely in the northwestern town of Pailin, not far from the Thai border.