World

Khmer Rouge Amnesty Denied

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

December 29, 1998 / 7:48 AM EST / CBS

Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk showed displeasure Wednesday at the warm reception given to two Khmer Rouge defectors and said an international tribunal would have a perfect right to try them for genocide.

Calling them "criminals," the constitutional monarch said he would not grant amnesties for Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea and would leave the handling of "this unfortunate and dramatic affair of forgiveness for the Khmer Rouge" to Prime Minister Hun Sen, who pledged Tuesday to shield the defectors from trial.

The refusal casts doubt on the legitimacy of the deal Prime Minister Hun Sen has granted the two leaders, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, to defect to the government in exchange for assurances they will not be tried for crimes against humanity.

"Taking into account the very wide and undeniable discontent of the majority of the Khmer people, I announce to this majority that I respect them and will not renew my power of amnesty for major Khmer Rouge criminals," said King Norodom Sihanouk.

Sihanouk, 76, who is receiving medical treatment for a brace of ailments in Beijing, made the comments in a statement faxed to news organizations.

Whether Hun Sen would go ahead with the amnesty in the wake of the statement was unclear. Although Sihanouk is popular in Cambodia, he is largely a figurehead and has no real way to enforce his will.

On the other hand, Hun Sen is Cambodia's most powerful man and his will amounts to law. He controls the judiciary and security services and could simply accord the pair a de facto pardon, possibly through the pliant court system.

Sihanouk said that an international tribunal would have "the perfect right to take up the case of genocide in Cambodia, because it concerns crimes against humanity."

"That concerns the conscience of the community of all the world's peoples," the king said.

The announcement came hours after the two Khmer Rouge leaders apologized for the deaths of as many as 2 million people during their regime in the 1970s and asked Cambodians to forget the past.

Yet, neither of the elderly revolutionaries accepted personal responsibility for the massacres during their rule.

Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea were flown by helicopter from a former rebel stronghold to the capital to, in effect, surrender to Hun Sen after he pledged they would not face trial for crimes against humanity.

At a news conference Tuesday, they were asked by journalists many of them Cambodians who lost family members if they felt any remorse for causing the deaths of as many as 2 million of the nation's 8 million people.

"Yes, sorry, very sorry," Khieu Samphan said, looking red and sullen.

"We would like to apologize and ask our compatriots to forget the past so our nation can concentrate on the future," Khieu Samphan said. "Let bygones be bygones."

The Maoist revolutionaries won a civil wa in 1975 and forced the population into slave labor camps, where many died of overwork, starvation, disease and executions. Many Americans began to grasp the horror of the era when portrayed in the 1984 movie, The Killing Fields.

Khieu Samphan called the situation, laid out in his doctoral thesis as a communist student in Paris in 1959, a "historical experiment."

The Khmer Rouge was overthrown in 1979 by a Vietnamese invasion, but spent two decades waging civil war. Stalemate ended in 1996 when the government began offering pardons to leaders and guerrillas to get them to make peace. With the movement all but extinct, calls are being heard for someone to finally be held accountable.

Amnesty International expressed shock at Hun Sen's reversal of previous support for a tribunal and the warm reception given the Khmer Rouge leaders.

"It's a black day for the Cambodian people and a black day for international justice," Demelza Stubbings, a representative of the human rights group said.

Khieu Samphan was the nominal Khmer Rouge leader, though he has been viewed as a front man for Pol Pot and others who held real power. Nuon Chea was considered Pol Pot's second-in-command and chief theorist. Pol Pot died in April of a heart attack.

Neither accepted personal responsibility Tuesday at the news conference before as hostile an audience as they ever are likely to face. Some reporters shouted demands for personal apologies to the families of those who perished.

Nuon Chea, asked who was to blame for the massacres, said: "Let's consider that an old issue. I cannot clarify that."

"We are very sorry, not just for the human lives, but also animal lives that were lost in the war," Nuon Chea said.