Aug 19 2021
No Cambodia trial over Aust men’s deaths
By AAP Newswire
Cambodia Genocide - AAP

The prosecution of a Khmer Rouge naval commander who was blamed for the deaths of two Australians at Cambodia's notorious Killing Fields is not expected to proceed and will be finalised by the end of the year.

Neth Pheaktra, spokesman for the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh, said charges against Meas Muth were "stuck" after international and local prosecutors failed to reach the super-majority needed for the case to proceed.

"Now it is in the hands of the prosecutor, defence lawyers and the civil parties, as they need to clarify about the legal proceedings," he told AAP.

"They cannot reach a super-majority ... to send the case to trial. Now it is stuck and awaiting interpretation of the law."

The ECCC, which is finalising 15 years of public hearings this week, comprised local and international prosecutors and a super-majority of support is required for a case to proceed.

Asked when the Meas Muth case, which includes charges of genocide against the Vietnamese and crimes against humanity, would be finalised, he said: "Not this week but this year, yes."

Meas Muth, now 83, was head of the Khmer Rouge navy when his men seized a yacht that had strayed into Cambodian waters in the late 1970s.

Ronald Keith Dean, a 35-year-old Sydney hotel worker, and David Lloyd Scott, believed to be about the same age, from West Australia, were sent to S21, run by ruthless commandant Kaing Guek Eav, who was known as Duch.

A guard testified that a shackled prisoner, probably Australian, was forced to sit, then had a tyre soaked in petrol pulled over him and lit.

Duch was convicted of crimes against humanity in 2010 and sentenced to life. He died last year.
https://www.riverineherald.com.au/world ... ens-deaths

Cambodia: UN-backed court drops genocide charges against ex-Khmer Rouge navy commander Meas Muth
Saturday, 18 Dec 2021
5:49 PM MYT

PHNOM PENH, Dec 18 (AFP): Genocide charges against a Cambodian ex-Khmer Rouge commander were dropped by the United Nations-backed court set up to try leaders of the brutal regime, according to a statement.

The Khmer Rouge, also known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea, sought to transform Cambodia into an agrarian utopia, but instead killed as many as two million people.

Ex-navy commander Meas Muth (pic) was charged in 2015 with genocide against Cambodia's ethnic Vietnamese minority during Khmer Rouge rule from 1975 to 1979.

He was also charged with torture, premeditated homicide and crimes against humanity, although wrangling between Cambodian and international judges meant he was never summoned to appear before the court.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), as the tribunal is formally known, was set up with UN backing in 2006 using a mix of Cambodian and international law.

It has convicted three people and cost more than US$300 million.

The court announced Friday it was terminating the case against Meas Muth "in the absence of a definitive and enforceable indictment".
https://www.thestar.com.my/aseanplus/as ... -meas-muth

Japan Provides US$220,000 in Financial Assistance to ECCC
AKP Phnom Penh, February 07, 2022 --

The Government of Japan on Feb. 4 disbursed an amount of US$220,000 as its contribution to the United Nations component of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)’s budget.

According to a press release of the Embassy of Japan in Cambodia AKP received this morning, the contribution is aimed to support the judicial process of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

“The Government of Japan attaches importance to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal from three points of view. Firstly, the Khmer Rouge trials are the completing stage of the Cambodian peace process in order to prevent the recurrence of atrocities committed during the Khmer Rouge period. Secondly, the Tribunal will help deliver justice to the victims of the Khmer Rouge and, therefore, contribute to national reconciliation. Thirdly, the Tribunal will contribute to strengthening the rule of law in Cambodia as well as in the international community,” it underlined.

The Government of Japan has been assisting the ECCC since its inception and, as of today, the financial assistance from Japan amounts to US$88.7 million including the aforementioned disbursement, approximately 27 percent of the total funds contributed by donors to the national and UN components of the ECCC, the same source pointed out.

Moreover Japan, it added, along with France, has actively followed the proceedings of the ECCC as co-chair of the Friends of the ECCC.

By C. Nika
AKP

CEOCambodiaNews wrote: ↑Tue Dec 28, 2021 6:45 pm

I'll see you in Hell, Brother, for sure, and we can have that conversation about those thousands of Vietnamese, Thai and other foreign sea people that were ALL summarily murdered on your orders simply for crossing the sea border.

That sweet blameless smile and shrug of shoulders you display to the world today, whilst sitting all absolved in the temple grounds - ain't going to get you very far down there, my friend.





(Yes. i do feel a bit better. thanks for wondering)

Khmer Rouge Tribunal, helping Cambodians heal, nears end
Hybrid UN-Cambodia court has been criticised for its slow pace and lack of convictions, but experts say it forced the country to confront the horrors of its past.
By Lindsey Kennedy and Nathan Southern
Published On 28 Apr 202228 Apr 2022
Correction28 Apr 2022
This story has been corrected to show that the only ongoing case at the court involves an appeal by Khieu Samphan who was convicted in 2018.


Khmer Rouge leaders (L-R), Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, and Ieng Sary with other officials and Khmer Rouge guards. Pol Pot died before the court was convened, Ieng Sary died before a verdict was reached, while Nuon Chea died at 93 after being found guilty of genocide [File: Documentation Center of Cambodia Archives via EPA]
After 19 years, hundreds of millions of dollars and just two successful convictions, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh is approaching its end.

The only case now ongoing for atrocities committed in Cambodia by Pol Pot’s brutal regime is an appeal by Khieu Samphan, who was convicted in 2018. The country’s youthful population is anxious to move on from a national identity characterised by a genocide it does not remember, while an ageing political elite is keen to limit chains of accountability before they edge too close to home.

Cambodia’s National Assembly, where the ruling party has every seat, has voted unanimously to wind up the court’s activities by the end of this year.

But despite the difficulties that dogged its progress – from funding to political obstruction to the death of defendants before verdicts could be reached or charges laid – the court forced the horrors of the Khmer Rouge out into the open and will have a profound effect on future fights for justice around the world.

Not only as an invaluable example for future study and prevention, as Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-CAM) and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge, puts it. But also, as former chief of investigations for the tribunal Craig Etcheson explains, because it brought into sharp focus the immense challenge of pitting a slow-moving, technically-minded judicial establishment against an experienced, tenacious leader who is determined to politicise the process.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), known informally as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, was set up in 2003 by the Cambodian government and the United Nations but was designed to have judicial and political independence from both.

Its purpose was to identify and prosecute those responsible for atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, the ultra-Maoist political party led by Pol Pot, whose rebel forces seized control of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Allegations included mass murder, torture, forced marriages and the genocide of Cambodia’s Cham and ethnic Vietnamese minorities.

During the Khmer Rouge’s brief time in power, Cambodia’s educated, professional classes were eviscerated, the cities emptied, and the population redistributed to collective farms and rural construction projects. In just four years, approximately two million Cambodians were either killed or died of starvation, overwork and disease.

“What would ‘justice’ look like when we are talking about two million people killed, millions of families ripped apart, and an entire culture whiplashed to within inches of its very existence?” asked Etcheson. “My expectation would be that there is no kind of justice which would satisfy everyone in the wake of such catastrophic crimes.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022 ... n-cambodia

Photo wikipedia
August 10, 2022
Appeal verdict for living genocidal regime leading official scheduled for September
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) will pronounce an appeal judgment in Case 002 concerning former Pol Pot genocidal regime leading official Khieu Samphan on the morning of September 22.

The ECCC Trial Chamber first announced its verdict against the figure on November 16, 2018, sentencing him to life imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The sentences were combined in Case 002/01.
He has since appealed to the Supreme Court Chamber.
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501129530/ ... september/

Former Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan loses genocide appeal
Ruling marks the final decision by the court and ends 16 years of work by the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Cambodia.

Photo of Khieu Samphan dated July 27, 1975, and taken by a visiting Vietnamese delegation to Cambodia just months after the Khmer Rouge fought their way to power [Courtesy of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia]
By Al Jazeera Staff
Published On 22 Sep 2022

The last surviving senior leader of Cambodia’s radical Khmer Rouge regime has had an appeal against his conviction for genocide rejected at a war crimes tribunal in the capital Phnom Penh.

The ruling on Thursday in the appeal of Khieu Samphan, 91, the former head of state of the 1975-1979 “Democratic Kampuchea” government, marks the final decision by the court and ends 16 years of work by the UN-backed war crimes tribunal.

The rejection of the appeal that sought to clear Khieu Samphan of the genocide of minority Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia also closes the book on one of the regime’s French-educated intellectuals who had argued that he was unaware of the crimes of mass murder perpetrated by his colleagues.

Of the two million victims of the Khmer Rouge, 100,000 to 500,000 were Cham Muslims, and an estimated 20,000 were ethnic Vietnamese.

Reading out the ruling in Phnom Penh, the tribunal’s judges rejected – point after point – Khieu Samphan’s numerous arguments appealing his conviction for genocide.
The “vast majority of Khieu Samphan’s arguments are unfounded”, Judge Kong Srim said during the lengthy reading of the decision.
Long article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/2 ... ocide-case