Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-18-Speech-4-129"
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"en.20010118.6.4-129"2
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"Mr President, I very much welcome the establishment of courts to try the suspects of the former Communist Khmer Rouge regime. It is important so that Cambodia can move forward into the future that those responsible for heinous crimes against the Cambodian population be brought to justice.
The Khmer Rouge regime was one of the worst human rights abusers of the twentieth century, being responsible for an estimated 1.72 million deaths in a short, four-year rule. Although I welcome the establishment of the courts I have a number of reservations. We have to remember that the members of the ruling Cambodian People's Party, including the prime minister, Hun Sen, were once activists of the Khmer Rouge, serving under the dictator Pol Pot. Hun Sen has already decided who can and cannot be taken before a tribunal, thus challenging the powers of any court. There have been genuine fears that several senior members of the regime might escape justice, in particular the former Khmer Rouge foreign secretary, Ieng Sary. He was given partial amnesty after he defected with about 10,000 supporters in 1996.
Ieng Sary and other Khmer Rouge leaders were sentenced to death in absentia in 1997 by the People's Court, which was organised by the Vietnamese army occupying Cambodia at the time. The amnesty granted by King Sihanouk refers only to this conviction and makes no reference to future convictions and therefore it is important that he is tried.
No Khmer Rouge leaders has ever been tried and only two are in detention, one being the person who ran a notorious torture centre in Phnom Penh from which only seven out of more than fourteen thousand inmates emerged alive.
The tribunal has an unusual framework for participation of both international and Cambodian judges and prosecutors. Normally, in other war crime courts, there are only foreign judges and prosecutors. This becomes ever more worrying when we see that while the UN-nominated judges will be screened by the Cambodian Supreme Council of the Magistrate, a body controlled by the ruling party of Phnom Penh, the UN has no power whatsoever to screen the judges appointed by Cambodia.
Finally, we also need to look at the involvement of China in all of this. Although it has always maintained that it only provided the Khmer Rouge with technical expertise in agriculture, the Cambodian documentation centre recently unearthed evidence to show that it was directly involved in the setting up of the interrogation and torture centre in Phnom Penh where thousands of Cambodians died."@en1
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