The World Briefly

September 23, 2022

No Expiration

Cambodia

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Cambodia’s UN-backed tribunal for the Khmer Rouge upheld a conviction against the former regime’s last surviving leader Thursday, in what appears to be the final judgment of the court, the Guardian reported.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) rejected an appeal by the former head of state Khieu Samphan, who was found guilty in 2018 of crimes against humanity and the genocide of the ethnic Vietnamese minority in the country.

Samphan, 91, was sentenced to life in prison. He appealed the ruling, saying that the ECCC had made more than 1,800 errors in its judgment.

The court upheld the life sentence.

The verdict is the last word of the court, which has focused on punishing the perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge regime. Nearly two million people were killed under the brutal communist dictatorship through a combination of mass executions, starvation and labor camps.

By the time the dictatorship was overthrown in 1979, about a quarter of Cambodia’s population had died.

The tribunal has provided a forum for national healing as well as justice, but it has also been chastised for its slow speed, high costs, and vulnerability to meddling from Cambodia’s current government.

Many of the key perpetrators, including the infamous “Brother Number One” Pol Pot, died before they could face justice.

Formed in 1997, the court has issued three convictions, one also against Samphan and the other of Nuon Chea, who was second-in-command to Pol Pot.

Amnesty International said Thursday’s ruling “should serve as another reminder that accountability for the most serious crimes has no expiration date”.

This story originally appeared in the September 23, 2022 newsletter, Democracy by Fiat.