Nuon Chea, Brother Number Two under the infamous Khmer Rouge regime, has been arrested with a view to facing human rights charges in the forthcoming UN-backed tribunal.
Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number 2 in the Khmer Rouge regime, has been arrested and charged with crimes against humanity in the forthcoming UN-backed human rights tribunal.
Born in or around 1925, Nuon Chea – whose original name was Long Bunruot – went on to study law at Thammasat University in Bangkok and became a member of the Siamese Communist Party. He then went on to take positions in the Democratic Workers’ Party of Kampuchea and, ultimately, rose to leadership positions of the Khmer Rouge, that is the Communist Party of Cambodia. The party, which was always referred to by its members as ‘angka’ (the organization), was very secretive and it has rarely been clear who was responsible for what during the period of Khmer Rouge rule. Once the Americans had been expelled from Vietnam, Communist Parties won military victories against royalist and nationalist factions in both Cambodia and Laos and there was some fear that the same thing might happen in Thailand. Nuon Chea is believed to have had a key role in determining policies, although he has resolutely refused to accept allegations against him. The policies of collectivization and the dictatorship of the peasantry (since there was no industrialized or urbanized working class in mainland Southeast Asia) turned out to be disastrous. The exact numbers are not known but somewhere in excess of one million people died as a direct result of these policies, either through starvation, over-work or direct murder (execution by the state).
Nuon Chea avoided prosecution after the ending of the Khmer Rouge regime, which resulted from the invasion of the Vietnamese army. This was part of the various slightly confused attempts to achieve some kind of national reconciliation – which is seen by some in much more cynical terms. In any case, the long-standing prime minister Hun Sen has declined to take action against former Khmer Rouge leaders, preferring to live quiet lives in the countryside, mostly in the Thai border area. It was only recently that Kang Kek Ieu (‘Duch’), the head of the notorious S21 camp was arrested. The UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal has taken many years to come about, with many complaints about lack of political will and shady deals done in the past. However, factors just as important as these have been lack of technical capacity – after all, the Khmer Rouge killed just about all of the professionals in the country who were not able to escape overseas and that has left an enormous gap in Cambodian society. Perhaps the trial of Nuon Chea will help to bring another step to genuine national reconciliation.
