The Last Surviving Khmer Rouge Leader Has Just Had His Genocide Conviction Upheld

He was an international face of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that reigned over Cambodia more than 40 years ago, and oversaw the deaths of millions in a genocide that wiped out some 25 percent of the country’s population. Now 91, Khieu Samphan has officially been declared guilty of the genocide he oversaw when the Khmer Rouge, helmed by Pol Pot, was in power. 

In a final verdict issued on Thursday by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a UN-backed national tribunal investigating the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, the appeal by former Cambodian head of state Khieu Samphan was dismissed, upholding a genocide conviction originally handed out in 2018. The decision was declared final.

Listening to the verdict in the Phnom Penh courtroom through headphones, a frail Khieu Samphan sat hunched over a desk in a wheelchair, sporting a head of thin white hair, wearing a white jacket and a face mask. The ruling was the court’s last, marking an end to years of legal proceedings attempting to bring justice to survivors of the Cambodian genocide.  

“He has been convicted historically, but today is made more meaningful as it's a legal proceeding to address this, a proceeding that is supported and participated in by not only the survivors, but by the international community,” Youk Chhang from the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which researches the abuses of that period, and a Khmer Rouge genocide survivor himself, told VICE World News. 

“The Khmer Rouge is not ancient history. It’s contemporary, it’s today, and it's going to be with us for the rest of history.”

The ruling is a rare one, and means that Cambodia is among the only countries worldwide to have convicted a former head of state for the crime of genocide at a national tribunal. 

“Cambodia is unique and the bravest in initiating this kind of prosecution,” Sim Sorya, a legal officer at the ECCC, told VICE World News. “We invited judges, prosecutors, and all this judicial support from the international community, which means a lot in terms of legal reform, in terms of legacy, in terms of reconciliation, and peace in Cambodia.”

“Other countries in the region and in the world may want to follow Cambodia, but I don't know if they could do it.”

An estimated 2 million people were killed under the Maoist group during its four-year rule between 1975 and 1979. Under leader Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge set out to transform Cambodia into a communist agrarian society, forcefully emptying urban centers and introducing radical genocidal social engineering policies as it emulated China’s Great Leap Forward. The result was mass starvation and the wide-scale murder of anyone deemed political opponents. 

Under the Khmer Rouge regime, cultural, ethnic, social, and religious identities were systematically erased. Ethnic minorities, including Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese groups, were targets of persecution. The Chams, a Muslim ethnic minority in Cambodia, were murdered and forced to consume pork, among other methods to erase their religious identity. Those that the regime believed to be members of the bourgeois-educated elite, even just those who wore glasses or spoke a foreign language, were killed arbitrarily. 

Amid the violence, Khieu Samphan, Cambodia’s nominal head of state, became the regime’s international face. In 2014, Samphan was convicted along with senior Khmer Rouge cadre Nuon Chea, known as “Brother No. 2” to Pol Pot’s “Brother No. 1,” for crimes against humanity. The pair was then sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity and severe breaches of the Geneva Convention genocide in 2018. 

Before their arrest in 2007, the pair had relocated to the northwestern province of Pailin, the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, living as neighbors in their quiet lives of retirement. Nuon Chea died in 2019 while serving his sentence, aged 93. 

In 2010, Kaing Guek Eav, the Khmer Rouge’s head of internal security also known as Duch, was convicted of crimes against humanity by the ECCC and sentenced to life imprisonment two years later. He was the head of the prison system and oversaw the notorious torture camp Tuol Sleng, where around 18,000 people were killed. He died at the age of 77 in 2020. 

Khieu Samphan looks likely to share the same fate. “No matter what you decide, I will die in prison,” he said in 2021, during a failed appeal attempt to overturn the ECCC ruling. 

The ECCC, which was formed in 1997 with both Cambodian and international judges, has been criticized for being cumbersome and costly, having spent more than $330 million over the course of its trials, but only convicting three people. But for Youk Chhang, the court offers an important chance for survivors to “bring about closure” amid enduring trauma from the Khmer Rouge regime. Part of the court’s work has been community outreach and trauma counseling for the millions of victims of the regime still alive in Cambodia today.

“Despite all the criticism about the amount that's been used, my argument would be, we lost 2 million people and another 5 million living around us are aging and even lacking access to healthcare and social services,” he said. “I think that is a reminder that we should not fail again to prevent such a crime.”

In his 2021 appeal against the ruling, Khieu Samphan claimed that he was being prosecuted on behalf of the entire Khmer Rouge regime. “The trial chamber has demonstrated its inability to adjudicate me impartially,” he said. “It is clear that through me, the chamber was, rather, targeting the Communist Party of Kampuchea.”

“Well, he's right,” said Youk Chhang. “Now he's alone. The rest have already gone into the grave site.”

“The tribunal’s intention was not to single him out for prosecution. It was intended to prosecute the entire standing committee of the Kampuchea Communist Party.”

While Thursday’s verdict simply reaffirms the fact he will spend the remainder of his life in prison, it offers much-needed closure for the survivors of the Khmer Rouge, said Youk Chhang, who experienced the brutality of the regime when he was just 13 years old. 

“When you look back, there is not a single day survivors forget to remember justice in the Khmer Rouge rule,” he said, hitting back at critics who say it took too long to convict Samphan. 

“Sixteen years might feel longer for those who did not suffer by the Khmer Rouge rule, but for those who suffered, it [did not feel like] 16 years, but 16 days.”

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Additional reporting by Alastair McCready.