Brother Number 3 died

From left to right: Ieng Sary, Pol Pot, Nuon Chea and Son Sen (KR Defense Minister)-photo shared by facebook user.

According to the ECCC’s press release today: Ieng Sary, born on 24 October 1925, died in the Cambodian-Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh. He was Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs and a permanent member of the Communist Party of Kampuchea’s Standing Committee during the Democratic Kampuchea regime. He was arrested on 12 November 2007 and was on trial before the ECCC on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. He was 88 years old. He was mainly responsible for inviting 1,700 educated Cambodians living abroad to return home, after the KR took power in April 1975. One third of them perished in S-21.

The hybrid court of UN and Cambodian judges was created in 2007 after years long negotiation between government and UN. It has spent million of US dollars ($173.3 million to date) to trial the highest leaders of the regime: Nuon Chea (brother number 2), Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Khieu Samphan (former head of state) and Duch (former chief of S 21). Ieng Thirith, Sary’s wife, got insane and could not stand trial (sic!). It loses a lot of credibility due to corruption, slow proceeding, political interference, and it started 30 years after the crimes were committed.

20 March 2012 (Photo credit: Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia)

He died peacefully this morning, after he and his regime forced us to work like slaves, tortured and killed million of Cambodians during his reign 1975-78, including myself. He would have heard his verdict and served some sentences behind bar….I think, Cambodians will not mourn his death. His boss, Pol Pot (Salot Sar) died in the jungle in 1998 and was cremated by old tires, lonely and abandon. Son Sen and his family members (together 14 persons) were killed by Pol Pot’s ordered troop in 1996 after rumors that he might change side.

In the photo above, only Noun Chea is still alive and sitting in the trial. May be he will die soon, and what is gone with him/them: the truth that ordinary Cambodians would never have known, why they killed own people?

When he was in power, he and his clique abolished Buddhism and Buddhist monks. After his death, his ceremony is blessed by monks.

• Posted in: Information
• Tagged: Cambodia, Cambodia politics, Cambodian, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Khieu Samphan, Khmer Rouge, Nuon Chea, Phnom Penh, Pol Pot, Son Sen