Human Rights Watch today said that with the death of Pol Pot, the group of countries known as the Friends of Cambodia, meeting this weekend in Bangkok, should continue the effort to bring the remaining leaders of the Khmer Rouge before an international tribunal for crimes against humanity. "Pol Pot may have been the most important figure in the Khmer Rouge, but he was not the only one responsible for the massacres," said Sidney Jones, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "Many others who took a direct role in the killings from 1975 to 1979 are alive and well and working with the Hun Sen government."
These leaders include Ieng Sary, Pol Pot's deputy, who now controls a lucrative timber concession in western Cambodia, and Keo Pok, 68, who defected to Hun Sen's government in late March, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review, and who was responsible for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Cambodians in eastern Cambodia, including members of the Muslim Cham minority.
Mam Nay, who lives near Ieng Sary, was chief interrogator and torturer at Tuol Sleng, the infamous Khmer Rouge prison. Sam Mith, who defected last August and became a general in Hun Sen's army, commanded the Khmer Rouge troops who slaughtered thousands of Vietnamese women and children along the Cambodian-Vietnamese border in 1978, the Far Eastern Economic Review said.
Ta Mok, known as the "butcher," has not defected but is living in Cambodia and is also responsible for crimes against humanity during the 1975-79 period. The Friends of Cambodia, including members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Japan, Australia, the U.S., and the European Union, are due to meet in Bangkok on April 19 to discuss plans for the Cambodian elections now set for July 1998.
"This is a key opportunity to press for an end to impunity in Cambodia," said Jones. "The international community should use this meeting not only to press for accountability for the crimes commmited in the 1970s but also for the political killings committed by officials of Hun Sen's government that took place during the coup in July 1997 and that are still continuing."
