Genocide charge for Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan
Khieu Samphan is helped to the dock for a hearing Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Khieu Samphan, detained in November,denies repsonsibility
A UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia has charged Khieu Samphan, formerly the head of state for the Khmer Rouge, with genocide.
The move came after genocide charges were filed against two other Khmer Rouge leaders, Ieng Sary and Nuon Chea.
All the genocide charges relate to the men's treatment of Cambodia's Vietnamese and Muslim minorities.
All three men had already been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Those charged are already in pre-trial detention although the trial is not expected to begin before 2011.
Denial
Up to two million people are thought to have died under the Khmer Rouge's rule.
Khieu Samphan, 78, has never denied these deaths, but both he and his lawyers insist that, as head of state, he was never directly responsible.
One member of his defence team is the infamous French lawyer Jacques Verges, whose previous clients have included Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Venezuelan hijacker Carlos the Jackal.
Mr Verges, 83, has known Khieu Samphan since they were both involved in left-wing student activities in France in the 1950s.
Brutal Khmer Rouge regime
He says he has lived a life of poverty after the Khmer Rouge regime was toppled.
A court official confirmed that the allegations were the related to the treatment of two minority groups: Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese people.
The accusation of genocide carries enormous symbolic weight, says the BBC's Guy De Launey in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
Researchers believe that the Khmer Rouge killed hundreds of thousands of Chams because of their religious beliefs.
Final arguments were heard last month in the trial of Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, who has admitted being responsible for overseeing the deaths of 15,000 people.
Judges at the tribunal are expected to make a ruling on his verdict early next year.
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Dark memories of Cambodia's killing spree
Pol Pot leads peasants on march in 1979
In the end, the Khmer Rouge were quietly toppled
Exactly 30 years ago, a coalition of Cambodian and Vietnamese troops forced Pol Pot and his followers from power - after a four-year reign which left as many as two million people dead.
But, as the BBC's Guy De Launey reports, Victory Day is not universally celebrated in Cambodia.
Even in 1979 it was a strange kind of victory.
There was no hero's welcome for the conquering troops. But nor was there a nervous population, fearful about the intentions of the incoming army. Because Phnom Penh was almost completely deserted.
The Khmer Rouge had forced millions of city-dwellers to march to the countryside when it took power in April 1975. In the intervening years only a small number of party workers were allowed to live in the capital, and they had fled as the Vietnamese-backed forces approached.
Vann Nath was one of the few Phnom Penh residents to witness the final hours of Pol Pot's murderous government. As an inmate of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, however, his was not the most comfortable vantage point.
Vann Nath in front of his painting of Tuol Sleng prison
I still don't know why I was allowed to live
Vann Nath, standing in front of a picture he painted of Tuol Sleng prison
"When the Vietnamese arrived there was a group of us locked in one room in Tuol Sleng. I heard some gunshots, outside on the main street," he remembers.
Soon after, with no little disbelief, he walked free. "In all there were seven of us who survived Tuol Sleng. To this day I still don't know why I was allowed to live."
Vann Nath had beaten formidable odds. Around 15,000 prisoners had passed through Tuol Sleng, but only a handful survived. Many died during the prison's systematic torture process; the rest were bludgeoned to death in the so-called killing fields on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
Two million dead
Under the Khmer Rouge, tens of thousands shared a similar fate, executed as "enemies of the revolution", often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Others perished on the gruelling journey from the cities to rural villages, or starved to death while working as forced labourers on collective farms.
As many as two million Cambodians are thought to have died because of the policies of Pol Pot's government and the actions of Khmer Rouge members.
Human skulls at one of the Khmer Rouge's "killing fields"
Skulls litter the Khmer Rouge's "killing fields"
The current government says the end of that era is a cause for celebration. Prime Minister Hun Sen was among the Cambodian troops who joined Vietnamese forces to oust the Khmer Rouge.
In the run-up to the anniversary, the governing Cambodian People's Party has called 7 January a "historical day" and a "new birthday" for the country.
The CPP is planning to mark the 30th anniversary in grand style. To ensure maximum attendance at a rally in Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium, thousands of children from nearby schools will each receive cash for food and drink, as well as T-shirts and caps in CPP colours.
'Invasion'
The party political nature of the celebrations is an indication that not all Cambodians acknowledge 7 January as a day of liberation. Opposition leaders sometimes refer to it as a Vietnamese invasion.
Cambodian school children with Cambodian and Vietnamese flags in 1989
Vietnam has had a long influence on Cambodian affairs
Pen Sovann feels that more deeply than most. He was one of the founders of the anti-Khmer Rouge front, and became prime minister in 1981 before a spectacular fall from grace.
Disagreements with the government's Vietnamese sponsors earned him first the sack, then a 10-year spell in a Hanoi prison.
"It was liberation at first. They couldn't stand and watch their neighbour's house burn, so they provided the water to help put out the fire," he says now.
"But I wasn't happy that they were trying to exert their influence over Cambodia. They were getting stronger and stronger, and even now they have more influence than the current Cambodian leaders."
Others, however, are happy to embrace 7 January as a day of liberation from the Khmer Rouge, whatever they feel about the decade-long presence of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia and the on-going close relations between the two countries.
It can hardly compare to the years of madness which had seen Khmer turn against Khmer.
Memory
For many, more than anything else, the anniversary provides an opportunity to keep alive the memory of what happened in the Pol Pot era.
Pum Chantinie
They ask me, 'Why, why why?' and I tell them I don't know why they did this - to our family, to Cambodian people
Pum Chantinie is now the secretary general of the Cambodian Red Cross. Along with the surviving members of her family, she walked hundreds of kilometres from the countryside back to Phnom Penh in January 1979, pushing a hand-made cart - only to discover their old house wrecked and surrounded by barbed wire.
"Our family gathers and we tell stories about our lives during the Khmer Rouge regime to our young generation," she says. "They ask me, 'Why, why why?' and I tell them I don't know why they did this - to our family, to Cambodian people."
Most Cambodians are too young to remember the Pol Pot era, or even the years of civil war which followed. But the anniversary should be followed, within months, by another reminder of what happened. The first trial at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal may start as early as March.
In the dock, charged with crimes against humanity, will be Vann Nath's former jailer, the man best known as Comrade Duch. All the indications are that he is willing to reveal what he knows about how the Khmer Rouge leadership made the decisions which led to so many deaths.
That may not be a cause for celebration. But it may at least answer some of the questions that people like Pum Chantinie have struggled with for so many years.
