Cell swingers in Cambodia

Southeast Asia
Mar 1, 2008

SEX IN DEPTH
Cell swingers in Cambodia
By William Sparrow

BANGKOK - Considering the glacial pace of legal wrangling, domestic
indifference and rampant allegations of corruption and mismanagement,
some might say it's about time some sex came up at the Khmer Rouge
tribunal now under way in the Kingdom of Cambodia.

The ultra-Maoist group's former supremo and "Brother No 1", Pol Pot,
died in 1998 in a hidden jungle redoubt along the Thai border. His
infamous military doyen Ta Mok, dubbed "The Butcher" by the Western
press, passed away suspiciously in a Phnom Penh military hospital in
2006. With the most atrocious and eye-catching suspects out of the
picture, and the rest of the leadership clique enjoying decades of
leisure and, in one case, even a royal pardon, the United Nations-
sponsored tribunal has been a stop-start, anticlimactic affair of
official rhetoric and obtuse legalese.

For journalists embedded in the turgid trial process it's been a long,
boring slog.

And so it was on February 25 that local media reported former Khmer
Rouge "Brother No 3" 82-year-old Ieng Sary's request that the court
grant conjugal visits with his wife - and fellow court detainee -
Khieu Thirith. In the history of international justice dating back to
the Nuremberg Trials of the late 1940s, this must surely be the only
time two suspects both charged with atrocity crimes and in custody
have asked for a little tete-a-tete together. Remember, too, the
elderly couples' autumn incarceration, and any potential jail-cell
rendezvous, are all courtesy of the UN, the taxpayers of its
contributing member states, and the millions of Cambodians victimized
by the murderous regime.

In explanation for the plaintive plea, The Cambodia Daily, a Phnom
Penh-based media NGO, reported Ieng Sary's lawyer Ang Udom as saying
the octogenarian "misses his wife". "He wants to see her, she wants to
see him ... why does the tribunal prevent them from seeing each
other?" the paper quoted Ang Udom as saying.

To add irony to insult, Sary and Thirith, who was the Khmer Rouge's
social affairs minister, both worked setting policy for the Khmer
Rouge, a significant plank of which was to dismantle the traditional
family structure. Husbands, wives and children were separated into
separate gender-based work collectives. Marriages were routinely
forced on individuals simply for reproduction to support a productive
workforce.

Kalyanee Mam wrote in The Endurance of the Cambodian Family Under the
Khmer Rouge Regime: An Oral History that "Marriages were usually
forced upon individuals for reproductive purposes only, since most
couples who were married were soon after separated from each other and
rarely met afterwards. After reproduction was achieved, it was not
important for couples to remain together, since their time and energy
were required on the work field."

Almost 30 years have passed since the end of the Khmer Rouge's
horrific rule from 1975-1979 during which as many one in five
Cambodians were killed. Many more were tortured or died of disease or
starvation in the forced labor camps of agriculture collectives in
which the entire population was enslaved.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, established by a
2001 law and convened in 2006, was initially scheduled to last three
years and cost $56.3 million, with the UN providing $43 million and
Cambodia's government $13.3 million. But money problems have plagued
the court, and Agence France Presse reported recently that the court
was seeking another $114 million from international donors to keep it
running until 2011. The majority of Cambodians live on less than $1
per day.

Former foreign minister Ieng Sary, and former social affairs minister
Thirith, 75, are in custody alongside Khieu Samphan, 76, the former
head of state, "Brother No 2" Nuon Chea and Duch, the warden of the
notorious torture center known as S-21, or Tuol Sleng. They are being
held separately in eight privately housed single-room cells in a
detention facility on the same property as the courtroom on the
outskirts of Phnom Penh. They all deny charges of war crimes or crimes
against humanity.

Sary is suspected of undertaking and facilitating murders as well as
planning and coordinating Khmer Rouge policies of forcible transfer,
forced labor and illegal killings. Thirith was allegedly one of the
planners who directed the widespread purges and the killings of
members within the Ministry of Social Affairs. Both have claimed they
are innocent.

The mere thought of a request for conjugal visits between Sary and
Thirith is a shocking insult to Cambodians. However, in another
universe it might be touching. The couple met during their university
days in Phnom Penh where they surely double-dated with fellow
classmates Pol Pot and his future wife Khieu Ponnary, Thirith's
sister. They were married in the summer of 1951 in Paris, where Sary
had a flat in the Latin Quarter and a coterie of radical student
friends, many of whom were ex-patriot Cambodian communists. According
to historian Ben Kiernan, Thirith was a "Shakespeare studies major".

Sary rose to power alongside his chum Pol Pot and was ultimately
deputy prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea, as the Khmer Rouge
named the country. After their 1979 ouster, and a Hanoi-backed
tribunal of that year which sentenced Sary to death in absentia, the
Khmer Rouge fought a guerrilla war against the government into the
1990s. Sary became the first senior Khmer Rouge leader to defect to
the government in 1996. At the behest of Prime Minister Hun Sen, King
Norodom Sihanouk issued a royal pardon to Sary later that year and
granted him semi-autonomous status in the gem and timber rich
municipality of Pailin, where his son is now governor. Sary and
Thirith have lived in an opulent Phnom Penh villa for many years.

Sary's amnesty was a stumbling block in the lengthy negotiations
between the Cambodian government and the UN and served to stall its
progress.

Even with recent progress, decades of delays have created apathy among
the Cambodian populace. As Khmer Rouge survivor and famous painter
Vann Nath told an Asia Times Online staffer in November 2007, "It has
taken too long for the trial. It has dragged on for years and now as
the delays of the trial keep going there will be more ways to defend
the suspects - and more delays."

Nath, who was one of only a handful of survivors of S-21, points out
that the leaders in custody certainly have better living conditions
than those who suffered at their hands. "They're secure, they have
mattresses, any food they want, special doctors," he said. "They have
better luck than most Cambodians."
If Sary's luck continues he might just get his conjugal visits. But
he's has been hospitalized three times with heart problems since his
arrest in December 2007, and it's doubtful the tender reunion of these
two war crimes suspects would be exceedingly risque (although
Americans may remember the Sienfeld episode in which character George
Costanza reckoned conjugal visits to be the best sex possible).

Or, perhaps, the scales of justice are tipping in mysterious ways. As
far-fetched a scenario as it may be, should Sary go out with a bang in
some Khmer Rouge tribunal jail cell it would certainly spark interest
in what has been an otherwise impotent process.
.