Headshot of Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's right hand man from the Khmer Rouge, during his second public appearance at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh February 7, 2008. Nuon Chea blamed foreigners on Friday for Cambodia's current ills, thereby refusing to acknowledge the legacy of Pol Pot's murderous regime at the U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Fri Feb 8, 2008
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Khmer Rouge "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea blamed foreigners on Friday for Cambodia's current ills, thereby refusing to acknowledge the legacy of Pol Pot's murderous regime at the U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal.
"My fellow Cambodians, today Cambodia is enjoying peace, solidarity and national reconciliation and its development is improving gradually," the octogenarian former guerrilla chief, charged with crimes against humanity, said at his bail hearing.
"But difficulties remain due to the influence of foreign countries that are hindering Cambodia's growth," he said without elaborating.
His only other words were in praise of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a one-eyed ex-Khmer Rouge fighter who defected to Vietnam in the late 1970s before returning with the 1979 Vietnamese invasion that ousted Pol Pot's four-year reign of terror.
An estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died of torture, disease and starvation under the ultra-Maoist regime as Pol Pot's dream of creating an agrarian peasant utopia descended into the nightmare of the "Killing Fields".
The effects of the "Year Zero" revolution and the nearly two decades of civil war that followed are still being felt 30 years later, with Cambodia one of the poorest and most heavily mined countries in Asia.
The court is expected to rule on Nuon Chea's bail request in several days. He is highly unlikely to be freed.
Besides Nuon Chea, top cadres now in custody are former President Khieu Samphan, former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, and Duch, head of Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng, or "S-21" interrogation and torture centre.
Pol Pot died in 1998 in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng on the Thai border.
(Reporting by Ek Madra; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Michael Battye and Bill Tarrant)
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Khmer Rouge "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea blamed foreigners on Friday for Cambodia's current ills, thereby refusing to acknowledge the legacy of Pol Pot's murderous regime at the U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal.
"My fellow Cambodians, today Cambodia is enjoying peace, solidarity and national reconciliation and its development is improving gradually," the octogenarian former guerrilla chief, charged with crimes against humanity, said at his bail hearing.
"But difficulties remain due to the influence of foreign countries that are hindering Cambodia's growth," he said without elaborating.
His only other words were in praise of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a one-eyed ex-Khmer Rouge fighter who defected to Vietnam in the late 1970s before returning with the 1979 Vietnamese invasion that ousted Pol Pot's four-year reign of terror.
An estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died of torture, disease and starvation under the ultra-Maoist regime as Pol Pot's dream of creating an agrarian peasant utopia descended into the nightmare of the "Killing Fields".
The effects of the "Year Zero" revolution and the nearly two decades of civil war that followed are still being felt 30 years later, with Cambodia one of the poorest and most heavily mined countries in Asia.
The court is expected to rule on Nuon Chea's bail request in several days. He is highly unlikely to be freed.
Besides Nuon Chea, top cadres now in custody are former President Khieu Samphan, former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, and Duch, head of Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng, or "S-21" interrogation and torture centre.
Pol Pot died in 1998 in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng on the Thai border.
(Reporting by Ek Madra; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Michael Battye and Bill Tarrant)
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