Ex-Khme Rouge denied genocide

Jan 12, 8:11 AM (ET)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - A former Khmer Rouge leader denied in an interview published Friday that the regime whose extremist policies wiped out much of Cambodia's population in the 1970s committed mass murder.

Nuon Chea, 80, who was second only to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, is expected to go on trial before a joint Cambodia-United Nations tribunal later this year on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

"Why should we have killed our own people? I do not see a reason," the English-language Phnom Penh Post quoted him as saying. "We wanted a clean, illuminating and peaceful regime."
An estimated 1.7 million people died as a result of the 1975-79 communist regime. Some were executed, while others died of starvation, disease and overwork.

None of the leaders have been held accountable for the atrocities. Pol Pot died in 1998, but Nuon Chea and several other top deputies still live freely in Cambodia.

Nuon Chea also said any documents linking him to the regime's crimes "were manipulated," including photographs of human skulls.

"Those photographs with skulls now being presented do not mean a thing. Modern technology can do this," he told the Post, a biweekly published every other Friday.

The comments outraged Youk Chhang, a Khmer Rouge survivor and leading genocide researcher, who called Nuon Chea "disrespectful and arrogant."

"The Khmer Rouge did not regard us as humans. They took away our love, our family, soul, belief. We were not humans in their eyes. We were their enemies," Youk Chhang said.