“The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has been informed by the legal guardian that the accused person Ieng Thirith passed away at approximately 10:30 a.m. on 22 August 2015 in Pailin, Cambodia”, the statement said.
Advertisement
Former top Khmer Rouge official Ieng Thirith has died, according to Cambodia’s U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal.
She was among just a handful of suspects who have been charged by the country’s UN-backed war crimes court.
Ieng Thirith had been suffering from dementia and had sought medical treatment in Thailand previous year after a series of minor strokes.
Though she did not remain on trial long enough to see a verdict issued, the court’s indictment notes that the minister was involved with senior policy decisions and actively participated in the regime’s largest purge, among other crimes.
Family ties helped her reach the upper echelons of power in a murderous totalitarian regime that tore children from parents and husbands from wives.
She was one of the few women in the leadership of the country’s communist movement and her sister, Khieu Ponnary, was married to Pol Pot – the head of the Khmer Rouge party.
The suspension of the case against Ieng Thirith was a bitter blow to many who survived the regime.
She was the widow of Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary – and herself a social affairs minister under the regime.
During that time at least 1.7 million people – about a quarter of the Cambodian population – are believed to have died from forced labor, starvation and execution, as the movement ruthlessly executed its radical social engineering policies aimed at creating a purely agrarian society.
Pol Pot’s sister-in-law, who was indicted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, has died aged 83 without victims seeing her face trial.
Advertisement
“Ieng Thirith was personally and directly involved in denying Cambodians even the most basic of health care”, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which researched the atrocities.
