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| A portrait of Ieng Thirith, a former member of the Khmer Rouge, sits in
front of her coffin yesterday during funeral proceedings. Vireak Mai |
Mourners gathered yesterday in Pailin to pay their final
respects to former Khmer Rouge tribunal defendant Ieng Thirith, an
accused genocidaire still regarded as a hero by many in this former
Khmer Rouge stronghold on the Thai border.
Thirith, who died on Saturday after a long period of poor health, is scheduled to be cremated today.
And despite the fact that religion was effectively banned under the
Khmer Rouge regime – for which Thirith served as minister of social
affairs – the 83-year-old enjoyed the trappings of a traditional
Buddhist funeral, held at a Pailin villa.
Huon Vany, Thirith’s 60-year-old daughter, said yesterday that her
mother – who had advanced dementia – had been bedridden for more than a
year.
“My feeling is the same as the feelings of many other Cambodian people when their parent passes away,” she said.
“I regret the loss. We are children who have taken care of her from
the bottom of our heart as she stayed in bed for over a year. Now she’s
gone, even though we worked hard to keep her alive.”
Despite Thirith’s having been by the tribunal with crimes against
humanity and genocide during her time as an official for a regime under
which some 1.6 million people died, Vany insisted yesterday that her
mother had been a good person, and had raised her children to lead
virtuous, peaceful lives.
“She gave birth to me; she gave me good advice and an education to be a good person up until today,” said Vany.
A 55-year-old former Khmer Rouge cadre who attended yesterday’s
ceremony, and who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he knew Thirith
from 1976 until the Khmer Rouge’s overthrow in 1979, and thought of her
as a second mother.
People
pray around a portrait of Ieng Thirith yesterday in Pailin province
after the former Khmer Rouge member passed away on Saturday. Vireak Mai
“I regret and am sad about her loss, because she exhausted herself for the nation and served the people.
Since I was young, I have never seen her commit crimes,” he said.
“She has never killed people, and she fed me like her own children.
Therefore, I came for her funeral today to pay my last respects to her.”
According to the Khmer Rouge tribunal’s indictment in Case 002,
Thirith was born the youngest child of a judge in Phnom Penh on March
10, 1932.
After graduating from the Lycee Sisowath – where she met her future
husband and co-defendant Ieng Sary – Thirith travelled to Paris, where
she earned a degree in Shakespeare studies from the Sorbonne.
After a stint teaching upon her return, she “entirely devot[ed]
herself to her revolutionary activities from 1965 onwards”, leaving her
children in the care of their grandparents for years.
Though she was not a member of the regime’s central or standing
committees, as the Khmer Rouge’s minister of social affairs – or social
action, as the position was also known – Thirith oversaw hospitals and
the production of medicine.
Thousands died of illness under the regime due to a lack of medical care.
The historian Ben Kiernan, in his book
The Pol Pot Regime,
described the experience of visiting a Vietnamese women’s delegation,
which Thirith took to a pharmaceutical production factory staffed and
overseen by mostly illiterate teenagers.
When a lengthy argument about technical expertise broke out, Thirith
interjected, saying the workers were using a Cambodian “formula”
developed during the struggle against foreign imperialists, namely the
French and Americans.
“It was not a happy visit,” the delegate recalled. “They hated us and thought we were inquisitive.”
During her time in the regime, Thirith toured the Northwest Zone,
where conditions were particularly bad – a situation she blamed on
“agents” infiltrating the regime, rather than the Khmer Rouge’s decision
to forcibly import some 800,000 people into the region.
Huon
Vany, the daughter of Ieng Thirith, attends her mother’s funeral
yesterday in Pailin with other family members after the former Khmer
Rouge member passed away on Saturday. Vireak Mai
Given her visit, Thirith was likely aware of the widespread
starvation there, John Ciociari and Anne Heindel wrote in their book
Hybrid Justice.
“She is also alleged to have either encouraged or failed to prevent
the arrest and execution of ministry staff,” the authors write.
