A transgendered female survivor of the Khmer Rouge will lodge a complaint to
the UN-backed war crimes court seeking the regime's former leaders stand trial
for sexual violence.
"This is the first complaint before the (Khmer Rouge court) concerning sexual
violence under the Khmer Rouge regime," said a statement on Friday by Silke
Stuzinsky, a lawyer representing civil complaints by victims of the regime.
"To date, a widespread silence and/or confusion has covered up crimes of sexual
violence," the statement said.
The complaint, to be filed next week, will seek to hold senior leaders
responsible for numerous rapes the woman -- who had undergone a full sex change
from being a man -- suffered as well as her several imprisonments in
re-education camps and prisons.
"She was punished for having committed moral offences and for behaving as a
woman. She was forced to cut her long hair and to wear men's clothing (as was
the custom under the Khmer Rouge)," Stuzinsky's statement said.
"She was threatened with death if she refused to marry a woman, and the Khmer
Rouge ordered the performance of sexual intercourse as part of the marital
obligation," the statement added.
Five former regime leaders have been detained by the tribunal, which was
convened in 2006 after nearly a decade of haggling between the United Nations
and the Cambodian government.
Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed, as
the communist Khmer Rouge dismantled modern Cambodian society in a bid to forge
an agrarian utopia during their 1975-79 rule.
Public trials are expected to begin this year, but delays in the process have
raised fears that the elderly defendants could die before going to court.
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