ECCC receives large amounts of documentary evidence on treatment of Cham Muslims and Vietnamese: On Tuesday, 23 February 2016, documentary evidence was presented at the ECCC included a recording, played by senior assistant prosecutor Dale Lysak, from 1991 of the late CPP president and former Khmer Rouge district secretary Chea Sim in which Sim recounted mass killings of ethnic minorities. Sim stated, “At that time, the Cham people were considered one of those ethnicities living in Cambodia…. They were all killed, regardless [of] whether they were the Cham ethnicity or other ethnicities”
Research by Ben Kiernan in The Pol Pot Regime was presented by the prosecution, as well as witness accounts. One complaint read “One day, when I refused to eat pork, the chief of the village ordered me to kill a pig and threatened me that I would be killed if I did not.” Prosecutor Lysak read from Farina So’s An Oral Hisotry of Cham Muslim Women in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge Regime, which recounted that many mosques were profaned and turned into torture chambers and that religious leaders were tortured and killed while religious texts, including the Koran “were collected to be burned or used as toilet paper.” (The Cambodia Daily, The Phnom Penh Post)
UNSC issues statement on possible war crimes against UNMISS base in S. Sudan: The UN Security Council issued a statement on Friday 19 saying that any attack against a UN base may constitute a war crime in reference to reports that Sudan People’s Liberation Army soldiers entered the United Nations Mission in South Sudan in Malakal during the recent violence that resulted in at least 18 people killed and more than 90 wounded. Security Council President Rafael Dario Ramirez Carreno of Venezuela said that council members were “particularly alarmed by credible reports of armed men in SPLA uniforms entering the UNMISS camp and firing on civilians, and the looting and burning of tents.” He also said “The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms all attacks and provocations against civilians and…that attacks against civilians and United Nations premises may constitute war crimes and those involved could be potentially subject to sanctions…for actions that threaten the peace, security, or stability of South Sudan.” (Radio Tamazuj)
The post 24 February 2016 – NEWS ABOUT THE COURTS – ECCC receives documents on treatment of minorities, UNSC statement on UNMISS base attack and appeared first on ICL Media Review.