UNTAC Redux - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 245

compelling testimony that was being given inside. Over 18 months of evidence hearings,
the Khmer Rouge evacuation of Phnom Penh was recalled in dramatic detail. Witnesses
and civil parties spoke of the frenzy and panic that gripped the city as the war-swollen
population was set on a forced march out of the city, and then dispersed to work camps
across the country.
In December 2012, Denise Affonço, author of the harrowing memoir To The End of
Hell , gave a dramatic account of her ordeal under the Khmer Rouge. Despite having a
job at the French embassy, the half-French, half-Vietnamese Affonço remained in Phnom
Penh after April 17. Her husband, Seng, a devoted communist, was convinced the Kh-
mer Rouge had benign intentions and even celebrated the end of the war by giving young
soldiers cans of Chinese beer. Soon after the evacuation of the city, he was executed. Af-
fonço ended up in a remote part of Battambang, where she was put to work on what was
known as the “Widows' Dyke.” Taking the stand, she described DK as a desert: “We were
in a rice exporting country, or at least previously. We had no rice to eat. A country full of
fruit trees; for four years, I never saw a single orange. We no longer had any medicines.
We had no hygienic products, either; no candles, no electricity, no water. We lived like
people out of the caves.” 28
Later, victims registered as civil parties to the case confronted Nuon Chea and Khieu
Samphan with harrowing stories of loss and suffering. One was Chan Sopheap, who lost
13 brothers and sisters to overwork and starvation on DK work communes. “I have al-
ways wondered why the three years, eight months, and 20 days [of Khmer Rouge rule]
was so cruel,” she told the court. “Why did they do all of this atrocity? I have endured
tremendous suffering.” 29
In October 2013, the court heard closing statements in Case 002/01. Throughout the
entire trial, the defendants had maintained their innocence. Khieu Samphan watched on
impassively; Nuon Chea observed most of the proceedings from behind sunglasses, or by
video link from his cell. The two men offered their condolences to victims, but denied any
personal responsibility. The evacuation of Phnom Penh, they said, had been carried out to
spare people from US bombing attacks and minimize the difficulties faced in the city. On
October 31, 2013, the last day of the trial, the two old men appeared in court to make their
final statements. Reading from a prepared address, Nuon Chea called for his release and
deflected responsibility in a familiar direction. “Vietnam had agents infiltrated in party
ranks and the army in order to destroy [the] Revolution, kill Cambodian people, and an-
nexed [sic] Cambodian territory, which had been a long-term ambition of Vietnam,” he
said. 30 It was a virtual echo of the justifications Pol Pot gave in his interview with Nate
Thayer in 1997.
Ten days earlier, prosecutors had wrapped up their case, calling for the two defendants
to be sentenced to life in prison. “There are few graver threats to humanity than those