And so it was on February 25 that local media reported former Khmer Rouge "Brother No 3" 82-year-old Ieng Sary's request that the court grant conjugal visits with his wife - and fellow court detainee - Khieu Thirith. In the history of international justice dating back to the Nuremberg Trials of the late 1940s, this must surely be the only time two suspects both charged with atrocity crimes and in custody have asked for a little tete-a-tete together. Remember, too, the elderly couples' autumn incarceration, and any potential jail-cell rendezvous, are all courtesy of the UN, the taxpayers of its contributing member states, and the millions of Cambodians victimized by the murderous regime.
In explanation for the plaintive plea, The Cambodia Daily, a Phnom Penh-based media NGO, reported Ieng Sary's lawyer Ang Udom as saying the octogenarian "misses his wife". "He wants to see her, she wants to see him ... why does the tribunal prevent them from seeing each other?" the paper quoted Ang Udom as saying.
To add irony to insult, Sary and Thirith, who was the Khmer Rouge's social affairs minister, both worked setting policy for the Khmer Rouge, a significant plank of which was to dismantle the traditional family structure. Husbands, wives and children were separated into separate gender-based work collectives. Marriages were routinely forced on individuals simply for reproduction to support a productive workforce.
~ from Cell swingers in Cambodia ~
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