Dubbed the “first lady” of the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Thirith was accused of having helped to bring about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians in the 1970s. A Sorbonne-educated communist, she was married to Ieng Sary, who was “Brother Number Three” and minister of foreign affairs under the regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Her elder sister Khieu Ponnary was the first wife of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge’s brutal leader.
In November 2007, by then in their eighties, Thirith and Sary were arrested at their sumptuous villa in Phnom Penh, for their role in the country’s 1970s genocide. They were indicted for crimes against humanity by the UN-sponsored Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).
About 1.7 million people died in four years from starvation, overwork, restrictions on the supply of medicines and executions as the Khmer Rouge purged Cambodia of what it saw as subversive elements. Women, children and the elderly were driven to work in appalling conditions and money was abolished. Religion and education were banned.
As Cambodia’s social welfare minister and “first lady” Thirith was accused by prosecutors of involvement in the “planning, direction, co-ordination and ordering of widespread purges”. She claimed the charges were “100 per cent false”. Her husband Sary (obituary, March 15 2013) — known as the smooth-talking “smiling face” of the secretive regime — blamed Pol Pot (obituary, April 17, 1998). “Do I have remorse?’’ he said. “No.’’
Case 002 at the tribunal, which involved Sary, Thirith and two other elderly former leaders of the Khmer Rouge, finally convened in 2011. It was described by Andrew Cayley, the international co-prosecutor, as “probably the largest and most complicated prosecution since Nuremberg”. In November of that year Thirith was judged unfit to stand trial because she had been diagnosed with dementia. In September 2012 the tribunal was forced to free her after she was declared mentally unfit.
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Ieng Thirith was born Khieu Thirith into a wealthy Cambodian family. Her father was a judge who deserted the family in 1946. Thirith and her elder sister Ponnary attended the Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh. The sisters travelled to Paris to study in 1950. Thirith became the first Cambodian woman to earn a degree in English literature.
She married her fellow student Ieng Sary in Paris on Bastille Day in 1951, soon after he had joined the French Communist Party. After Ponnary returned to Cambodia, Thirith, as a member of the French Communist Party, continued her struggle against French colonialism in Paris. Over the next five years she bore Ing Sary three children. Their son Ieng Vuth is the deputy governor of Pailin province.
Cambodia gained its independence from France in 1953, and the couple returned home in 1956. Soon afterwards Khieu Ponnary married Saloth SAR — later known by his revolutionary name of Pol Pot. She had met Saloth SAR in Paris and knew that he was now a high-ranking member of the small, concealed Cambodian Communist movement.
Over the next few years, Ieng Sary and Pol Pot taught in private schools and engaged in underground work while the sisters taught at the Lycée Sisowath. Thirith also opened a private English-language school in Phnom Penh. In 1963, fearing arrest by King Sihanouk’s police, Saloth SAR and Ieng Sary took shelter in a communist base on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. Using the revolutionary name of Phea, Thirith joined them in the jungle in 1964.
She returned to Cambodia with Sary in May 1975, soon after the Khmer Rouge victory. She was named minister of social action, while Sary became minister of foreign affairs. Thirith’s position involved supervising four hospitals in Phnom Penh and insuring the national distribution of medicines. The Documentation Centre of Cambodia — that later gathered evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities — revealed how during a tour of Cambodia’s northwest she reported that health conditions were terrible but blamed foreign agents rather than the government. Pol Pot swiftly ordered a purge of Khmer Rouge cadres in the region.
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In 1979 a Vietnamese invasion forced the Khmer Rouge leaders and thousands of their supporters into exile on the Thai-Cambodian border, where the Khmer Rouge continued its fight against the new pro-Vietnamese regime in Phnom Penh. Thirith held some nominal official positions in the border camps controlled by the Khmer Rouge.
By 1996 Ieng Sary had defected to the Phnom Penh government. As he had been promised, he received a royal pardon. The Khmer Rouge movement collapsed soon afterwards — Thirith’s sister died in 2003 having been declared insane in the 1970s.
From then on, Thirith and Sary were reclusive. Their secluded villa in Phnom Penh was only a short walk from a Buddhist temple whose priests had been exterminated during the revolution.
Ieng Thirith, Khmer Rouge minister, was born on March 10, 1932. She died on August 22, 2015, aged 83