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'He Died Easier Than the People He Killed'

Aun Chhengpor

   SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA - Vicheika Kann and Reaksmey Hul in Phnom Penh, and
   Chenda Hong in Washington contributed to this report.

   In his most recent photos, Nuon Chea looks like somebody's grandfather,
   wearing big dark glasses that suggest a sensitivity to light possibly
   tied to other medical problems.

   Not that long ago, he'd gone from tottering as he walked to using a
   wheelchair. There were whispers of liver problems and kidney troubles
   and whatever else happens as a human body passes through its ninth
   decade.

   That longevity eluded some 1.7 million Cambodians who died between 1975
   to 1979, as the Khmer Rouge tried, and failed, to turn Cambodia into a
   self-sufficient agrarian utopia. Nuon Chea, known as Brother No. 2, is
   widely believed to have been the mastermind behind the development of a
   Maoist society without money, religion or intellectuals envisioned by
   the regime's founder, [1]Pol Pot, who died in 1998.

   Nuon Chea was appealing his Nov. 16, 2018, conviction for genocide when
   he died on Sunday in Khmer Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh. He
   had been in care since July 2. At age 93, he was serving a life
   sentence for a 2014 conviction for crimes against humanity.

   "He died easier than the people he killed," said Sun Sitha, 58, a
   resident of Siem Reap who lost her father and three siblings to the
   Khmer Rouge. "He separated people from their families, and hurt them.
   He deserved to die."

References

   1. https://projects.voanews.com/cambodia-election-2018/english/biography/pol-pot.html

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