Nuon Chea

នួន ជា
Democratic Kampuchea state institutions Marxism–Leninism Cambodia Cambodia 1926–2019 ○ Died in custody serving life sentence

Deputy Secretary of the CPK, 'Brother Number Two'

Convicted of genocide against the Cham and Vietnamese in November 2018, he died on 4 August 2019 while serving his sentence and his appeal was pending; the Supreme Court Chamber found no legal grounds to annul the judgment and let the trial findings stand.

Cambodian revolutionary and chief ideologist of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge), serving as its Deputy Secretary. Known as 'Brother Number Two' to Pol Pot, he chaired the People's Representative Assembly and briefly served as acting Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea. Convicted of crimes against humanity in 2014, he was given a life sentence on 16 November 2018 for genocide against the Vietnamese and Cham and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

Also known as: Lao Kim Lorn · Long Bunruot · Brother Number Two

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Related historical events

Legal Aftermath of His Death: An Unfinalized Genocide Conviction

Nuon Chea was sentenced to life imprisonment on 16 November 2018 in Case 002/02 for genocide against the Cham and Vietnamese, among other crimes, but that judgment was not final when he died. According to the ECCC case record, the Supreme Court Chamber terminated the proceedings against him on 13 August 2019 following his death. Because he died while his appeal was pending, the Case 002/02 convictions are not final.

Immediately after his death his defence team requested that the conviction be vacated. The Supreme Court Chamber found no legal reason to do so and affirmed that the complete record of the Trial Chamber findings would continue to stand. The court can therefore be understood to have legally recognised genocide perpetrated against two minority groups, the Cham and the Vietnamese. Yet as a result of his death, Khieu Samphan's conviction became the only genocide charge adjudicated all the way to the appeal stage.

This mattered because Nuon Chea was the only accused convicted of genocide against the Cham. Had the Supreme Court Chamber not let the judgment stand, the court's only formal legal recognition of that crime could have been removed. Commentators in 2019 noted that the status of the conviction was legally unclear and that his death had major implications for genocide recognition in Cambodia.

In Cambodia, genocide recognition is not limited to judicial decisions and is shaped by historical, political, social and cultural factors. Locally, genocide is often framed as something that happened to the entire population rather than to specific minority groups, and research suggests members of the Cham community rarely drew distinctions between their experience and that of the broader population.