Thai-Khmer Joint Declaration_GBC (General Border Committee)
Khmer Rouge_Human Rights_UN_KHM & ENG
“UN Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights in Cambodia
Mr. Evan Luard, British Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, proposed to the UN Human Rights Commission on March 3, 1978, that a special body should be set up to inquire into alleged violations of human rights in Cambodia. After the Soviet delegate had opposed the proposal, describing the allegations without basis and politically inspired, the commission decided on March 8 to ask the Cambodian Government to provide information on reports of serious abuses.
A statement issued by the Cambodian Foreign Ministry on April 22 condemned the British
Government’s initiative as ‘odious interference’, and described the British as ‘very savage and very barbarous’.
The UN Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities adopted on Sep. 15 a resolution calling for an analysis of 1,000 pages of material on violation of human rights in Cambodia submitted by the British, US, Canadian and Norwegian Governments, by Amnesty International and by the International Commission of Jurists; the resolution was approved by 15 votes to three – Bulgaria, Romania and the Soviet Union voting against and Syria and Turkey abstaining. In a telegram to the UN Mr. Ieng Sary denounced the resolution as ‘impudent interference’ in Cambodia’s internal affairs, and declared that the Cambodian people and Government would ‘make mincemeat of any criminal manoeuvres of the imperialists and their partisans’. The analysis of the evidence, which was submitted to the Human Rights Commission on Feb. 15, 1979, quoted estimates that a least 1,000,000 people had died in Cambodia from all causes since 1975.
Mr. Ieng Sary invited Dr. Kurt Waldheim, the UN Secretary-General, on Oct. 13, 1978, to visit Cambodia and verify the human rights situation for himself. Although the UN sources said in December that Dr. Waldheim would visit Cambodia at the beginning of 1979, the development of the war between Cambodia and Vietnam obliged him to cancel his visit.”
Source: Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 4 May 1979, page 29583.
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