PHNOM PENH, September 3, 2008 (AFP) - A transgender survivor of the Khmer Rouge submitted a complaint to the UN-backed war crimes court Wednesday seeking to draw attention to sexual violence under the regime.

Sou Southevy, a 68-year-old born a man who considers herself a woman, wept as she recounted being gang-raped and imprisoned for 'moral crimes' under the Khmer Rouge.

'I was forced to get a haircut and wear men's clothes and if I didn't follow their order I would've been killed,' Sou Southevy said during a press conference in the capital on Wednesday.

'I knew a lot of transgenders who died under the Khmer Rouge regime,' the survivor added.

Sou Southevy said she hoped the complaint would lead to further charges against senior leaders indicted by the war crimes court, and highlight the plight of the transgender community in Cambodia and around the world.

It is the first complaint to be made concerning sexual violence under the Khmer Rouge.

A recent anti-human trafficking law in Cambodia has forced numerous female and transgender sex workers into rehabilitation centres, where rights groups claim they face rape at the hands of police.

'It is shocking to me to see that after more than 30 years we are again sending sex workers to the prisons, starving them and calling it rehabilitation or re-education,' Sou Southevy said.

Five former regime leaders have so far been detained by the tribunal, which was convened in 2006 after nearly a decade of haggling between the United Nations and the Cambodian government.

Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed, as the communist Khmer Rouge dismantled modern Cambodian society in a bid to forge an agrarian utopia during their 1975-79 rule.

Public trials are expected to begin later this year, but delays in the process have raised fears that the elderly defendants could die before going to court.