Fri May 18, 2012
Photo Credit Guillaume Suon Petit
Khmer Rouge chief of town in the the Rattanakiri Province, Cambodia
Justice for Cambodia?
By Guillaume Suon Petit, France – September 2006
Historic news came out from Phnom Penh last July. It only took 27 years after the fall of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forces on April 17, 1975 and seven years of intense negotiating for Cambodia to get the United Nations to create a judicial body to try the perpetrators of genocide in a court of law. The trial, which will be manned by 13 United Nations and 17 Cambodian nominees as judges should last three years.
Despite the enthusiasm generated by media like the editors of The New York Times who stated that this was “an extraordinary triumph for law and civilization,” the Cambodian people believe that surviving members of the Khmer Rouge will likely get off the hook.
Khmer Rouge’s leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 without any judgment. Ta Mok, otherwise known as “the butcher,” recently passed away and the former Khmer Rouge’s president, Khieu Samphan, fled the country the day after the trial was announced. Most of the other leaders from this corrupt and violent regime have either died or bribed the Cambodian government for their rendering in the 1990’s and they remain at large. Only Douch, the former director of the Tuol Sleng Center where 17,000 Cambodians died after being tortured, has been in a Phnom Penh prison since 1999.
How are the choices made on who will be pursued and who will be granted impunity? A Cambodian student survey showed that the Cambodian people want not only the Khmer Rouge criminals to be judged, but they also want justice exacted for those who collaborated with their regime.
The hunt is on for war criminals. Phnom Penh officials are nervous because no one really knows just how far the judges will dare to investigate. Many members of the current Cambodian administration were also Pol Pot’s followers like the current Prime Minister, Hun Sen, who was a former Khmer Rouge commandant and former Cambodian Prince, Norodom Sihanouk was also allied with Khmer Rouge.
Will these people be appropriately judged by the designated judges? And what about the Chinese government which provided the Khmer Rouge with weapons and military supplies? What about the French government, which recognized the Khmer Rouge as a political party before 1975 and remained deaf to the victims during its holocaust?
What penalties should fall on the United States whose government, under the direction of President Gerald Ford supported the Khmer Rouge and contributed $85 million dollars (according to Time magazine) after their April 1975 victory? Will governments be held accountable for what happened in Cambodia? I think not.
But the Cambodian people and the Khmer Diaspora need closure – even if it’s a symbolic one. A fair and just trial is much needed therapy for a country desperate to heal the deep wounds left over from a genocide perpetrated by their government. An amnesiac society cannot move on and it cannot spread peace.
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