 Still no justice for victims of Cambodia's genocide
UNITED NATIONS — Nearly two million people murdered during the Khmer Rouge regime's orgy of violence in the 1970's still have not seen justice. Now more than a quarter century after the horrific and genocidal Killing Fields crimes of Pol Pot's communists against his own Cambodian countrymen, not even a modicum of justice has been served. And while the leader Pol Pot himself has died, so many of those who made his Beijing-backed regime work between 1975 and 1979 are still not only free but in the current Cambodian government. A United Nations plan which would have allowed a long awaited criminal tribunal for Cambodia to judge for history before the perpretretors are gone has been spurned by the Cambodian government. A similar UN Tribunal dealing with former Yugoslavia are currently prosecuting Balkan war crimes, most notably the case of Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Yet the UN system has faced a rocky reception from the rulers in Phnom Penh--perhaps it's that the ruler Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge himself who later defected to the Vietnamese, knows that too many people may talk too much once formal proceedings get moving. After five years of tortuous negotiations to set the legal ground rules for a fair and impartial tribunal, the UN effort appears stillborn. UN Legal Counsel Hans Corell told correspondents that it's essential that the UN maintain control over any trials, otherwise "It would leave the field open to the government in Cambodia to make whatever changes they see fit in the future." Essentially the chance to rewrite the bloody chapter? Given the sanguinary nature of the regime, and the magnitude of its crimes, large numbers of Khmer Rouge cadres were active participants in carrying out Pol Pot's orders. Ironically even many of the former Khmer Rouge ringleaders do not deny the massacres per se but will then rationalize that the actions were prompted by "Vietnamese agents." The Beijing-backed Pol Pot regime was itself ousted by the Vietnamese leading to a decade long occupation by Hanoi and a round of political musical chairs for many of the Khmer Rouge. While many Cambodians are willing to let the ghosts of their murdered relatives rest; others know that a cleansing process in which the guilty will be judged must transpire. This is not victors' justice as the Cambodian people themselves will be doing the judging and this long-suffering Southeast Asian nation will psychologically profit from cleansing itself of the Khmer Rouge communists genocidal guilt. Though the UN has now pulled out of the process since the Hun Sen rulers are being chacteristically aribitrary, there are other ways for the matter to move forward. The USA, France, and Japan are pressuring the UN to keep engaged in what would become a long process but one which needs international oversight lest the justice served on some former Khmer Rouge by many other former Khmer Rouge becomes an excuse for settling scores. Naturally Cambodia could make the case that, as a sovereign state, they have a perfect legal right to try and punish the guilty on Cambodian soil. This would appear more than reasonable. Yet the magnitude and the nature of the crimes against humanity go well beyond the frontiers of Cambodia, presenting a genuine case for international oversight. While the judgement will be definitely skewed, probably more to hide the guilty in the current government than the crimes of the 1970's, the fact remains that a third country or group could equally sponsor the process. The regional Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) format would be good choice to bring international oversight yet within an Asian context. An ASEAN tribunal on Cambodian soil would be such an option. At issue is not "getting even" but rather bringing justice and in turn, national reconciliation. In other words, while the majority of criminals will probably never see justice, or have since died, the fact remains that the savage Khmer Rouge regime ruling what was then quainlty called Democartic Kampuchea and under the ideological benevolence of the People's Republic of China, deserves to be brought not only to justice but before history. Judging the Pol Pot era as anything less would be a cruel sham.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
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