Coming clean in Cambodia
UNITED NATIONS Ñ A quarter century ago the Khmer Rouge communists were ousted from power in Cambodia by other communists from neighboring Vietnam. The one positive result was that this genuinely genocidal regime symbolized by Pol PotÕs rule came to an end. The downside was that Cambodia was under foreign occupation for a decade. Now the lingering legacy remains that no Cambodian who served the Khmer Rouge, has seen justice for crimes, which led to a minimum of 1.7 million murdered countrymen.
So here we are at the UN a quarter century laterÑthe same halls, where once feverish diplomacy by the ousted Democratic Kampuchea regime lobbied in the corridors to gain support against the Vietnamese. I recall Prince Norodom Sihanouk (now King of Cambodia) in his gray tailored Mao-jacket hobnobbing with Third World delegates, playing the sympathy card against HanoiÕs neo-colonialism.
Sihanouk a farcically tragic figure, whose credentials encompass the French colonial period to the present, was a man who was variously patronized by Paris, Pyongyang, and Beijing. Today the indefatigable King Sihanouk reigns over this surrealistic but impoverished Southeast Asian state, the Kingdom of Cambodia.
VietnamÕs military invasion of Democratic Kampuchea had nothing to do with humanitarian altruism but was a clear strategic calculation that the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge were not only a threat to Vietnam but to the Vietnamese community inside Cambodia of which 40,000 were killed on ethnic grounds.
Later many leading Khmer Rouge such as the current Premier Hun Sen jumped ship from Pol Pot and threw in with the new masters from Hanoi.
But deeper reasons for the Cambodia invasion rest in East AsiaÕs geopolitical landscape being re-arranged by then President Jimmy CarterÕs diplomatic recognition of the PeopleÕs Republic of China announced in December but taking effect on 1 January 1979. In VietnamÕs view and that of its big brother in Moscow, this emerging Sino/American entente was intended to encircle Soviet interests. The Kremlin leadership in effect told Vietnam to do the dirty work, and then with some shreds of evidence, proclaim the humanitarian goal of eliminating the hated Khmer Rouge regime.
During early 1979, the hardball contest was in play; Communist China now under the helm of Deng Xiaoping, feeling empowered by the Carter political recognition, but insulted by losing its Khmer Rouge allies, vowed to Òteach Vietnam a lesson.Ó Early in February, Chinese forces attacked Vietnam, only to discover that Vietnam was going to teach the PeopleÕs Republic a humiliating lesson.
VietnamÕs occupation of Cambodia was regularly condemned by large majorities in an annual UN vote in which the USA and Western Europe joined with Communist Chinese and much of the Third World, to oppose HanoiÕs creating this Manchukuo on the Mekong. Even though the Pol Pot regime was out of power in Phnom Penh, they continued to hold the UN General Assembly seat of Democratic Kampuchea along with a coalition of anti-Vietnamese political factions.
I recall being in Paris during the settlement talks which led to the Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia, and subsequently the U.N. sponsored free elections in 1993. Tragically twenty-five years after the fall of Democratic Kampuchea, many of the key Khmer Rouge rulers remain free and living with near impunity, and none have been judged for their crimes against humanity. The former dictator Pol Pot has already died.
Calling the Khmer Rouge rule genocidal is an understatement. The neo-Maoist madness which inspired that regime was embarrassing even to its backers in Beijing. Still, the United Nations has persistently pressed for a formal legal process to bring Justice through an International Tribunal. When the process is convened inside Cambodia, both international and national judges will staff a Trial Court and Supreme Court.
But the living perpetrators, the political figures of Democratic Kampuchea, and those who have since reinvented their role since the dark 1975-79 Pol Pot era, must still face this delayed justice. The must also confront the ghosts of their victims with whom they have yet to make peace.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.  |
