Anorak

Anorak News | 39 years later Khmer Rouge leaders found guilty of genocide

39 years later Khmer Rouge leaders found guilty of genocide

by | 16th, November 2018

Pol Pot CAmbodia

 

Justice delayed is not justice denied. In Cambodia, former Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea, 92, and Khieu Samphan, 87, have been handed life sentences for their roles in the murder of – get this – up to 30% of Cambodian population; 2.8 million people. Nuon Chea, 92, was Pol Pot’s number 2. Samphan, 87, was head of state. Pol Pot – ‘Brother Number One’ – ran ‘Democratic Kampuchea’ from 1975 to 1979. He and his supporters turned Cambodia into a “land of blood and tears”, where the State organised murder, rape, forced marriage and torture in the pursuit of an agrarian paradise. 

Now two of the swine are in the dock. You see their ages and wonder. Should we bother to try them, these old men? Yes. Never give up. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), established in 2006 with both Cambodian and international judges, has cost $300m. It has convicted three people: 

In 2010 it convicted Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who was in charge of the infamous Tuol Sleng torture centre and prison in Phnom Penh. He is serving a life sentence.

Former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary was a co-defendant with Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea but died before judges delivered a verdict in the first of the two sub-trials in 2014. His wife Ieng Thirith, the regime’s social affairs minister and the fourth co-defendant, was ruled mentally unfit to stand trial and died in 2015.

Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphany enjoyed long and healthy lives. They looked blessed. But now see the butchers brought to their reckoning. That they lived long enough to face the music is our blessing. But why did it take so long to get them? And why not go for all the killers, not just the men and women at the top?

This was not the pair’s first trial. They are serving separate life sentences following earlier convictions for crimes against humanity. So many escaped justice. But these two got it twice. Does that strike anyone as lazy – and convenient?

The former UN secretary general’s special expert on assistance to the Khmer Rouge trials and former US ambassador at large for war crimes, David Scheffer, tells The Guardian that these latest verdicts are “comparable, in Cambodia, to the Nuremberg judgment after World War Two”. 

After the Second World War, we were given the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – but nothing to give it bite. The Declaration told people and nations to keep human rights “constantly in mind”. Or what? How did the the killers get away with it for so long?

In September 1979, the UN voted to retain Khmer Rouge representation in the General Assembly, a post the Khmer Rouge occupied until 1991…

The United States – whose intensive bombing of areas with communist bases during 1969-73 arguably did much to bring Pol Pot to power – pursued a ‘hands-off’ policy, turning a blind eye to China’s continuing support of the Khmer Rouge and the shady activities of the Thai military, which gave its protection to Khmer Rouge top-brass throughout the 1980s and 1990s

For anyone interested in what crimes against humanity means, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights by Kirsten Sellars is really good.

Photo: Images of the Ba Chúc massacre at a Vietnamese museum as the massacre was one of the events that prompted the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea



Posted: 16th, November 2018 | In: Key Posts, News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink