A Change of Guard

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Wednesday 3 September 2014

Another view: Justice comes to Cambodians

Waterloo Region Record

By Editorial
An excerpt from a Chicago Tribune editorial:
Sokha Ten Meyer was 23, married to a Cambodian army officer and the mother of two children in 1975 when Phnom Penh, her country's capital, fell to the Khmer Rouge.
The city's entire population was forcibly evacuated. This was the first step in a genocide that would kill an estimated two million or more Cambodians in four years.
Ten Meyer and her family were banished to a series of labour camps, where she broke stones, planted rice and plowed fields. There was little to eat. Her two sons died of malnutrition within two days of each other.
There is no logical way to explain the horrors of the Khmer Rouge or its leader, Pol Pot, the despot ultimately responsible for the Cambodian genocide. There is, by contrast, an internationally recognized protocol for holding accountable those political figures who commit crimes against humanity.
For Cambodia, this system worked — finally, yet imperfectly: A United Nations-backed tribunal in Cambodia reached guilty verdicts in August in the first phase of a case against the two most senior surviving leaders of the Khmer regime. Nuon Chea, 88, and Khieu Samphan, 83, were sentenced to life in prison for their roles in Cambodia's evil experiment in social engineering — the emptying of all cities and towns to transform the entire country into a Maoist collective.
The Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 revolution was a deranged disaster. Millions were forced to march into the countryside, often at gunpoint, the court found. Many died of exhaustion, malnutrition and disease. Many were murdered. A second phase of the trial will focus on broader accusations of genocide, including mass executions.

These initial verdicts are a milestone for international justice. Though it has been 35 years since the Khmer Rouge's ouster, a court has ruled — on Cambodian soil — that the former government exterminated and victimized its own people. While the world still remembers Cambodia's "Killing Fields," the trial result gives official voice to condemnation of one of the 20th century's most brutal regimes.
Yet reaction to the case has been mixed. The results are less than definitive, and time is running out. Only four defendants went to trial, and of those one died and another became infirm. To speed the process, the case was divided into parts. The genocide charges eventually will be prosecuted (after an appeal of the first verdicts) — if the defendants live that long. The court faced other setbacks including financial strains. There was one previous verdict against a prison warden responsible for the murder and torture of as many as 14,000 people.

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