A visit to the memorial at Choeung Ek, a mass grave in Phnom Penh, offers a glimpse into the magnitude of Pol Pot’s butchery. Thousands of skulls stacked atop each other on shelves that reach skyward — a pillar of death that gives scale to the depravity of the Khmer Rouge.
From 1975-79, the Khmer Rouge regime killed 1.7 million Cambodians, one of the worst mass murders the world has ever seen. Pol Pot died in 1998. But many others — the despot’s inner circle, his commanders, the overseers of the “Killing Fields” — also had blood on their hands.
Since 2006, a United Nations-backed tribunal made up of international and Cambodian judges and prosecutors has investigated the mass killings, with the aim of bringing to justice the architects of the Cambodian genocide. Now, after 11 years, after spending $300 million, what has been the tribunal’s yield so far? Three convictions, The New York Times reported. Two were top officials in the Khmer Rouge. The third oversaw a regime prison.
All three were sentenced to life in prison. Two other defendants died before their trials ended.
From its inception, the tribunal has been hamstrung by its hybrid makeup. It’s the product of a compromise between the U.N. and the Cambodian government, which sought a layer of sovereignty over the court’s affairs. The U.N. and the Cambodian government share the cost of the court’s budget.
Three other individuals also are being investigated by the tribunal, but charges against them are doubtful — the current prime minister, a former member of the Khmer Rouge, said he opposes any further indictments.
The court limited itself to pursuing only senior Khmer Rouge leaders and individuals deemed “most responsible” for the mass killings. The Times cites one Khmer Rouge official, Im Chaem, 74, whom the court declined to try, even though she was accused of overseeing the deaths of thousands of people in a labor camp. Today, she lives with her children and grandchildren, tending her garden.
Genocide is a crime horrific enough to warrant the world’s oversight of its prosecution and adjudication. It’s why the U.N. oversees the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and initiated tribunals for the mass killings associated with the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
“Crimes against humanity” isn’t just a catch phrase; it’s a special category of horror that commits the world to ensuring the people responsible for mass murder are brought to justice — legally, fairly and without the taint of political bias. In the case of the Cambodia tribunal, that didn’t happen.
Political bias poisoned the process.
Some apologists argue it’s enough that the tribunal’s work shed light on a dark chapter in Cambodia’s past, allowing its people to reconcile and move on. That is not, however, the purpose of tribunals that investigate and prosecute those accused of mass killings.
The aim always should be straightforward and unambiguous.
“Trials at best, convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent,” Peter Maguire, who has taught law and war theory at Columbia University, told the Times.
Anything less simply isn’t justice.
— Chicago Tribune
