Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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The victims of the Khmer Rouge regime spent more than 30 years hoping, waiting, and praying for their day in court.
Survivors from the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge rule from 1975-79 at long last were able to witness their first glimpse of justice in 2010 with the conviction of Kaing Guek Euv aka Duch, the director of the S21 secret prison. Duch, who reported directly to senior leaders of the regime, masterminded the confessions extracted by all manner of torture — electric shock, waterboarding and being covered with angry, poisonous centipedes and scorpions — en route to the prisoners’ inescapable fate of execution.
The prison site was preserved by the Heng Samrin government, and opened to the public in 1980 as the Tuol Sleng Genocidal Museum.
When the guilty verdict came in the first trial, the cavernous public gallery, packed with Cambodian survivors still grieving over lost relatives, erupted with applause, relief, and a flood of tears.
Sovachana Pou, Senior Research Fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace (CICP) blogged at the time, (all sic) “I personally witnessed the hybrid justice proceeding live, with more than 500 people, most of them are victims. It was a moving experience and historic event for all the victims [who had] to wait more than 30 years to finally having some sort of justice.”
Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime was ousted by Cambodian dissidents and Vietnamese regular troops in 1979. However, Cold War diplomacy led to the West’s complicity in supporting recognition of the exiled Khmer Rouge’s right to still represent the Cambodian people inside the UN General Assembly.
This Machiavellian diplomacy in support of the hated Khmer Rouge blocked UN recognition of the “Killing Fields” nightmare until 1997. Western ambassadors that I met in Bangkok in the 1980s and beyond predicted back then that a Cambodia tribunal would never take place.
After surmounting many hurdles, the Cambodian Tribunal, officially the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), finally came into being in 2006, some 30 years after the mass graves were unearthed and evidence was made available from the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The tribunal was based on a partnership between the Cambodia government and the UN.
Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Tribunal: Mission Accomplished?
I think these things offer more in terms of catharsis and validation than justice simply because they wait 20-30 years before they start.
Survivors from the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge rule from 1975-79 at long last were able to witness their first glimpse of justice in 2010 with the conviction of Kaing Guek Euv aka Duch, the director of the S21 secret prison. Duch, who reported directly to senior leaders of the regime, masterminded the confessions extracted by all manner of torture — electric shock, waterboarding and being covered with angry, poisonous centipedes and scorpions — en route to the prisoners’ inescapable fate of execution.
The prison site was preserved by the Heng Samrin government, and opened to the public in 1980 as the Tuol Sleng Genocidal Museum.
When the guilty verdict came in the first trial, the cavernous public gallery, packed with Cambodian survivors still grieving over lost relatives, erupted with applause, relief, and a flood of tears.
Sovachana Pou, Senior Research Fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace (CICP) blogged at the time, (all sic) “I personally witnessed the hybrid justice proceeding live, with more than 500 people, most of them are victims. It was a moving experience and historic event for all the victims [who had] to wait more than 30 years to finally having some sort of justice.”
Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime was ousted by Cambodian dissidents and Vietnamese regular troops in 1979. However, Cold War diplomacy led to the West’s complicity in supporting recognition of the exiled Khmer Rouge’s right to still represent the Cambodian people inside the UN General Assembly.
This Machiavellian diplomacy in support of the hated Khmer Rouge blocked UN recognition of the “Killing Fields” nightmare until 1997. Western ambassadors that I met in Bangkok in the 1980s and beyond predicted back then that a Cambodia tribunal would never take place.
After surmounting many hurdles, the Cambodian Tribunal, officially the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), finally came into being in 2006, some 30 years after the mass graves were unearthed and evidence was made available from the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The tribunal was based on a partnership between the Cambodia government and the UN.
Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Tribunal: Mission Accomplished?
I think these things offer more in terms of catharsis and validation than justice simply because they wait 20-30 years before they start.
