A Khmer Rouge Sentence is Denounced as Too Lenient while the Cambodian Government Places Obstacles on Trials of More Senior Genocide Policymakers

In its first verdict, the U.N.-backed tribunal established in 2006 to try the leaders and decision makers of the Pol Pot regime was convicted of war crimes against humanity and to 35 years in prison for the murders of as many of 14,000 people. Kaing Guek Eav, 67, is best known as "Duch" in the Cambodian Genocide. In Duch's case, the prosecution had recommended 40 years and said following the verdict that they were considering an appeal. Time Magazine reported, "In the 500-seat public gallery, which was filled to capacity, the largest of any courtroom in the world, there was uncomprehending silence as Judge Nil Nonn, the Trial Chamber's president, read out the judgement and the arithmetic of the sentence's reductions.

Time Magazine reporter Douglas Gillison wrote "Pol Pot and the leaders of the communist insurgency that seized Phnom Penh in 1975 put Dutch in the service of their implacable paranoid belief that secret enemies were hiding everywhere. Duch, a former schoolteacher turned chief of Cambodia's secret police, known by the codename of S-21, into a killing machine, sacrificing men, women and children to his superior' foregone conclusions. Under torture, thousands were forced to invent fantastic confessions of treachery for the CIA, the KGB or Vietnamese agents; though interrogators knew these were false."

Peter Maguire, author of "Facing Death in Cambodia" said "His conviction was an easy knockout. Now that the legal mismatch is over, the long delayed main event - the trial of the aging Khmer Rouge political leaders - Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea and Ieng Thirith - can begin.

Sources:
Gillison, Douglas (July 26, 2010). A Khmer Rouge sentence is denounced as too lenient. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2006475,00.html

Maguire, Peter (July 28, 2010). Cambodia's Troubled Tribunal. International Herald Tribune (Op Ed Contributer). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/opinion/29iht-edmaguire.html

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Khmer Rouge Tribunal vs. Karmic Justice

Excerpt from a touching statement

When my mother — who saved me and four siblings from starvation under the Khmer Rouge in 1976 — passed away in October 2009 at the age of 73, I realized that for her justice delayed had become justice denied. (I’m embarrassed to admit it, but the words “justice delayed is justice denied” had never really sunk in until my mother’s passing.)

As an observant Buddhist, however, my mother probably had the last word. She always said that no matter what happened to the Khmer Rouge leadership in their current lifetime, Karmic justice would prevail in the next: They would be reborn as cockroaches.

Source: Sophal Ear (March 17, 2010).The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/opinion/18iht-edear.html?hp&ex=&ei=&partner

Please click here to see original article.

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Did the U.S. "Cause" the Cambodian Genocide?

An intriguing controversy has erupted on the H-Genocide listserv between scholars of the Cambodian Genocide. A posting by Jeannette Smyth has proposed a new interpretation of the Khmer Rouge developing the policy of the genocide of one to three million fellow Cambodians.

Smyth writes, "It was Cambodia that was bombed back into the stone age. Under this stress the genocide took place." A separate article by Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan in "The Walrus" similarly concludes, 'The failure of the American campaign in Cambodia lay not only in the civilian death toll during the unprecedented bombing, but also in its aftermath, when the Kmer Rouge regime rose up from the bomb craters, with tragic results.' "

For some readers, the subtext of the above is highly problematic, i.e., that the U.S. was also responsible for the subsequent genocide. Dr. Andrew Port, Associate Professor at the Dept. of History at Wayne State University commented "When taken to their logical conclusion, these comments would seem -- directly, in the case of Smyth, or indirectly (Owen and Kiernan) - to exculpate (at least partially) the Cambodian perpetrators themselves. The American bombing campaign was undoubtedly one important factor among many that helped 'set a stage', so to speak. And the behavior of the Western World more generally may have helped contribute to some of the brutal developments that later took place in the former colonies. It is extremely difficult to demonstrate causal connections. And besides, at what point do those who actually commit genocide have to take responsibility for their own actions?"

Source: Smyth, Jeanette (February 23, 2010). H-Genocide Listserve. Smyth/Port exchange: Newly analyzed evidence: Bombing holocaust of Cambodia; its proximate causation of the genocide.

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