Blog Will there ever be justice in Cambodia?
February 3rd, 2007Once more speculation arise whether the UN-sponsored tribunal agains former Khmer Rouge leaders actually will take place.
I just want to ask: How long should the Cambodian people wait?
Posted by: John Einar Sandvand, Asia Observer
It has been such a long process. Since Pol Pot died in 1998 and the last Khmer Rouge commanders withdrew their opposition to the government, the process towards a final judgment has been taking place.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia was set up last year - and the first trial proceedings have been planned to start later in 2007.
But still the international and Cambodian judges have not been able to agree on the internal proceedings of the court. And without an agreement, proceedings cannot move forward.
Are we once more witnessing the political play of the Cambodian government, in which the prime minister himself has a background in Khmer Rouge?
I do not know.
But my thoughts go to the Khmer people. An estimated 1,5-2 million people lost their lives during the Khmer Rouge years from 1975 to 1979. Should they not receive justice?
The Chinese blogger JenKayla visited Khmer Rouge’s former torture center S21 in Phnom Penh today. She writes in her blog:
“Cambodia knows no winter. Only sun, rain, heat, and extreme heat. I am at the Killing Fields 15 kilometers southeast of Phnom Penh. Several wooden signs around me mark the significance of the parched earth:
–Mass Grave: 450 Victims.
–Mass Grave: 166 Victims, headless.
–Mass Grave: 100 Women and Children, Naked.
This morning’s visit to S-21 Prison, the Auschwitz of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge Regime, was both shocking and sobering. I wept through galleries of victim’s photographs. Although each picture was shot in the same way, head and shoulders from the front in typical mug-shot fashion, each one told a different story of a unique individual. Angry eyes, vacant eyes, looks of hatred, resignation, defiance, fear, sadness. These prisoner’s photographs were their last physical record before their death. To all but a few, this is how they will be remembered. And the WAY that they died: I saw implements of torture that cause me to shutter. 12 of S-21’s 14,000 prisoners survived. The cruelty of mankind truly knows no bounds.”
The people of Cambodia deserves justice now.
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