Put Khmer Rouge on Trial

Before the Serbian massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, before the Hutus slaughtered the Tutsis a decade ago, the Khmer Rouge turned on hundreds of thousands of other Cambodians and in their twisted ideology shot, knifed, clubbed and starved them to death. The United Nations has established war crimes tribunals to try those charged with crimes in the former Yugoslavia, including its onetime president, Slobodan Milosevic, and in Rwanda. Yet in Cambodia, leaders of the Khmer Rouge walk free nearly 30 years after the atrocities they unleashed. There is still time for the country’s leaders to face up to history and render at least partial justice.

Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge in killing as many as 2 million people during their 1975-79 rule. He escaped justice, stayed in the country and died peacefully in 1998. But among those still alive and needing to be brought to trial are the former foreign minister, Ieng Sary, and the former head of state, Khieu Samphan. Also deserving prosecution are two men in custody, onetime military leader Ta Mok and Kang Kek Ieu, the man known as Duch who was the jailer at Tuol Sleng, the former high school where at least 14,000 people were killed. Hun Sen, Cambodia’s current prime minister, continues to balk at trying his former Khmer Rouge comrades, whom he abandoned only when Pol Pot turned on him and marked him for death.

After a year of rule by a caretaker government, Cambodia formed a new governing coalition last week. This is an opportunity to show vigor by ordering trials. Unfortunately, Hun Sen, who showed his colors in 1997 by seizing power in a coup after losing an election, remains in charge.

The United Nations is busy these days, especially after being handed the Iraq mess. But the U.N. has done good work in Cambodia and still has many workers in the country. It should push Hun Sen to accept an internationally supervised trial for the former Khmer Rouge leaders.

The Documentation Center of Cambodia, founded nine years ago with U.S. support and now funded by international organizations, has assembled an impressive archive of the genocide -- orders for execution, gruesome photographs and other evidence.

Cambodia has proposed no substitute for trials, such as a reconciliation process like South Africa’s. Given the staggering death toll and the country’s inability to shed corrupt legislative and judicial processes, such a meager substitute would be inadequate. Cambodians understand what happened in their own villages but lack a comprehensive portrait of what occurred across the nation. Coming to grips with the past can enshrine the horrors for the knowledge of generations, as Germany has done with the Holocaust, and act as a preventive against recurrence.