‘Killing Fields’ Justice Can’t Wait

Twenty-five years after the Cambodian genocide, the country is inching closer to criminal trials of some leaders of the Khmer Rouge government that killed an estimated 1.7 million citizens through execution, overwork, starvation or denial of medical care. If Prime Minister Hun Sen’s regime does not quicken the pace, most of the tyrants of the “killing fields” could die of old age, free and at peace. Also, without trials both evidence and memory of a great slaughter could fade.

Last week, Cambodia’s National Assembly ratified an agreement with the United Nations for a tribunal by a mixture of Cambodian and international judges and prosecutors. The country’s Senate and its king, Norodom Sihanouk, are expected to agree, even though Sihanouk has announced his intention to abdicate.

Hun Sen was a Khmer Rouge soldier but turned against his colleagues when they marked him for death. He was a minor character compared with Pol Pot, who died in 1998, or former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary or Khieu Samphan, the former head of state. Both are alive, their whereabouts known.

The Documentation Center of Cambodia has compiled hundreds of thousands of pages detailing Khmer Rouge rule, including records of atrocities, and has taken testimony across the country that can be used at trial. The center’s director, Youk Chhang, says that it is not too late to hold killers accountable, and that trials are needed to build a foundation for the rule of law.

Two prominent Khmer Rouge leaders are in jail and probably would be among the first defendants. Ta Mok was Pol Pot’s top lieutenant. Kang Kek Ieu, known as Duch, ran the notorious Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, where 16,000 prisoners were killed. Today the prison, once a school, displays photos of many of those killed, chilling portraits of a genocide that fits a timeline between the Holocaust and Rwanda. Duch’s signature is at the end of one list of those brought into Tuol Sleng, with the notation “Kill them all.”

Khieu Samphan has recently written a book claiming he didn’t know what was going on when he ruled the country. Trials can prove him and his henchmen liars, and detail the four terrible years that Cambodians should know and remember.