Four
decades after Cambodian dictator Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime
orchestrated the deaths of at least 1.6 million of their own people, the
country is finally gaining some small new semblance of closure. A
United Nations-backed tribunal called the Extraordinary Chambers in the
Courts of Cambodia has officially ruled the atrocities a genocide.
Those
atrocities began in 1975, after Pol Pot and his communist forces took
over Cambodia, dubbed it “year zero,” and reverted the country to a
classless agrarian society. From there, the Khmer Rouge forces set their
sights on all perceived enemies of their new state: anti-communists,
intellectuals, Vietnamese, Chinese, Cham Muslims, Buddhists, and any and
all groups that might oppose their radical new vision.
Many of
these people were sent to prisons and forced labor camps while many more
were simply killed. All in all, somewhere between 1.7 and 2.5 million
people (as much as one-quarter of the country’s total population) were
killed between 1975 and 1979, when the Vietnamese invasion of the
country put an end to the Khmer Rouge’s rule and to the Cambodian
genocide.
Now, after years of debate between leaders, academics, writers, and the like, these atrocities are now officially a “genocide.”
The
UN Convention on Genocide maintains that “genocide” involves an “intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or
religious group,” and the tribunal was able to prove that this was the
case in Cambodia, particularly when it comes to the slaughter of the
Vietnamese and Cham Muslims.
Furthermore, the tribunal issued
guilty verdicts against two senior surviving members of the Khmer Rouge:
Nuon Chea (92), who was found guilty of genocide against both the Cham
and Vietnamese, and Khieu Samphan (87), who was found guilty of inhumane
crimes against the Vietnamese. Both men were sentenced to life
imprisonment.
The men oversaw such tortures as forced labor under
threat of death, suffocation by plastic bags, and the extraction of
toenails and fingernails. In other instances, Muslims were forced to eat
pork and ex-government workers were killed by electrocution with
telephone cables.
The
tribunal has had to organize hundreds of thousands of documents and
speak with hundreds of witnesses in order to build their case against
the Khmer Rouge. These efforts have cost more than $300 million and have
seen the arrest of five top Khmer Rouge leaders. Prime Minister Hun Sen
of Cambodia, consequently, would like the tribunal to cease its
efforts.
Whether the efforts continue or not, others have voiced
their opposition the prime minister’s wishes — even while recognizing
that the tribunal could never fully bring closure in the wake of such
horrors.
“We need to show the world that even if it takes a long
time, we can deliver justice,” said Ly Sok Kheang, the director of the
Anlong Veng Peace Center and a researcher in peace and reconciliation
efforts.
“It may be finished,” Iam Yen, a woman who gave testimony
to the tribunal of her years imprisoned in a child camp said. “But I
won’t ever have peace.”
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