Cambodia Letter: Just outside the town of Pailin, in northwestern Cambodia, two lopsided hills rise sharply from the plain. Between the two hills are a complex of caves known locally as "the killing caves".
The caves were the site of atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979. More than 10,000 people died here, crudely tortured before being thrown into the rocky caves from a hole above. Today, smashed skulls are piled high in a makeshift memorial inside the main cave.
Above your head, the clothes of the victims are hung like bunting, a pitiful reminder of the innocents who died here.
The killing caves are just one of thousands of sites all over Cambodia filled with the remains of the victims of the Khmer Rouge, as the Communist Party of Kampuchea came to be known.
On April 17th, 1975, the genocidal guerrilla movement swept into Phnom Penh, seizing power after five years of civil war. Founded 10 years earlier by a small group of Paris-educated Maoists led by Saloth Sar, later known as Pol Pot or "Brother Number One", their popularity had grown during the early 1970s as Cambodia reeled under a massive US bombing campaign aimed at North Vietnamese troops using neutral Cambodia to attack South Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians had died in the bombing, causing the stricken survivors to rally to the Khmer Rouge.
The US-backed Lon Nol regime was quickly dispatched and so began "Year Zero", a ruthless attempt to build a rural communist utopia through mass murder. Power was concentrated in the hands of the rural poor while teachers, doctors, lawyers, artists, students and other educated people were systematically killed through execution, torture or overwork. As many as three million of Cambodia's eight million people perished under the Khmer Rouge, who were finally overthrown by invading Vietnamese troops in 1979, following years of armed border incursions.
Every family in Cambodia, from the royal family on down to the lowliest peasant family, lost at least one member in the genocide, the effects of which remain in stark evidence today. Prostitution, drug abuse and violence are endemic and Cambodia lags far behind its neighbours in terms of education, healthcare and economic development.
Today, most of those responsible for unleashing the ruthless experiment remain free, most living comfortably in retirement around Pailin itself, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold.
But, for a few of the top leadership at least, their days of freedom may be numbered. An important milestone was reached this week with the opening of the so-called Office of Administration that will oversee the trial of those deemed most responsible for the Cambodian genocide.
The Office of Administration is responsible for establishing the joint UN/Cambodian court, helping to select potential judges, prosecutors and defenders as well as overseeing the evidence-gathering process.
The formal judicial process is expected to begin in the next few months with the first trials expected to begin by early next year.
Between six and 10 of the now elderly surviving top Khmer Rouge leadership are expected to go on trial with possible sentences ranging from five years to life imprisonment. There will be no death penalty. The death penalty is unconstitutional in Cambodia.
But for many Cambodians, the upcoming trials cannot deliver them the justice they seek.
For many, the trials have been fatally compromised before they begin.
The terms of the agreement establishing the court, negotiated in a spirit of some animosity by the Cambodian government and the UN, guarantees that the Cambodian judiciary has a built-in majority of three on the five-man panel of judges that will decide the verdicts.
In addition, four of the five judges must vote for a conviction or the defendant will be released.
Cambodia's judicial system is considered by many to be hopelessly corrupt and subjected to routine political interference. Given its track record, and its built-in majority, many Cambodians doubt the verdicts will be delivered independent of political interference.
Many fear that potential defendants who might embarrass the Hun Sen government, himself a former Khmer Rouge cadre, may be able to escape prosecution, or to cut a deal to secure a lighter sentence, in return for tempering their testimony.
In addition, the tiny number of potential defendants means that many of those who committed serious crimes, including mass murder, will not only go free but will also be guaranteed immunity from future prosecution.
But despite these shortcomings, most Cambodians are lending their support to the process because, they say, it's the only show in town.
They hope that by scrutinising the trial process they may be able to guarantee at least some measure of legitimacy, a legitimacy that is sorely needed if Cambodia is to turn the page on its darkest chapter.