UN reputation on line if impasse on criminal court not overcome

WorldView: With a budget of $56.3 million (€42

WorldView: With a budget of $56.3 million (€42.9 million) and an expected life-span of three years, the UN-sponsored criminal court, known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), is mired in procedural wrangling, writes Peadar King.

Established in 2004, the judges were sworn in on July 3rd last year, but for French co-investigating judge Marcel Lemonde, the next plenary session in April of this year will be a defining moment.

By then, should all outstanding procedural details remain deadlocked and the international judges walk away, the trial will collapse and the reputation of the United Nations will again be severely dented. The Slobodan Milosevic trial ended abruptly with his death, 50 hours of testimony away from its completion.

Other despots, like Burmese leader General Than Shwe, who are currently imposing genocidal regimes on their people, will no doubt sleep a little easier should the UN-mandated court fail to deliver justice.

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The same cannot be said for the victims of nearly four years of genocide in Cambodia who have longed for their day in court. For these victims, there is a crying need to expose the shocking nightmare that was Democratic Kampuchea.

On April 17th, 1975, Pol Pot (Brother No 1) and about a dozen leaders of the Khmer Rouge (KR) took power in Cambodia, beginning a radical experiment in social engineering analogous with that undertaken by Mao Zedong in China in the Great Leap Forward.

The KR was intent on transforming Cambodia - renamed Kampuchea - into a revolutionary utopian society. This was to be a nationalist, communist idyll uncorrupted by urbanisation, learning, science or religion. Blinded by ideology, this small elite of ruthless cadres imposed a highly orchestrated genocidal regime on the unsuspecting people.

Almost one-third of its eight million population died as a result of its actions. Over one million were horrifically killed and over another million died from starvation. An estimated 2.2 million people died or were killed during this period. To date, about 20,000 mass graves have been uncovered.

Cambodia gained its independence from France in 1953, but the Cambodia that developed became little more than a plaything in a regional power struggle that involved China, the Soviet Union, the United States and Vietnam. Over the border, the Vietnam War was raging.

The Vietcong Tet offensive against US bases in South Vietnam that left 4,000 US service personnel dead in 1968 was a defining moment.

Vietcong forces were taking refuge in Cambodia and in March of the following year, US president Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger covertly and illegally ordered - without sanction from the US congress - B-52 bombers to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia, sparking a merciless five-year civil war in which half a million people were killed. From the chaos of this civil war, the KR swept to power. Despite its burgeoning reputation for cruelty, by the time it reached Phnom Penh in 1975, war-weary Cambodians were ready to believe anything in the hope that they could get some respite from conflict. Unhappily, the worst was yet to come. Another bloodbath was about to be unleashed.

China gave unquestioning backing to the Khmer Rouge. Despite accounts of systematic killing and torture from the few who managed to flee Cambodia, as a result of China's veto on the Security Council - with the exception of Irish-born Chaim Herzog, then Israeli representative to the UN - no international voice was raised against the actions of Pol Pot and his cadres. Stung and hamstrung by the experience of Vietnam, US president Jimmy Carter was loath to get involved.

Eventually in December 1978, despite having earlier supported the Khmer Rouge, the Soviet Union backed a Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Without any popular support, the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed and the government fled to the jungle.

Over the next decade, key members of the Khmer Rouge defected and in 1998 Pol Pot died in a hut in the jungle close to the Thai border. Just before his demise, international pressure for an international tribunal to examine the events during the nightmare that was Kampuchea grew.

Initially, China opposed an international tribunal. The idea of publicly trying a revolutionary communist regime modelled on its own was for China just too awful to comprehend and was resisted.

There were also deep suspicions that Hun Sen, the current prime minister and former mid-ranking member of the Khmer Rouge, did not want this trial but had to be seen to support it. Many believe that he is deliberately obstructing the court in the hope that the trial will collapse or that the elderly defendants will have died before they come to trial. Ta Mok, (Brother No 4) for example, died last July. However, a number are still alive.

Within certain sections of Cambodian society there is deep resentment that former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger is not facing trial for the illegal bombing of Cambodia. As has become the norm, only those on the losing side are held accountable for their actions.

Meanwhile the reputation of the United Nations to deliver justice to victims of genocide in what was once the autocratic and bloodied Democratic Kampuchea is on the line.

Peadar King is executive producer of the six-part documentary series What in the World? The first of these will be shown on RTÉ One next Thursday at 10.45pm.