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The Khmer Rouge Tribunal: A Politically Compromised Search for Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2013

Kheang Un
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Extract

In 1993, Cambodian history turned a very significant corner with the promulgation of a new liberal constitution aimed at moving the country forward from its turbulent past. Many challenges remained, however; one of which was how to deal with the most horrific crimes of the “despicable Pol Pot” regime (1975–79)—as Cambodians called it—during which the radical pursuit of utopian revolutionary ideas cost roughly two million Cambodians their lives. Searching for mechanisms to hold perpetrators accountable for their crimes is seldom simple, as this essay, an assessment of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal twenty years on from the founding of the new Cambodian state and thirty-four years after the fall of the Pol Pot regime, attests. The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, whose formal name is the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), was established in 2006, providing the first hope that Khmer Rouge leaders would finally be brought to justice and held to account for their hideous crimes.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 72 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 783 - 792
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2013 

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References

1 Peter Maguire writes in the New York Times that “neither the ECCC nor the UN has earned the right to act with anything but humility, given their performances to date.” See Peter Maguire, “Cambodia and the Pitfalls of Political Justice,” New York Times, June 10, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/opinion/21iht-edmaguire21.html (accessed September 15, 2011).

2 Duncan McCargo asserts that “the ECCC is currently failing, and it is time the UN seriously considered withdrawing its support for this deeply flawed tribunal,” as it offers a platform for Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) to divert attention from their “failings and abuses.” See McCargo, Duncan, “Politics by Other Means? The Virtual Trials of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal,” International Affairs 87, no. 1 (2011): 627CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 Nuon Chea was the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologue and the second most powerful leader after Pol Pot, Khieu Samphan was the head of state of Democratic Kampuchea, Ieng Sary was the foreign minister, and Ieng Thirith was the minister of social affairs.

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10 Heder, “A Review of the Negotiations,” op. cit. n.3.

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13 Pham, Phuong, Vinck, Patrick, Balthazard, Mychelle, and Hean, Sokhom, After the First Trial: A Population-Based Survey on Knowledge and Perception of Justice and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley, June 2011), 26Google Scholar.

14 Interview with author, Phnom Penh, January 2011.

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20 Court officials, interview with author, Phnom Penh, December 2010 and June 2013.

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23 FUNCINPEC stands for Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indépendant, Neutre, Pacifique, et Coopératif, the former resistance movement that formed a coalition with the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s to fight against the then Vietnamese-backed government in Phnom Penh.

24 Phuong Pham et al., So We Will Never Forget, op. cit. n.11.

25 Phuong Pham et al., After the First Trial, 31, op. cit. n. 13.

26 Phuong Pham et al., After the First Trial, 31, op. cit. n. 13.

27 Documentation Center of Cambodia, http://www.dccam.org/. See also Phuong Pham et al., After the First Trial, 13–14, op. cit. n. 13.

28 Phuong Pham et al., After the First Trial, 14, op. cit. n. 13.