February 15, 2007
Khmer Rouge Tribunal at Risk
A UN-supported special tribunal for the aging leaders of the Khmer
Rouge may
fail after all, if the prime minister gets his way. His complaint is foreign
meddling.
It was meant to be the first international court for the crimes of
communism, a kind of
Pot's Khmer Rouge in
his ideological reign of terror between 1975 and 1979, and now—after
years of negotiation with Prime Minister Hun Sen's government—the victims
would have recourse to an international, UN-supported tribunal. Its judges
were sworn in seven months ago. But now the project looks set to fail.
Foreign judges and lawyers participating in the trials have said they will
advise the UN to quit funding it if no one can agree on a framework for them
by the end of April. The very fact that foreigners are participating—
mostly as defense counsel—has irritated Hun Sen. He's
backtracked on
commitments to fund and support the trial more than once over the years, and
now he says the UN-appointed legal team is a threat to
sovereignty.
Hun Sen was once a junior-level soldier in Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. He
defected to help the Vietnamese topple the Maoist group and install a new
Cambodian government, and in the meantime he's criticized many of Pol Pot's
former deputies. The problem, though, is that the past isn't really over:
Guerrilla factions of the Khmer Rouge were fighting late into the 1990s, and
Hun Sen's ruling party, the CPP, is seen as a haven for some ex-Khmer
leaders. Hun Sen played too small a role in the movement to fear
retribution, but a number of his aging supporters could be hauled before the
court.
The tribunal idea is popular in
Institute of Democracy in
support trials to settle the ghosts of the Pol Pot era. The prime minister
has said his country should "dig a hole and bury the past." But his
delay
tactics may not just be a function of his powerful friends. The Khmer Rouge
had support from
their tiny neighbor that
revisited.
Copyright 2007
Spiegel Online