The Washington Post

Tuesday, April 18, 2000

No Pass For the Khmer Rouge

By Brad Adams

(Brad Adams worked in Cambodia as a human rights lawyer from 1993-98 and is now writing a book on Cambodia with a grant from the Individual Project Fellowship Program of the Open Society Institute.)

Think of Cambodia, and the first image that comes to mind is death and misery. The term "killing fields" was coined to describe the slaughter of Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge during its reign from 1975 to 1979.

Now Cambodia has the opportunity to be known as a place where it is never too late for justice. With Pol Pot dead, the recent collapse of the Khmer Rouge and the relegation of Cambodia to the geopolitically irrelevant, bringing remaining Khmer Rouge leaders to justice should be straightforward.

Unfortunately, it is not. While in 1997 Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen asked the United Nations to create an ad hoc international tribunal similar to the ones in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, he now rejects this as an infringement on Cambodian "sovereignty." Having cut deals in the interim with Khmer Rouge political and military leaders--and under pressure from China, a longtime Khmer Rouge supporter--Hun Sen has instead suggested that Cambodians "dig a hole and bury the past."

Cambodians disagree. When Hun Sen publicly embraced former Pol Pot deputies Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea a year ago, tens of thousands of normally cowed Cambodians signed petitions for an international tribunal. Under pressure, Hun Sen then proposed a "mixed tribunal" in which a majority of Cambodian judges would sit beside a minority of foreign judges appointed by the United Nations. A Cambodian prosecutor would have veto power over any indictments.

In response, the United Nations has insisted on adherence to basic principles as the price for its participation and the legitimacy this would confer. Most important is "an independent, international prosecutor" and "a majority of international judges" to ensure that it is evidence--and not politics--that determines who is indicted, arrested and convicted.

Curiously, the United States has pressured the United Nations to compromise these principles--principles it insisted on in the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Eager to persuade Congress to fully restore aid suspended after Hun Sen's 1997 coup d'etat, the administration has essentially embraced Hun Sen's proposal. To placate the United Nations and human rights groups, it has suggested a complicated and unworkable system in which verdicts would be reached by a "supermajority" of judges and a "review board" would resolve deadlocks when the co-prosecutors are unable to agree whether to indict a suspect.

Given his control over Cambodia's judiciary, which has presided over a series of show trials of political opponents in recent years, Hun Sen would be the de facto prosecutor, judge and jury. As if to emphasize the point, he recently ruled out the prosecution of Ieng Sary, Pol Pot's former deputy and now a political ally, and stated that a mixed tribunal would take up the cases of only four to five suspects. Hardly a recipe for justice.

Not only is the United States proposing second-class justice for Cambodians, it appears to be oblivious or indifferent to the consequences this new and lower "Cambodia standard" may have on efforts to create a uniform and credible system of international justice for cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. One can easily imagine regimes with dubious human rights records demanding the "Cambodia precedent" instead of the standard created by the International Criminal Court now under discussion.

While the U.S. position is baffling, equally curious is the silence of the same European countries that recently pushed so hard to bring the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to trial. While Pinochet's crimes were grave, they pale in comparison with the deaths of almost 2 million in Cambodia. Where are the demands to the Cambodian authorities to arrest Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary, who each day mock Cambodians as they live as free men in comfortable retirement?

Instead of providing Hun Sen with the shovels to "bury the past," the world should insist that Cambodia cooperate in the creation of a tribunal that meets international standards. There is no lack of leverage, as more than 50 percent of Cambodia's budget comes from international aid. Anything less would be a grave injustice to the victims of one of the most horrific regimes the world has ever known--a regime that the United States, China and others had no small part in bringing to power through their disastrous policies in Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s.