After 19 years, hundreds of millions of dollars and just two successful convictions, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh is approaching its end.
The sole person on trial for atrocities committed in Cambodia by Pol Pot’s brutal regime – a 74-year-old grandmother accused of orchestrating mass murder – will be the last. The country’s youthful population is anxious to move on from a national identity characterised by a genocide it does not remember, while an ageing political elite is keen to limit chains of accountability before they edge too close to home.
Cambodia’s National Assembly, where the ruling party has every seat, has voted unanimously to wind up the court’s activities by the end of this year.
But despite the difficulties that dogged its progress – from funding to political obstruction to the death of defendants before verdicts could be reached or charges laid – the court forced the horrors of the Khmer Rouge out into the open and will have a profound effect on future fights for justice around the world.
Not only as an invaluable example for future study and prevention, as Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-CAM) and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge, puts it. But also, as former chief of investigations for the tribunal Craig Etcheson explains, because it brought into sharp focus the immense challenge of pitting a slow-moving, technically-minded judicial establishment against an experienced, tenacious leader who is determined to politicise the process.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), known informally as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, was set up in 2003 by the Cambodian government and the United Nations but was designed to have judicial and political independence from both.
Its purpose was to identify and prosecute those responsible for atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, the ultra-Maoist political party led by Pol Pot, whose rebel forces seized control of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Allegations included mass murder, torture, forced marriages and the genocide of Cambodia’s Cham and ethnic Vietnamese minorities.
During the Khmer Rouge’s brief time in power, Cambodia’s educated, professional classes were eviscerated, the cities emptied, and the population redistributed to collective farms and rural construction projects. In just four years, approximately two million Cambodians were either killed or died of starvation, overwork and disease.
“What would ‘justice’ look like when we are talking about two million people killed, millions of families ripped apart, and an entire culture whiplashed to within inches of its very existence?” asked Etcheson. “My expectation would be that there is no kind of justice which would satisfy everyone in the wake of such catastrophic crimes.”
Yet many have tried.
Ever since senior Nazi commanders were tried (and hanged) at Nuremberg in 1946, international criminal tribunals have been set up to prosecute war criminals everywhere, from Japan to Rwanda and Iraq.
Some, like the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, were run by the UN. Others, including atrocities committed in Uganda, Palestine and Myanmar, are being investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Myanmar is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
‘Hybrid’ court
What makes the ECCC unusual is that it is a ‘hybrid’ court: a joint project between the UN and the Cambodian government.
The UN and Cambodian legal teams work in parallel, and judgements are made in accordance with Cambodia’s laws. The idea was to give the court’s verdicts legitimacy in…
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