An unidentified former soldier looks on near the once Khmer Rouge-stronghold border town of Pailin. (David Longstreath, AP)03/07/2006
Phnom Penh - Cambodia was set to make a symbolic start on Monday to the long-awaited trials of leaders of the Khmer Rouge, 27 years after the fall of the regime blamed for the deaths of up to two million people.
Seventeen Cambodian judges and 10 foreign jurists were to be sworn in at a ceremony at 09:00 in the royal palace's Silver Pagoda, setting in motion a process that should see some suspects tried by mid-2007.
"This makes it official, formally establishing the Khmer Rouge tribunal," said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which has compiled evidence of atrocities committed by the ultra-Maoist regime.
The simple ceremony, presided over by Cambodia's minister of the royal palace Kong Sam Ol and UN envoy Nicolas Michel, will begin what is expected to be a three-year tribunal that many feared would never get off the ground.
Since Cambodia first asked the United Nations for help in 1997, Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was once a low-ranking Khmer Rouge member, has proven reluctant to commit resources to the trials.
Donors have ended up funding most of the $56.3m process.
Drive for agrarian utopia
During the six years of stumbling negotiations, Cambodia's government was blamed for trying to derail the proceedings.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, and other survivors are in their 70s and 80s, prompting fears that they too could die before facing justice for one of the most gruesomely effective genocides of the 20th century.
The regime turned Cambodia into a vast collective farm between 1975 and 1979 in its drive for an agrarian utopia, forcing millions into the countryside.
Up to two million people died of starvation, overwork and from execution during the four-year rule of the Khmer Rouge, which abolished religion, property rights, currency and schools.
Seventeen Cambodian judges and 10 foreign jurists were to be sworn in at a ceremony at 09:00 in the royal palace's Silver Pagoda, setting in motion a process that should see some suspects tried by mid-2007.
"This makes it official, formally establishing the Khmer Rouge tribunal," said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which has compiled evidence of atrocities committed by the ultra-Maoist regime.
The simple ceremony, presided over by Cambodia's minister of the royal palace Kong Sam Ol and UN envoy Nicolas Michel, will begin what is expected to be a three-year tribunal that many feared would never get off the ground.
Since Cambodia first asked the United Nations for help in 1997, Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was once a low-ranking Khmer Rouge member, has proven reluctant to commit resources to the trials.
Donors have ended up funding most of the $56.3m process.
Drive for agrarian utopia
During the six years of stumbling negotiations, Cambodia's government was blamed for trying to derail the proceedings.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, and other survivors are in their 70s and 80s, prompting fears that they too could die before facing justice for one of the most gruesomely effective genocides of the 20th century.
The regime turned Cambodia into a vast collective farm between 1975 and 1979 in its drive for an agrarian utopia, forcing millions into the countryside.
Up to two million people died of starvation, overwork and from execution during the four-year rule of the Khmer Rouge, which abolished religion, property rights, currency and schools.
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