By Tracy Dove, Ph.D
Editor, The Russia News Service
U.S. Politics Today (USA)
It is praiseworthy that the capture of "Brother Number 2"- Nuon Chea- made international headlines this week, although the tale of the Cambodian Killing Fields has long since been diluted by time, disinterest, and dishonesty. The Khmer Rouge orchestrated the deaths of over 1.2 million in a country that had only 7.5 million residents, making it a much greater tragedy in relevant numbers that the Holocaust was during World War II. How could it be that the Cambodian genocide of the late 1970's doesn't even make it on to our national radar screens? In the case of the Holocaust, the American people and its national government acknowledged the crime and fought the Nazi regime with courage; in regard to the Khmer Rouge, Americans were oblivious, because their government tacitly supported the brutal regime because it carried on the struggle against Vietnam that the Americans lost years before.
The humiliation of watching those last marines evacuate the American Embassy in Saigon back in 1975 is an event from which patriotic America has never entirely recovered. It wasn't so much that Vietnam won the war, but that the United States lost it, and any regime that opposed Hanoi was an automatic friend of Washington. The tale of this relationship begins with the carpet bombings conducted by the US in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Modern historians, using declassified documents about the bombings, have drawn correlations between the incidence of US bombings and the recruitment of villagers to the Khmer Rouge, and concluded that the bombings indeed influenced high amounts of Cambodian youth to join the party.
Meanwhile, the United States had been propping-up the government of Cambodia against the Khmer Rouge insurgency, but in 1973, the support was cut off. This was convenient for Communist China, which had an interest in the region, and so with support from Chairman Mao- who had just finished hosting Richard Nixon for dinner on the eve of getting his UN Security Council seat back from Taiwan- the Chinese moved in to support the Khmer Rouge's leaders, who were fresh from their generous exchange programs in Paris. Artificially, the Khmer Rouge grew in power, and in 1975 it had overrun the capital, Phnom Penh. And so the story of the Killing Fields begins.
The gruesome details of the genocide can be found in more authoritative studies than this column can provide, but what is of interest with the arrest and handover of Nuon Chea to the international tribunal is why it took so long. While the Khmer Rouge worked the Cambodian people to their deaths, the regime grew increasingly hostile to its neighbor, Vietnam. Fearing an attack from Hanoi, the Khmer Rouge's leader, Pol Pot, ordered a preemptive strike into Vietnam, and a few border villages were ransacked by Cambodian paramilitary forces. Vietnam responded with a complete invasion of the country, and occupied most of it from 1979 until 1989.
Enter the United States; with arch foe Vietnam spreading its influence in Southeast Asia, and backed by uber arch foe the Soviet Union, America stepped in to prop-up the Pol Pot regime, which was hiding in the forests of Cambodia along the Thai border. The logic resounded through the halls of the White House that destabilization of Vietnam's hold on Cambodia took precedence over the crimes against humanity that the Khmer Rouge had thus far committed. It wasn't until the end of the Cold War that the situation in Cambodia was normalized, but the final peace plan was anything but normal.
While the world was watching the Berlin Wall crumble and Ceausescu getting shot on Christmas Day, 1989, peace negotiations were going on unnoticed between the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam and other fighting factions. With the absence of powerful partners to ensure that justice was done, the final agreement between the warring groups stipulated that the word "genocide" could never be used when referring to the Khmer Rouge. It was a horrible mistake, and could have been corrected if the United Nations or the United States had horned in more forcefully, but again, there was a vacuum of interest, and the negotiations were concluded. As a result, collecting the political will to establish a tribunal was exceedingly difficult, but nevertheless, the United Nations was able to push one through. Only in 2006 were jurors sworn in to begin the trials, which are scheduled to begin now- hence the arrest of Brother Number 2 this week.
The United States is conspicuously absent from this legal affair, and it is unlikely that any justice will be served on the octogenarian defendants who killed all of those innocent people all of those years ago. It is a slap in the face of justice and an irony of the Cold War legacy, but one can be sure that if it were Castro's trial, the United States would have certainly reserved the entire front row for itself and the Little Havana Cubans of greater Miami. It seems that once a rogue country has been on the payroll once, then a golden parachute or a "get out of jail free" card always seems to be in the bargain.
Tracy Dove, editor of The Russia News Service, is a Professor of History and the Department Chair of International Relations at the University of New York in Prague.
The humiliation of watching those last marines evacuate the American Embassy in Saigon back in 1975 is an event from which patriotic America has never entirely recovered. It wasn't so much that Vietnam won the war, but that the United States lost it, and any regime that opposed Hanoi was an automatic friend of Washington. The tale of this relationship begins with the carpet bombings conducted by the US in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Modern historians, using declassified documents about the bombings, have drawn correlations between the incidence of US bombings and the recruitment of villagers to the Khmer Rouge, and concluded that the bombings indeed influenced high amounts of Cambodian youth to join the party.
Meanwhile, the United States had been propping-up the government of Cambodia against the Khmer Rouge insurgency, but in 1973, the support was cut off. This was convenient for Communist China, which had an interest in the region, and so with support from Chairman Mao- who had just finished hosting Richard Nixon for dinner on the eve of getting his UN Security Council seat back from Taiwan- the Chinese moved in to support the Khmer Rouge's leaders, who were fresh from their generous exchange programs in Paris. Artificially, the Khmer Rouge grew in power, and in 1975 it had overrun the capital, Phnom Penh. And so the story of the Killing Fields begins.
The gruesome details of the genocide can be found in more authoritative studies than this column can provide, but what is of interest with the arrest and handover of Nuon Chea to the international tribunal is why it took so long. While the Khmer Rouge worked the Cambodian people to their deaths, the regime grew increasingly hostile to its neighbor, Vietnam. Fearing an attack from Hanoi, the Khmer Rouge's leader, Pol Pot, ordered a preemptive strike into Vietnam, and a few border villages were ransacked by Cambodian paramilitary forces. Vietnam responded with a complete invasion of the country, and occupied most of it from 1979 until 1989.
Enter the United States; with arch foe Vietnam spreading its influence in Southeast Asia, and backed by uber arch foe the Soviet Union, America stepped in to prop-up the Pol Pot regime, which was hiding in the forests of Cambodia along the Thai border. The logic resounded through the halls of the White House that destabilization of Vietnam's hold on Cambodia took precedence over the crimes against humanity that the Khmer Rouge had thus far committed. It wasn't until the end of the Cold War that the situation in Cambodia was normalized, but the final peace plan was anything but normal.
While the world was watching the Berlin Wall crumble and Ceausescu getting shot on Christmas Day, 1989, peace negotiations were going on unnoticed between the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam and other fighting factions. With the absence of powerful partners to ensure that justice was done, the final agreement between the warring groups stipulated that the word "genocide" could never be used when referring to the Khmer Rouge. It was a horrible mistake, and could have been corrected if the United Nations or the United States had horned in more forcefully, but again, there was a vacuum of interest, and the negotiations were concluded. As a result, collecting the political will to establish a tribunal was exceedingly difficult, but nevertheless, the United Nations was able to push one through. Only in 2006 were jurors sworn in to begin the trials, which are scheduled to begin now- hence the arrest of Brother Number 2 this week.
The United States is conspicuously absent from this legal affair, and it is unlikely that any justice will be served on the octogenarian defendants who killed all of those innocent people all of those years ago. It is a slap in the face of justice and an irony of the Cold War legacy, but one can be sure that if it were Castro's trial, the United States would have certainly reserved the entire front row for itself and the Little Havana Cubans of greater Miami. It seems that once a rogue country has been on the payroll once, then a golden parachute or a "get out of jail free" card always seems to be in the bargain.
Tracy Dove, editor of The Russia News Service, is a Professor of History and the Department Chair of International Relations at the University of New York in Prague.
4 comments:
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A bus stop at the gates of White House,Kremlin,and Tiamen Square.
However, a precipitious fallout upon the group of dirty hands who were given a brief moment of indulging self-presumption at the peak stage of the proxy cold war.
One should say that the game of three gansgsters who choose Cambodia for collision course are to blame. The cause and effect of superpowers mentality (DOMINO game). But it is precarious to let the assigned proxies, who willing to kill, out of hands of justice.
Iraq is another exmaple of the stage of mentality of Domino effect. One the troops are out, the terrorists will chase to US soil.
Sadam husien, gased a few hundred of iraqi, and his country was bombed, invaded, and he was hung in severals year. Millions of cambodian was killed by pol pot, americian's bombing, vietnamese, and thai soldier. And more then 30 years later. Nothing was done !!! What kind of civilized world is this ????
Actually Yuon special team sent it in, to kill khmer people in 77 -78-79 by helicopters at night time in Phnom Penh secretly (sources student from 1990 go to study in Soviet and youn student have told Khmer students) but I do not know Nuon Chea have the evidences or proof to show UN court??
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