From The Economist
A UN-backed tribunal finally arrests the Khmers Rouges' foreign minister
RESIDENTS of Phnom Penh had grown accustomed to seeing Pol Pot's foreign minister living it up. But generous donations to Buddhist temples and the ruling party turned out to be not enough to shield Ieng Sary from justice. This week he and his wife (also once a minister in the Khmer Rouge government) were arrested on the orders of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a United Nations-backed court run by Cambodian and international judges. They join two other Khmer Rouge leaders in custody. A third, Ta Mok, died last year.
But it is 82-year old Mr Ieng who had seemed to be most flagrantly getting away with mass murder. In 1979, he was sentenced to death along with Pol Pot by a “people's revolutionary tribunal”. In 1996, however, he led a breakaway faction that split the Khmers Rouges, hastening the end of its insurgency. He was rewarded with an amnesty which annulled the 1979 verdict. The tribunal's judges have had to sidestep the issue of trying him twice for the same crime by indicting him for “crimes against humanity and war crimes”. Diplomats also claim China has put pressure on Cambodia's prime minister to spare Mr Ieng, who was privy to the secret details of Beijing's unflinching support for the murderous Khmers Rouges in the 1970s.
The tribunal seems to have surmounted—or ignored—legal complexities and diplomatic obstacles. But Ta Mok's death and a stroke just suffered by Khieu Samphan, once the Khmers Rouges' head of state, is a poignant reminder that justice is more than ever a race against time.
RESIDENTS of Phnom Penh had grown accustomed to seeing Pol Pot's foreign minister living it up. But generous donations to Buddhist temples and the ruling party turned out to be not enough to shield Ieng Sary from justice. This week he and his wife (also once a minister in the Khmer Rouge government) were arrested on the orders of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a United Nations-backed court run by Cambodian and international judges. They join two other Khmer Rouge leaders in custody. A third, Ta Mok, died last year.
But it is 82-year old Mr Ieng who had seemed to be most flagrantly getting away with mass murder. In 1979, he was sentenced to death along with Pol Pot by a “people's revolutionary tribunal”. In 1996, however, he led a breakaway faction that split the Khmers Rouges, hastening the end of its insurgency. He was rewarded with an amnesty which annulled the 1979 verdict. The tribunal's judges have had to sidestep the issue of trying him twice for the same crime by indicting him for “crimes against humanity and war crimes”. Diplomats also claim China has put pressure on Cambodia's prime minister to spare Mr Ieng, who was privy to the secret details of Beijing's unflinching support for the murderous Khmers Rouges in the 1970s.
The tribunal seems to have surmounted—or ignored—legal complexities and diplomatic obstacles. But Ta Mok's death and a stroke just suffered by Khieu Samphan, once the Khmers Rouges' head of state, is a poignant reminder that justice is more than ever a race against time.
5 comments:
Come on Ieng's family, let tell the world about the dark side of China. Nothing to loose.
I don't know what's The Hell... China try to do to Khmer People?
What is a bunch of retarded?
Everyone knows that the KR regime can't survived without the support from at least one of the supper power, and we also know China have been arming the KR regime from day1.
But so what if China supporting the KR regime in the interest of China national security? Is that a crime against humanity? Did China ordered the mass killing? Maybe yes, but only if mass killing will strengthen the proxy and help to secure the China interest. But that is not the case because mass killing and abusing people will not strengthen Cambodia, but weaken it and will not serve as a good proxy for China national security, and you don't need a PhD to know that. Just look at how easy it is for the Vietnam to conquered Cambodia in 1979? Do you think China is thrill about that?
The trial is senseless already because the big killers of Khmer People are not on trial. USA, China, Russia, France, Vietnam, and Thailand are the big ones, in case anyone is still blind.
9:29, Selling war gears is not a crime. All permanent members of the UN Security Council are big time arms dealers for people to kill each others.
Post a Comment