Two million victims are being denied justice for political convenience, says sean thomas |
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By their very nature, trials for genocide take time. Nonetheless, the judicial proceedings in Cambodia, against the communist murderers of the Khmer Rouge, are surely breaking records for slowness.
Just last week another legal hitch was encountered, which will set back the UN-funded hearings by months, if not years. A committee of judges, some foreign, some Cambodian, admitted on Thursday that they had failed to resolve crucial disagreements. The differences relate to the proposed tribunal, and the way it might integrate Cambodian and international law.
It sounds arcane. But what it really means is this: the foreign authorities believe the Cambodian judges are ill-trained and corruptible; the Cambodians resent the outsiders as insensitive and overbearing.
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| In the torture gardens of Tuol Sleng, tens of thousands were flayed, beaten, electrocuted and raped |
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Deep down many suspect that the Cambodian government is stalling.
The sorry result of these ongoing disputes is that, so far, not a single witness has been heard. And yet the Khmer Rouge fell from power as long ago as 1979.
You might think such a time lapse would make the trials irrelevant, almost ancient history. Not so. Cambodia still visibly aches with the pain inflicted by Pol Pot's Angkar - 'The Organisation'.
For instance, if you visit - as I did this week - the Khmer Rouge torture garden, Tuol Sleng, in the drowsy suburbs of Phnom Penh, you can still see the iron bedsteads on which tens of thousands of people were flayed, beaten, electrocuted and raped. You can still see the bloodstains from some poor victim sprayed across the ceiling.
Alternatively if you talk - as I did last week - to average Cambodians in the street, you soon hear the most appalling litany of sorrow.
Tuk
tuk drivers, hotel staff, bank tellers, fish-sauce sellers: they all have the same harrowing stories. "The Khmer Rouge killed 
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