 my mother"; "They took my brother and sister"; "I haven't seen my children since...". The universality of this refrain is not surprising, when you consider the statistics. It is estimated that, in their lunatic pursuit of an agrarian utopia, the Khmer Rouge killed two million Cambodians - through starvation, abuse, and outright extermination. Two million Cambodians constituted about a quarter of the nation's population. The equivalent in the UK would be the deaths of fifteen million Britons.
This is why their trials are so important, and so relevant to ordinary Cambodians. This is why the delays are so frustrating.
The Cambodian government, for its part, baulks at any criticism. Chea Sim, president of the ruling Cambodian People's Party, said last week: "We wish that those entities who constantly look at the process in a negative way would take a more balanced approach." He added: "The Cambodian People's Party undertook the struggle to save the people, and has constantly searched for justice for the victims of the genocidal regime."
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| Most Khmer Rouge leaders are still at liberty, which is like Himmler still walking the streets of Munich in the 1960s |
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Which is all well and good, if it weren't for the fact that, if the trials take much longer, there will be no one left to convict. Pol Pot died a squalid but peaceful death nearly a decade ago. Ta Mok, 'the Butcher', expired last year. The various other Khmer Rouge suspects are in their seventies and eighties. Remarkably, most of them are at liberty, which is rather like Himmler and Goring still walking the streets of Munich in the 1960s.
Why are the trials truly taking so long? Some say the Chinese, very influential here, want to forget their association with Pol Pot, and are pressuring the Cambodians to avoid a proper hearing. Others blame high-ups in the Cambodian government, which still contains Khmer Rouge "sympathisers".
A final theory says that the entire nation would, subconsciously at least, rather bury the past than relive it.
This is understandable, of course. And yet it isn't good enough for Cambodia. It isn't good enough for humanity. And it isn't good enough for that person whose blood is sprayed across the ceiling of Tuol Sleng. 
FIRST POSTED JANUARY 31, 2007
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