Newspapers with pictures of former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav are displayed at a newspaper stand in Phnom Penh on July 27. (photo: Reuters)Wednesday, July 28, 2010
By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR
IPS WRITER
BANGKOK — For a country plagued by a weak judiciary and where government officials have profited from a culture of impunity, Monday’s verdict in the first case to try a surviving commandant of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime broke new legal ground in Cambodia.
The ruling by a UN-backed special war crimes tribunal against Comrade Duch, whose real name is Kaing Khek Eav, brought to an end the fears by the estimated five million survivors of that dark period in the South-east Asian nation’s history that the Khmer Rouge hierarchy would in the end get away with their brutality.
After all, the verdict came 31 years after the Khmer Rouge was toppled by advancing Vietnamese forces, followed by years of civil war and feuding between Cambodian political factions, where talk of an international war crimes tribunal or hauling Khmer Rouge commanders to face justice were remote in the countryside.
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The ruling by a UN-backed special war crimes tribunal against Comrade Duch, whose real name is Kaing Khek Eav, brought to an end the fears by the estimated five million survivors of that dark period in the South-east Asian nation’s history that the Khmer Rouge hierarchy would in the end get away with their brutality.
After all, the verdict came 31 years after the Khmer Rouge was toppled by advancing Vietnamese forces, followed by years of civil war and feuding between Cambodian political factions, where talk of an international war crimes tribunal or hauling Khmer Rouge commanders to face justice were remote in the countryside.
Please click here to read more...
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