By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
PHNOM PENH – The undated photo, by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, is as chilling as it is casual; right beside a black Mercedes, senior Khmer Rouge brass – in their trademark black pajamas, sandals and krama around the neck – pose nonchalantly. We see “Brother Number One” Pol Pot, his second-in-command Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Vorn Vet. This is what Hannah Arendt meant when exposing “the banality of evil”.
This Monday, in a specially built complex on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the initial hearing of the starkly named Khmer Rouge Tribunal took place by calling some of the most reviled characters in recent history – including “Brother Number 2″ Nuon Chea and the relatively sophisticated “Foreign Minister” Ieng
Sary, who convinced quite a few diplomats, Americans and Europeans included, that the Khmer Rouge were just trying to build a new, agrarian society; and that entailed the ritual killing over two million Cambodians in a 20th century Asian holocaust.
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