Justifying the KR court

Writing in the Irrawaddy Magazine, Nic Dunlop makes the case for why a Khmer Rouge tribunal is so important, even after all these years.

Accountability, Dunlop argues, is pretty important.

Cambodia is a society plagued by violence. Human rights workers have investigated scores of political murders, but no one has ever been charged. One of the principal purposes of a tribunal is to establish an understanding of the importance of a due process of law to replace this cycle of impunity and revenge, and to begin a new era in Cambodian legal affairs—an essential step in the country’s judicial reform.

It is also important for people to see that leaders are not immune from prosecution. Many believe this lack of accountability is one of the most enduring legacies of Khmer Rouge rule. No one believes in the ability of those in authority to act in a responsible way.

There is also a very visceral need for retribution.

And for others, revenge is the only answer. As one peasant woman once told me, “I want them killed for what they did… I don’t want just a trial,” she said. “I want to eat them.”

Can a trial at this late stage ever hope to ease such venomous hatred? Probably not. For all the KRT hopes to contribute, it will never be able to completely slay the demons of Cambodia’s past. Only time can do that.

What the KR Tribunals can offer is a nationwide process through which the country can recover emotionally from Pol Pot and his reign of death. To this day, Cambodia has yet to really even begin that process. Memories from those years have been suppressed, never dealt with. A trial will throw open the doors to those memories and force the country to finally face the brutal legacies of its past. Painful as that process may be, without it, true healing, and ultimately, real closure, will never be possible.

One former Khmer Rouge told me that he believed that only by understanding how Cambodia as a society could produce such a cataclysm would the country be able to move on. And that meant understanding the perpetrators as much as acknowledging the sufferings of the people. “That,” he said, “is why a trial is important.”