Not an African or participant in the Balkans:
"Top four surviving Khmer Rouge leaders go on trial; Justice sought for 1.7 million killed in 1970s" by Sopheng Cheang, Associated Press / June 28, 2011
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The top four surviving members of the brutal Khmer Rouge went on trial yesterday before a tribunal aimed at finding justice for the estimated 1.7 million people who died in Cambodia’s “killing fields’’ of the 1970s.
With the leaders all in their late 70s or early 80s and with Khmer Rouge overlord Pol Pot long dead, the trial before the UN-backed panel represents the last, best chance for Cambodia to bring accountability to the Khmer Rouge leadership blamed for the deaths.
All four of the defendants say they are innocent.
“This is, at this time, the most important trial in the world,’’ said Stephen Rapp, US envoy on war crimes issues. “It’s a message to others who might commit similar crimes, that there will be consequences. That it may not happen tomorrow or the next day. But eventually, you’ll be in the dock as well.’’
Sent to Tony Bliar, George Bush, and the cadre of Israeli war criminal leaders?
During their 1975-79 reign, the Khmer Rouge tried to implement a communist utopia but ended up killing as many as one-quarter of their countrymen through executions, medical neglect, overwork, and starvation....
Testimony and presentation of evidence is expected to begin in August or September, 32 years after the Khmer Rouge were kicked out of power in 1979 with the help of a Vietnamese invasion.
That is an interesting situation, in that I worked with a couple of Cambodians a while back and asked them about it in the wake of Bush's invasion of Iraq.
I mean, if ever one could look at an invasion and call it a "good invasion" certainly the North Vietnamese example would be it, right?
They said no. They said no invasion is ever good.
For more than a decade afterward, they waged a bloody insurgency against the Phnom Penh government.
Does that sound familiar, America?
Pol Pot escaped justice with his death in 1998, then a prisoner of his own comrades as his once-mighty guerrilla movement was collapsing.
Lawyers for the defendants came out fighting yesterday, giving a hint of points they may raise later.
Lawyer Ang Udom reminded the court that Ieng Sary had been convicted and sentenced to death in absentia in 1979 by a Vietnamese-established court and that he received a royal pardon in 1996 when he led a mass defection to the government. However, the tribunal has already ruled he is still liable for charges.
Michel Pestman, representing Nuon Chea, said a full accounting of the historical context of the Khmer Rouge should include a probe of the massive wartime US bombing of Cambodia and Vietnam’s role.
Oh, the WAR CRIMINAL BOMBING of Cambodia?
I'll wait and catch the trial!
--Top four surviving Khmer Rouge leaders go on trial--"
Also see: C is For Cambodia
Related: Cambodian War Crimes Conviction
Don't get me wrong, readers. Justice should be rendered for war crimes so that souls can rest; however, I object to the selectivity to which the charges are applied.
