The spectre of the Khmer Rouge over Cambodia.

• Author: Widyono, Benny

After 27 years of international amnesia over bringing the Khmer Rouge to justice, and following six years of intense negotiations between the United Nations and the Government of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge tribunal, officially known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), was established in 2006. The tribunal is a UN-assisted national court, with international participation of prosecutors and judges.

On 4 February 2008, the Khmer Rouge's second in command, Nuon Chea, now 81 years old, made his first appearance in court. He is being held at the Khmer Rouge tribunal's facility outside Phnom Penh, along with four other senior leaders, including former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and then Head of State Khieu Samphan. For many of the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime, the court appearance of Nuon Chea, though 29 years delayed, was highly significant--the best proof that justice, denied for so long, would at last be achieved. Everyone hoped that the spectre of the Khmer Rouge, which had haunted Cambodia since the 1960s, would finally disappear. However, many of them and those in the international community are still puzzled why it took so long for the tribunal to begin the proceedings.

To be able to grasp this mystery, we have to go back to history. The Khmer Rouge started as a small communist insurgency against Prince Norodom Sihanouk's neutralist Government in the cold war, and grew into a terror regime during its rule from April 1975 to January 1979. This resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians through execution, exhaustion and starvation. Massive bombings of eastern Cambodia by the United States (1969-1973) and the overthrow of Sihanouk by a pro-American right-wing general in March 1970 radicalized the rural youth, turning many of them into the arms of the regime. The enraged Prince embraced Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge in Beijing, thereby opening the flood gates of Chinese arms to the Khmer Rouge and contributing to its meteoric rise.

On 7 January 1979, the Vietnamese army, together with a small group of Cambodian rebels, overthrew the genocidal regime, ending the 3 1/2 year-long nightmare of the Cambodian people. Suddenly, the Khmer Rouge's unspeakable atrocities were revealed and had generated an outcry echoed throughout the world. Demands for justice were voiced everywhere by journalists and civil society. However, the liberation of the country from these horrors did not end the suffering...