late for court

Ta Mok has pulled a Slobodan. Or a Ken Lay, or a Pol Pot.

The “feared, one-legged commander” known as “the Butcher” is dead at age 80 or so. And with only a year to go before he presumably would have gone on trial along with other Khmer Rouge leaders for things they did 30 years ago, before most living Cambodians were even born.

Preceding Ta Mok to hell, if you believe in such things, were Ke Pauk and Pol Pot himself, not to mention others who didn’t survive the latter years of the Khmer Rouge mini-regime in northern and western Cambodia.

There ain’t going to be much left to put on trial at this rate, which means a raw deal for taxpayers in the donor countries who are putting up nearly the whole cost.

The whole thing is budgeted at about $56 million, of which Cambodia itself is reportedly ponying up about $3 million, a small price to pay out of the national coffers for such a large honeypot for Cambodia’s elite to dip their fingers into.

What we’ll likely see in the dock, if there ever is a dock, is going to be the B-team. A short roster of minor players anchored by Duch, who ran the S-21 torture center, though the press and the governments involved will all collaborate to present them as the worst of the worst. In fact the worst of the worst are living in comfort, some in mansions and others near the Thai border, and these are the ones who will escape justice through the good graces of Hun Sen, or Death, or both (they often work together).

The citizen-viewer goes on the record once again: There will never be a meaningful trial of Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia while Hun Sen is in power.

And by meaningful, the c-v means one in which

1. the standards for prosecution are applied fairly (no immunity for any particular people, namely Ieng Sary)

2. defendants are charged under actual laws

3. all relevant and available evidence is considered

4. judgments are based on that evidence and on the applicable law and nothing else

5. sentences are carried out according to the judgments.

To be specific, the c-v hereby guarantees that Ieng Sary will never be a convict in prison in a Cambodia ruled by Hun Sen, regardless of evidence, trial, sentencing etc. A grave, yes. Prison, no.

That’s because Hun Sen and Ieng Sary have a deal, and Hun Sen’s regime is built on such deals. He lives and dies by his word.

The problem for Hun Sen is not so much that he is obliged to prevent the trial from being meaningful. The financial sponsors of the trial will assuredly defend the legitimacy and value of the trial they are so generously financing — and which they hope will expiate their sins of the past. And the cable news will lead the foreign media in promoting the heck out it — after all, they want stories, not non-stories.

The problem is that once the trial, such as it is, is over, Hun Sen will have lost the main carrot he has been holding out in front of the foreign donkey for the past decade. Once the donkey has at last eaten that tiny, shriveled carrot, and pronounced it delicious, Hun Sen will be left holding only a stick.

The citizen-viewer is all in favor of a trial — a fair, legal, legitimate trial. This one’s set up to be a sham, and Cambodia has seen enough of those.

Comments

[tonii]

before khmer rouge regime, even before the Lon Nol bloody american puppet fascit regime, usa army bombed Cambodia and killed (at least) 500.000 innocent civilians.
I'm still wating for a trial against united states americans leaders.

no, i do not call it a democracy, it is just another imperialist militarist oligarchy regime. and will not stand much longer.