The evil that was the Khmer Rouge
“Pol Pot’s deputy has told a court the Khmer Rouge were not “bad people”, blaming deaths of Cambodians under the Maoist regime on neighbouring Vietnam. Nuon Chea made the comments at his genocide trial at a UN-backed court in Phnom Penh.”
This is the opening of a news report from the BBC’s web site on the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders an astonishing three decades after their regime resulted in the deaths of some two million Cambodians. Incredibly Nuon Chea blames the deaths on the Vietnamese but it was Vietnam that brought the killing to a halt by overthrowing the regime.
I visited both Vietnam and Cambodia a few years ago and, while in Cambodia, I visited the site of one of the Khmer Rouge prisons [my account of the trip here]. Also I read the moving work “River Of Time” by Jon Swain [my review here].