Slow justice in Cambodia
In the mid 1980s, I saw the film “The Killing Fields” which graphically depicted the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror in Cambodia in which 1.7 million people died, nearly a quarter of the population. A couple of years ago, in Siem Reap I visited one of the many killing fields and found it a moving experience which I have described here.
This week, the UN-backed genocide tribunal in Cambodia staged its first historic hearing. Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, the head of the brutal regime’s notorious Toul Sleng torture centre, appeared before the panel of five judges on Phnom Penh’s outskirts, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. You can read more here.
This is good news for the people of Cambodia but it is almost 30 years after the end of slaughter.