Lao Mong Hay

Some years ago, at a public forum to debate a future trial of the Khmer Rouge, three ‘intellectuals?who had been senior Khmer Rouge officials, they laid the blame for the mass killings and the devastation of Cambodian society squarely on the shoulders of Pol Pot, their supreme leader who had died a year or so earlier. They could not do anything against him, so they claimed. Of course they did not support any trial.

Ieng Sary, former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, upon his arrival in Bangkok, Thailand, for medical treatment on Oct. 7, denied any responsibility for the crimes under his regime, saying he had done nothing wrong.

Ieng Sary was tried in absentia along with Pol Pot and both were sentenced to death in 1979 after their regime had been overthrown by Vietnamese forces. He received a royal pardon in 1996 after he broke away from the remaining Khmer Rouge forces and rallied to the government.

See no evil, know no evil: Nuon Chea, Brother No. 2, arrested in September 2007 to face trial by the Khmer Rouge tribunal. (Photo: Google)

Nuon Chea, known as Brother No.2 next to Pol Pot, who was arrested in September 2007 to face trial by the Khmer Rouge tribunal, has likewise denied any responsibility for those deaths. He said that, due to his high position, he had had no knowledge of those deaths, claiming that he "did not have any direct contact with the bases (where the killing was taking place) and (he was) not aware of what was happening there."

Another senior Khmer Rouge leader to face the same trial is Khieu Samphan, president of the Khmer Rouge regime.  In his book, "Recent History of Cambodia and My Successive Positions," published in 2004, Khieu did not admit any responsibility either, claiming ignorance of the killing that had been going on. In an encounter with this author several years back on his future trial, he expressed ‘deep disappointment?that, after ‘devoting a lifetime serving the nation? he was to be tried in the end, instead of receiving any appreciation. But he, nevertheless, was resigned to accept that fate.

In recent months, former King Sihanouk of Cambodia, who had associated with the Khmer Rouge as their Beijing-based leader and who is widely believed to have contributed to their victory over the U.S.-backed regime in 1975, has vehemently shirked all responsibility for the suffering of his people and attributed this responsibility to the Khmer Rouge. He steadfastly holds on to his immunity from prosecution, and flatly refuses to appear before the Khmer Rouge tribunal as a defendant or a witness.

As to the leaders and rank and file of the present administration in Cambodia, some were actually Khmer Rouge themselves. Yet since their accession to power, thanks to the Vietnamese ousting of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, they have also laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of those ousted Khmer Rouge. Recently, they have categorically defended Sihanouk's immunity from all Khmer Rouge trial proceedings.

None of the Cambodian rulers so far has shown any sense of accountability or has acknowledged any share of responsibility, even of a moral nature, for their actions and the treatment of their people. French Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre's remark that 'hell is other people" very much applies to them. This behaviour is very much a characteristic feature of Cambodian political culture: Only other people can do wrong, not the rulers themselves.

When he was leader of the country after the recovery of its independence in 1953, Sihanouk and his followers blamed the French colonialists for all the backwardness of Cambodia, claiming that those colonialists ‘had done nothing for Cambodia? Sihanouk overlooked his share of responsibility for that backwardness when he had associated for well over ten years with the French, who had crowned him in 1941.

General Lon Nol and his followers, who overthrew Sihanouk in 1970 and plunged Cambodia into the Vietnam War from which the Khmer Rouge came to power, in turn blamed Sihanouk for

all Cambodia's ills accumulated over the years. Yet they had served Sihanouk or under him since the country's independence, if not longer.  The Khmer Rouge blamed all previous rulers at all levels of administration and all those who had associated with the previous regimes. Upon their victory, the Khmer Rouge set out to mercilessly eliminate them and destroy the old society to build a new one.

The present rulers in turn blamed the Khmer Rouge, upon its overthrow, for the suffering of the Cambodian people, forgetting that some of them had been Khmer Rouge themselves and did nothing to stop the ferocity with which the Khmer Rouge forced town people out of their homes to do farm work in rural areas on the day of their victory in 1975.

Not all the rank and file of the present regime is free from past association with the Khmer Rouge either. Some were even perpetrators of those crimes when they were Khmer Rouge rank and file. Yet they are beyond the reach of the Khmer Rouge tribunal which is confined to trying senior Khmer Rouge leaders most responsible for those crimes.

The Khmer Rouge tribunal, a mixed UN-Cambodian tribunal functioning under Cambodian law, has at long last begun its work.  It is successively apprehending and arresting senior Khmer Rouge leaders.  It is now holding those leaders to account for what they did to their people and society. The trials will undoubtedly contribute to ending the long impunity for the Khmer Rouge, at least for their leaders.

But no less important will be their contribution to creating accountability in Cambodian political culture, though it is very much debatable whether such accountability will be able to strive without well-functioning institutions for the rule of law, which are lacking at the moment in Cambodia.