Finally, Justice for Khmer Rouge Leaders

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A Cambodian court, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (backed by the UN) has convicted two former Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, of crimes against humanity and sentenced them to life in prison.  A bit late, but better than nothing. 

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The Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot and his communist intellectual henchmen killed around two million Cambodians in their late-1970s attempt to engineer utopia.  The deaths were caused by a combination of starvation and disease, caused by insane economic and social engineering schemes, and outright execution of most educated Cambodians as well as those put on a hit list by someone’s whim.  Over 20,000 mass graves have been found, aka the Killing Fields, with evidence of nearly one-and-a-half million executions.  It was madness. 

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Nuon Chea studied in Bangkok.  He was known during the height of Khmer Rouge power as Brother Number Two (to Pol Pot’s position as Brother Number One).  I wrote about him a few years ago in a review of the movie “Enemies of the People” (2009), in which he was featured. 

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Khieu Samphan studied in Paris with Pol Pot and other Cambodian communist intellectuals in the 1950s, getting his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Paris in 1959.  During the red terror he was Cambodia’s head of state, yet under Pol Pot’s ultimate control. 

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Both men are in their 80s, so their lives in prison will not be long ones.  (Pol Pot died in 1998, never seeing trial.)  They both face an additional charge of genocide.  Stay tuned. 

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-Zenwind.

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