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UN Abets Khmer Rouge Impunity - International Justice - Global Policy Forum UN Abets Khmer Rouge Impunity
By Tom Fawthrop
Asia Times Online
June 12, 2002The prospect of ever holding Khmer Rouge leaders accountable for some of the worst crimes against humanity committed in the 20th century are growing dimmer since the United Nations' shock decision in February to walk out of a joint plan with the Cambodian government to set up a special tribunal. UN ambassadors from 12 key countries have urged UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to resume talks with Phnom Penh, but so far the world body has stubbornly rejected all attempts to get the negotiations back on the rails.
Khmer Rouge leaders accused of killing more than 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1978, more than 22 percent of the estimated population, may never be subjected to a comprehensive indictment without UN funding and support.
By not accepting Phnom Penh's open invitation to resume negotiations, the UN could be aiding and abetting Khmer Rouge impunity from prosecution, says Peter Leuerprecht, the UN's human-rights rapporteur for Cambodia. Leuerprecht told Asia Times Online, "It would be a terrible irony if the UN contributed to the impunity of the Khmer Rouge leaders."
The decision by UN headquarters on February 8 suddenly aborted three years of painstaking negotiations, stunned Phnom Penh, and drew sharp criticism from all the donor governments. Not a single member state has expressed any public support for the international body's abrupt termination of talks.
Hans Corell, the UN's legal chief, has argued that the elaborate Khmer Rouge Tribunal law passed by Cambodia's National Assembly last year - providing for international and local lawyers and judges to work side by side in what is termed a "mixed tribunal" - does not meet international standards of justice. The law for setting up a mixed tribunal was the product of detailed legal debate between the UN legal team and the Cambodian Task Force on the Tribunal that was to be held in the capital Phnom Penh.
Kent Wiedemann, until recently the US ambassador in Phnom Penh, and who had followed the negotiations with intense interest, commented just before his departure: "My extremely firm belief is that they were never closer [to an agreement] than they were at the time that the UN announced its unilateral decision to pull out. The job was just about done."
It is increasingly clear that the underlying reasons for the impasse between Cambodia and the UN legal team go far deeper than legal differences and international standards and boil down to a bitter mutual distrust and an ensuing battle for control.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has never forgiven the UN for permitting the Pol Pot regime to occupy Cambodia's seat at the UN 10 years after it had been ousted in 1979 by Cambodian and Vietnamese forces. In a May 15 speech the prime minister recalled that "when the Khmer Rouge was killing Cambodian people, the Khmer Rouge had a seat in the UN, and the UN kept allowing the Khmer Rouge to remain there until the Paris Peace Agreement" of 1989.
The Cambodian prime minister raised the issue of the Khmer Rouge genocide many times in the 1980s, but it fell on deaf ears at the UN and in the West. It is a source of bitterness to many survivors of the Killing Fields that the UN never showed any interest in prosecuting the leaders of the Pol Pot regime until 1997. The UN has never apologized for this chapter in its history.
But at the same time, the current Phnom Penh authorities are viewed with distrust by the UN and international human-rights groups. Cambodian lawyers are poorly trained, while most judges are tainted with corruption and lack independence from political meddling and intervention by the executive.
In a country where Hun Sen, despite being a democratically elected leader, exercises some distinctly authoritarian habits of trying to control most sectors, doubts and suspicions are rife that he would also seek to manipulate a special tribunal. On the other hand, critics of the UN pullout point out that distinguished international jurists, who would participate as co-prosecutor and two out of three judges, would provide sufficient checks and balances to any attempts to meddle and undermine the independence of the tribunal.
Leuerprecht, a former law professor, concluded that "I am a lawyer and I am sure, rather this tribunal than no tribunal", adding that to have a tribunal was of the greatest importance to Cambodian society and in the promotion of human rights, and stresses that the UN could bring this about if it had the political will.
However, those who supported the UN legal team - Amnesty International and other human-rights groups - argue better no tribunal, than a legally flawed tribunal. Wiedemann suggested that the UN offices concerned with the issue had been overworked organizing war-crimes trials for Sierra Leone. "Perhaps they were just exhausted by that experience," he said. "I would speculate that they were not anxious to take on another very complicated international tribunal."
The Cambodian government responded to the controversial UN decision by saying "we will keep the door open for three months", a time period that has already elapsed. In spite of all the lobbying and exhortations, US researcher Dr Craig Etcheson, an expert on the Khmer Rouge, has concluded: "They [the UN] aren't coming back. That chapter is history." Etcheson claims that the only hope left is "a delicate diplomatic minuet aiming to grope toward plan B". Hun Sen's plan B is to appeal to friendly countries to provide funding, training and judges. So far India is the only country that has committed itself to sending judges to participate in a Cambodian Genocide Tribunal either with or without UN approval.
But all governments including India see this as a second-best solution. Diplomatic efforts by friendly countries have been bolstered by the April resolution of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva that also urges the UN secretary general to move for a resumption of the stalled process.
Leuerprecht advised that "the UN should be aware of its past record on Cambodia, a record that is not all glorious". Cambodia's chief negotiator, cabinet chief minister Sok An, has also pointed out that the international community has a special responsibility to help Cambodia "in order to clear its own record on previous support for the Khmer Rouge". If the UN sticks by its current rejection of the Cambodian tribunal, history may render a harsh judgement against senior UN officials that did not go the extra mile to bring the mass murderers to justice.
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