One of my first blog posts for UN Dispatch about Case 002 of the landmark Khmer Rouge War Tribunal. I’ll be covering – and live tweeting – the court this winter as the case against Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, and Ieng Sary progresses.
Khmer Rouge: Never Too Long to Wait For Justice
Phnom Penh, Cambodia – A landmark trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders began this week at the Extraordinary Criminal Chambers of Cambodia outside Phnom Penh. Students, saffron-clad monks, civil parties and average citizens arrived by bus, tuk tuk, and motorbike to pack the public courtroom and watch as the prosecution delivered its opening statements to the court, which was established after a 2003 agreement between the Cambodian government and the United Nations.
This was a seminal moment in Cambodian’s decades long quest to come to terms with the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime. “Case 002″ as it is simply known is hoped to bring some margin of justice to the three Khmer Rouge leaders who ruled Cambodia from April 1975 to January 1979, when between 1.7 to 2 million Cambodians died during one of the most horrific genocides of the modern era…..