The Myths That Keep Pol Pot Out of a Courtroom

WASHINGTON —  The arresting photographs of Pol Pot’s denunciation at a show trial in Cambodia once again demonstrate the power of an image to stir the conscience. The State Department denounced the “jungle trial” as a travesty. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright reiterated the U.S. commitment to bring Pol Pot to justice “by some procedure that is internationally accepted” for the radical evil he contrived as leader of Cambodia in the 1970s. Yet, there is every reason to doubt the strength of this commitment--and to resist the excuses that may soon be offered for allowing Pol Pot to escape judgment before a credible tribunal.

Two months ago, the world was presented with an unexpected opportunity to prosecute Pol Pot. In June, a faction of Khmer Rouge guerrillas rebelled against their longtime leader, capturing him near the Thai border. The rebels were open to the possibility of turning Pol Pot over to Cambodian authorities who, in turn, were prepared to surrender him for trial before an international tribunal. But after a flurry of high-level diplomatic efforts, it became clear that nations able to bring Pol Pot to justice were more disposed to be deterred.

The United States, whose law does not easily enable it to prosecute Pol Pot, urged Canada and other countries with the requisite laws to seek his extradition. One would think that Canada would have deemed it a privilege to provide a forum for enforcing the world’s conscience, for prosecuting a man who, perhaps more than any other living person, embodies mankind’s capacity for grand evil. Instead, it expressed irritation at having been put on the spot and identified a raft of obstacles to his extradition.

Some raised the risk of unintended consequences. What if negotiations for Pol Pot’s surrender proved destabilizing? It was, after all, Cambodia’s First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh who was leading the negotiations, and his co-prime minister, Hun Sen, might perceive a threat in a deal between his rival coalition partner and Pol Pot’s captors.

The coup last month against Ranariddh by Hun Sen might seem to have vindicated these fears--and entomb forever the prospects of securing Pol Pot’s presence before a legitimate court--until the dramatic images of Pol Pot’s show trial placed the question of his fate in the foreground of international conscience and responsibility.

In light of nations’ demonstrated reluctance to meet that responsibility, it is important to examine the reasons for their hesitancy--and to dispel several myths concerning the relationship of negotiations over Pol Pot’s fate and the July coup.

First, many have fallen for Hun Sen’s claim that he was at least partly justified in overthrowing Ranariddh because the prince had been “secretly” negotiating with “Pol Potist” remnants in northern Cambodia. But far from being secret or treasonous, Ranariddh’s negotiations in Anlong Veng were undertaken pursuant to an agreement he had reached with Hun Sen. Ranariddh’s party, known by its French acronym FUNCINPEC, sought to neutralize the military threat posed by the forces at Anlong Veng by offering “lower down” Khmer Rouge stationed there virtually the same deal that Hun Sen had granted their erstwhile comrades in western Cambodia, who defected from Pol Pot in 1996.

When FUNCINPEC’s negotiations provoked a split among senior Khmer Rouge leaders, resulting in the execution of one, Son Sen, and the arrest of Pol Pot by another, Ta Mok, FUNCINPEC pressed for Pol Pot to be turned over to the international community to stand trial. His interlocutors at Anlong Veng did not decline, but asked for a “concrete, guaranteed” judicial venue. If they were to surrender Pol Pot, they wanted to know where he would be sent. When no clear response materialized, the negotiations bogged down.

Meantime, a creeping coup set in motion by Hun Sen to to destroy FUNCINPEC’s power bases and parliamentary majority was accelerating. It seemed the only way out of political checkmate. The international community insisted that Hun Sen honor Cambodia’s commitments to hold free and fair elections in 1998, which he was certain to lose. His already low popularity had declined even more since a failed attempt in March to assassinate opposition leader Sam Rainsy in a grenade attack; Hun Sen’s bodyguards were revealed to have played a direct role. A primary aim of the coup was to disarm FUNCINPEC-controlled police and military units to ensure that FUNCINPEC politicians had no protection from violent threats and intimidation aimed at driving them out of powerful positions in the civil service.

As pretext for this action, Hun Sen fabricated allegations--widely reported in the media but now discredited by independent investigators--that FUNCINPEC was bringing in “hidden Khmer Rouge” to expand its armed forces. It was, he said, for this reason that he sent in his own troops to arrest and disarm the “treasonous” FUNCINPEC forces. The coup happened when Ranariddh’s senior military commander resisted disarmament. Conveniently for Hun Sen’s rhetorical strategy, this same commander had been in charge of the talks at Anlong Veng.

Hun Sen now insists that Ranariddh should be tried for his “treasonous” contacts with Khmer Rouge. Yet, Hun Sen’s representatives are attempting to take up the negotiations in Anlong Veng where Ranariddh left off, offering the same deal.

A second often-repeated myth is that Hun Sen acted to thwart prosecution of Pol Pot lest such a trial bring to light his own Khmer Rouge past. Yet, that past is already well known and, whatever his culpability for recent depredations, Hun Sen has scant cause to fear criminal prosecution for his conduct as a junior Khmer Rouge cadre. Historians, human-rights researchers and others who have spent years probing archival records and interviewing former communist cadres have found no proof of direct involvement by Hun Sen in political killings or other crimes while Pol Pot was in power.

Hun Sen has, to be sure, much to answer for in his post-Khmer Rouge years. Today, more Cambodians are threatened with human-rights violations by Hun Sen than by the Khmer Rouge. Indeed, it is crucial that the international community take concerted action to release Cambodia from his anti-democratic stranglehold and ensure that Cambodians can select their leaders through free and fair elections. Still, these efforts should not obscure the continuing importance of bringing Khmer Rouge criminals to justice.

Such trials could, in fact, help reverse a trend that has had a toxic effect on Cambodia’s fragile democratic culture. By distinguishing those who are criminal from others associated with the increasingly meaningless label “Khmer Rouge,” such prosecutions would help disarm a much abused tactic for discrediting political opponents--playing the Khmer Rouge card by deploying the label against political opponents.

A third misconception concerns the potential for bringing Khmer Rouge criminals to trial. One possibility explored last June is to create an international tribunal for Cambodia, or to expand the jurisdiction of the United Nations tribunal established to try war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. When these options were raised in June, skeptics observed that China would likely veto any such effort at the U.N. Security Council.

But this was not, as was often implied, an insuperable obstacle. A tribunal could also be established by the U.N. General Assembly, where China does not exercise a veto. Security Council action would be necessary to coerce the cooperation of recalcitrant nations states. But that is not a problem here. Cambodia has asked the United Nations to establish a tribunal to try Pol Pot.

Nor, in any case, is U.N. action necessary, although the organization’s imprimatur would enhance the legitimacy of any effort to bring Pol Pot to justice. A coalition of willing nations could establish a tribunal to try Pol Pot and others by concluding a treaty.

A final excuse for abiding impunity for Khmer Rouge crimes is the oft-heard claim that Cambodians eschew prosecution as alien to their culture. This view, more convenient than true, dehumanizes the survivors of Cambodia’s killing fields. We empathize with the quest for justice by relatives of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. But when Cambodians seek some measure of accountability for crimes of epic dimension, we wonder why they can’t just get over it.

Beyond that, crimes on the scale of those committed by Pol Pot and others in the 1970s concern us all. They are, both legally and morally, crimes against humanity.