Weeks after presiding over the National Assembly’s ratification of an agreement to prosecute surviving ex-Khmer Rouge leaders, Assembly President Prince Norodom Ranariddh dismissed the tribunal’s value Monday, saying its projected budget would be better spent improving the nation’s agricultural sector.
“If I had $55 million, I would use the money to develop the country. It is more beneficial” than prosecuting the aging leaders of the Pol Pot regime, he told reporters outside the Assembly.
“There are two kinds of justice: The justice for the victims, and another justice for the poor people,” he continued. “Fifty million dollars is too much. How many canals could we dig with that money?”
Despite having helped kick-start what proved to be seven years of stumbling talks with the UN over the tribunal’s creation, Prince Ranariddh said Monday he has long harbored doubts over the tribunal’s necessity but refrained from expressing them.
The election of his half-brother King Norodom Sihamoni as the new king of Cambodia—a position Ranariddh says he declined—has loosened his tongue, he said.
“Now I am not a king, so I dare to talk about the budget,” he said with a chuckle.
Though Prince Ranariddh said that retired King Norodom Sihanouk agrees with him, the argument that the trial is a poor use of funds is a new one among government officials.
The prince’s comments Monday echoed those made in February by Nuon Chea, Pol Pot’s closest adviser, who said in an interview that the tens of millions spent to prosecute him and his comrades should be saved for Cambodia’s poor rather than wasted on foreign judges.
Observers pointed to the prince’s comments as further evidence of the government’s reluctance to pursue justice for the more than 1 million victims of the 1975-79 Democratic Kampuchea regime.
“It’s not surprising,” said Sam Rainsy Party spokesman Ung Bun-Ang, commenting on Prince Ranariddh’s remarks. “There’s no real evidence that the ruling parties want to have the Khmer Rouge trial. If the ruling parties were sincere about the Khmer Rouge trial, they would have done it a long time ago.”
Though government officials, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, have blamed stingy donors for delaying the tribunal’s process, other officials have speculated that a trial could embarrass the governments of Vietnam and China, both of which supported the Khmer Rouge regime at one point.
“They make statements to satisfy” foreign governments that don’t want the trial, said Thun Saray, director of the rights group Adhoc.
But Prince Ranariddh’s efforts to ratify the government’s agreement with the UN to hold the trial indicated his true willingness to see the Khmer Rouge leaders brought to justice, Thun Saray said.
“You have to see the actions of our leaders, not to listen too much to their speech,” he said.
