To make up for its tacit support of the Khmer Rouge, it is the international community’s responsibility to help Cambodia try former leaders of the genocidal regime, Minister of Cabinet Sok An told an international conference in Sweden last week.
“Let me be frank here,” the minister told a seminar of the Stockholm International Forum, according to a copy of the speech provided by the Documentation Center of Cambodia. “We felt that it was important for the international community to share in carrying out this task in order to clear its own record on previous support for the Khmer Rouge.”
Although the UN in February abandoned nearly five years of negotiations toward a tribunal, Cambodia will find another way to legitimately try former Khmer Rouge leaders for their crimes if the UN continues to withhold its cooperation, Sok An said.
“While primacy is given to United Nations participation in the process, if it pulls out, Cambodia is entitled to go ahead to establish the [tribunal] without the United Nations, hopefully with the participation and support of individual member states and foreign legal personalities,” he said.
Sok An and others continue to speak of the UN pullout as an “if”—something that might happen in the future—although it has already happened and the UN has staunchly insisted on multiple occasions that it will not return to negotiations. Many governments, including the US and the European Union, have objected to the UN’s decision but insisted that no trial be held outside the auspices of the world body.
But the possibility that the UN’s decision might be final is beginning to be acknowledged. And the idea that Cambodia might stage a trial with the help of other individual nations has begun to seem slightly more likely since India said last month it would contribute a judge to such an effort.
Sok An, Center for Social Development President Chea Vannath and Documentation Center of Cambodia Executive Director Youk Chhang made presentations in a session of the yearly conference, which deals with world human rights issues.
In the most complete account to date of the government’s position on the UN decision, Sok An recounted the progress of its dealings with the world body.
To justify the pullout, UN representatives have painted Cambodia as inflexible and obstructionist; but Sok An said Cambodia repeatedly compromised with the UN during the negotiations.
He also noted that the UN pullout surprised the Cambodians.
“It was particularly surprising to read that the UN Secretariat believed ‘it is not likely that we would resolve it through further negotiations,’ considering how far both parties had come precisely through the process of negotiation,” Sok An said.
The Cambodian law that outlines the tribunal structure has been a key point of contention. The UN says that it could never agree to Cambodia’s demand that the law supersede an agreement with the UN. But Sok An said Cambodia never made such a demand.
“We…see the two documents as being complementary to each other, and we see no need to establish a hierarchy between the two,” he said.
He also noted that the Cambodian law, which the National Assembly passed last year, was drafted with the help of the UN. UN representatives, however, have claimed that they urged the government not to submit the law to parliament until an agreement was in place.
Youk Chhang’s speech highlighted the human side of all this technical quibbling.
“We have trusted the United Nations and the Cambodian government too much, believing that they would bring us justice and reconciliation,” he said.
“Now the Cambodian people are being held hostage on this issue.
“Both the United Nations and the Cambodian government are abrogating their responsibility to us, the victims, and also to the perpetrators. They are failing us.”
