By Staff
Closing arguments begin next Monday in the trial of chief Khmer Rouge interrogator Duch, the first senior Pol Pot cadre to face a U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal investigating Cambodia's genocide.
Here are some facts about the Khmer Rouge and how Cambodia is dealing with its legacy:
THE KILLING FIELDS
- Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge guerrillas launched a bloody agrarian revolution in 1975, five years after King Norodom Sihanouk was overthrown in a right-wing coup.
- An estimated 1.7 million people -- 21 percent of the population -- were executed or died of disease, starvation or overwork over the next four years in rural labor camps that became known as the "Killing Fields."
THE FALL OF THE KHMER ROUGE
- Vietnamese troops invaded in late 1978 and installed a communist government made up mostly of former Khmer Rouge cadres, including current Prime Minister Hun Sen. Hanoi withdrew in 1989.
- Fighting continued between the government and Khmer Rouge remnants between 1979 and 1991. Millions of Cambodians remained in refugee camps during the unrest.
SLOW ROAD TO JUSTICE
- A 1991 U.N.-brokered peace pact led to elections in 1993 and the restoration of Sihanouk as a constitutional monarch.
- In August 1999, two years after Cambodia asked the United Nations and the international community to help set up a Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal, the government said it wanted to maintain overall control of the court.
- The plan languished for years. Draft laws flew back and forth between Cambodia and the United Nations. The tribunal's legitimacy was questioned in Cambodia and there were calls for world leaders -- from former U.N. leaders to Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher and Henry Kissinger -- to be subpoenaed over their support for Pol Pot's regime.
Closing arguments begin next Monday in the trial of chief Khmer Rouge interrogator Duch, the first senior Pol Pot cadre to face a U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal investigating Cambodia's genocide.
Here are some facts about the Khmer Rouge and how Cambodia is dealing with its legacy:
THE KILLING FIELDS
- Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge guerrillas launched a bloody agrarian revolution in 1975, five years after King Norodom Sihanouk was overthrown in a right-wing coup.
- An estimated 1.7 million people -- 21 percent of the population -- were executed or died of disease, starvation or overwork over the next four years in rural labor camps that became known as the "Killing Fields."
THE FALL OF THE KHMER ROUGE
- Vietnamese troops invaded in late 1978 and installed a communist government made up mostly of former Khmer Rouge cadres, including current Prime Minister Hun Sen. Hanoi withdrew in 1989.
- Fighting continued between the government and Khmer Rouge remnants between 1979 and 1991. Millions of Cambodians remained in refugee camps during the unrest.
SLOW ROAD TO JUSTICE
- A 1991 U.N.-brokered peace pact led to elections in 1993 and the restoration of Sihanouk as a constitutional monarch.
- In August 1999, two years after Cambodia asked the United Nations and the international community to help set up a Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal, the government said it wanted to maintain overall control of the court.
- The plan languished for years. Draft laws flew back and forth between Cambodia and the United Nations. The tribunal's legitimacy was questioned in Cambodia and there were calls for world leaders -- from former U.N. leaders to Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher and Henry Kissinger -- to be subpoenaed over their support for Pol Pot's regime.
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