Cambodia’s War Crime Bullies

By Luke Hunt
The Diplomat
February 15, 2012

When international negotiators began the arduous task of thrashing out the makings of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, certain considerations were made. It was decided the entire emphasis of the trial would rest solely on crimes committed in Cambodia between April 17, 1975 and January 7, 1979.

This was the period when Pol Pot and his Standing Committee, an inner circle who terrorized their countrymen and obliterated Khmer culture, spawned the term auto-genocide. Conveniently, however, the decision meant the tribunal would be strictly a Cambodian affair and the wars waged before and after Khmer Rouge occupation would be dismissed.

As such, the likes of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Vietnamese leaders in Hanoi and their Soviet backers would be insulated from the tribunal’s reaches and Cambodian war crimes committed outside the mandated time frame deemed largely irrelevant. Read the rest of the article at The Diplomat.