Caging the Khmer Rouge

The Hun Sen Government in Cambodia has drawn up a new blueprint for the trial of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge. P. S. SURYANARAYANA analysis the move.

THE ``MILLENNIUM crossover'' in this emerging new era of ``pax electronica'' is hardly the time for a small and hapless South East Asian State like Cambodia to make its presence felt on the international stage. Yet, the reign of genocidal terror in that country in the 1970s has not ceased to be relevant to the evolving ethos of international relations at the dawn of a new millennium. The prevention of the rise of genocidal regimes is an abiding issue on the ill-defined but recognisable international agenda, and that accounts for a new sense or urgency on the Cambodian front. The only incongruence is that the Cambodian Government's sense of urgency does not match the priorities of the global community as being articulated by the United Nations.

Since winning a mandatory vote of confidence, a novelty in itself, in Cambodia's newly-elected National Assembly over a year ago, the Prime Minister, Mr. Hun Sen, has not looked back. The criticality of that confidence vote needs no explanation in a Cambodian context that was defined by the absence of political morality for several decades, notwithstanding the perceived constitutionality of the long-reigning monarch, King Norodom Sihanouk.

More recently, Mr. Hun Sen's participation in the summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Manila in November served as an international endorsement of his status as the new leader of Cambodia. It is in this context that Mr. Hun Sen has begun a new round of diplomatic dialogue with the U.N. over the issue of laying the ghost of the Khmer Rouge to eternal rest. But the question is whether the dialogue is likely to make any headway at all.

The Hun Sen administration drew up a new blueprint recently for the trial of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, all of them already condemned by the world as cohorts of the deceased Pol Pot in his crimes against humanity carried out in the name of creating an agrarian El Dorado in Cambodia in the 1970s. Mr. Hun Sen lost no time in sending the plan to the U.N. for its comments.

These sequential actions were in tune with his oft-stated policy of associating the U.N. with the trial of Pol Pot's surviving lieutenants. But Mr. Hun Sen's parallel bid to go it alone, if need be, raised doubts whether he was merely going through the motions of consulting the international community, while actually playing according to a possible hidden agenda.

If Mr. Hun Sen had gone ahead with his parallel plans, his Cabinet would have by now approved the blueprint without having had the benefit of the U.N.'s comments to go by. Outwardly, this could not be seen as an irreversible step. But the fact remains that the stage would then have been set for a purely domestic trial within the judicial parameters of Cambodia's unsophisticated legal system.

Now, with Mr. Hun Sen giving himself some time to translate the blueprint into a final plan of action, the odds against a substantive trial have eased slightly. But international concerns over the Cambodian framework of justice have not eased.

Under the Hun Sen plan, foreign judges and prosecutors with international standing could assist their Cambodian counterparts in bringing Ta Mok, ``Duch'', Mr. Khieu Samphan and Mr. Nuon Chea to book. But the proverbial scales of justice will be left entirely in the hands of the Cambodian legal luminaries. This aspect is opposed by Western observers. The absence of judicial expertise in Cambodia need not be laboured as an argument to acknowledge their point.

The idea of a ``super majority'' for a judicial verdict on genocidal crimes is another novelty in the Cambodian scheme, besides the proposal that both Khmer prosecutors and international experts could adduce evidence and argue the case. If Mr. Hun Sen had considered it prudent to make his intentions clear, despite being aware of the Western scepticism, he had strong compulsions to test the will of the international community.

Apart from the obvious argument about Cambodian sovereignty over the Khmer Rouge trial, Mr. Hun Sen played the card of national unity and reconciliation to justify an internal process of justice. An anti-genocide trial was not seen by him as a deterrence option but as a Pandora's Box. His stated fear was that a trial by an international tribunal could only revive old passions in Cambodia. This argument could not be dismissed outright, if only because the Khmer Rouge had spread its tentacles deep within Cambodian society. This perceived reality could alone lead to fresh tensions in Cambodia in a Khmer Rouge trial by an international jury under the largely Western norms of retributive justice.

Beyond this, Mr. Hun Sen's gameplan covered other considerations of exposing the chinks in the international community's human rights armour. Given the Khmer Rouge's varying equations with such countries as the U.S., at one end of the spectrum, and Thailand, at another, over a long period, Mr. Hun Sen knew that the demand for an international tribunal could be countered with the insistence on examining that organisation's realpolitik connectivity with non-Cambodian players and States as well, which was sometimes viewed in the West as a ``sideshow'' of the roles of Richard Nixon and Mr. Henry Kissinger in Cambodia's slide.

Now, the U.S. has already indicated its preparedness for allowing a scrutiny of its alleged role in the tragic drama of the Khmer Rouge's rise. If, however, the international community should now consider it worthwhile to give Mr. Hun Sen a full hearing on the trial issue, the reason has much to do with the remarkable manner in which his administration has brought that country to the threshold of a bid for establishing a proper civil society.

When the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) began its operations in March 1992, some Khmer people likened its advent to the possible fulfilment of a Buddhist prediction that ``white elephants with blue hats'' would save the country from disaster. Now, although Mr. Hun Sen has not been viewed as a possible saviour of Cambodia, he seems determined to prove that he can still make a positive difference.

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