The West is now backing a trial process to bring Khmer Rouge murderers to justice. But we shouldn't forget who backed the Khmer Rouge and who spent years blocking attempts to bring them to justice.
As there are attempts to prosecute those responsible for the Cambodian genocide, signed into law by the UN and the Royal Government of Cambodia on 6th June 2003, some are naturally very worried. For instance, in the same month, Colin Powell took a brief trip to Cambodia to persuade Prime Minister Hun Sen to sign an Article 98 agreement. An Article 98 agreement is one in which nations that are party to the International Criminal Court agree to exempt US personnel from prosecution. The agreement was signed and endorsed by the Cambodian government on 3rd October 2003. No one will stand trial for the criminal bombardment of Cambodia in the years 1969 to 1973, which killed hundreds of thousands of people; no one, Chinese, British, American or Australian, will stand trial for aiding and abetting the Khmer killers when they were attempting to retake the country during the 1980s; no British or American government figure from the time will stand trial for attempting to block NGO assistance to a struggling post-Pol Pot country. The trials will be temporally limited to the period of Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-9, in which between 1.5 and 2 million people died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
No reason to be purist about it: those who were involved in that grotesque regime deserve to be tried, even if it is only a partial victory, even if the other criminals are left out of it for reasons of geopolitics. However, the arduousness of this process, and the attempts to block it by governments who legitimise their actions with the language of human rights, should not be forgotten.
Continue:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_leninology_archive.html#110950205384622429
No reason to be purist about it: those who were involved in that grotesque regime deserve to be tried, even if it is only a partial victory, even if the other criminals are left out of it for reasons of geopolitics. However, the arduousness of this process, and the attempts to block it by governments who legitimise their actions with the language of human rights, should not be forgotten.
Continue:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_leninology_archive.html#110950205384622429 
Homepage:
Comments
Hide the following 10 comments
Know Your History
27.02.2005 23:12
Read Chomsky.
People's Friend
1.5 million were murdered you idiot
02.03.2005 12:31
Oh, and I doubt that Chomsky has much sympathy for the Khmer Rouge either (in fact, that would be a major understatment IMO).
not left, not right, the middle finger
Rich Vengeance
02.03.2005 14:03
In a land that had its economy wrecked by bombing foreigners there was no food for anyone. The new government told people to leave the city and go out into the country to grow food.
Peasants, seeing useless urban parasites coming, killed them. Everyone was starving, perhaps they ate them.
Any complaints should be directed at the Rich, and at the war criminals in certain Western Governments who now pass legislation to protect themselves from prosecution.
Lucy Parsons was right. If it is not done with taxes, it must be done with knives and guns.
DarkerCloud
You are no better then Nazi Holocaust deniers
02.03.2005 18:49
What a load of bullshit!
So 1.5 million people were murdered because they were "urban parasites", huh? Sounds very much like the logic the Khmer Rouge used, killing people who seemed "interlectual" (which could have just meant wearing glasses), just so they could protect their own hides when their policies went belly-up. There were parasites all right, none other than Pol Pot and his lieutenants.
Genocide is genocide is genocide, doesn't matter if the perpritrators consider themselves "left-wing" or "right-wing", either way it is an act of pure, unadulterated evil against your fellow human being.
not left, not right, the middle finger
Hey, let's ask the man himself...
02.03.2005 19:32
“…executions have numbered at most in the thousands...these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing. “
Noam Chomsky. Distortions at Fourth Hand
“Refugees (i.e. those fleeing the Khmer Rouge) are frightened and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to report what they believe their interlocuters wish to hear. “
Noam Chomsky. Ibid.
“Ponchaud's book [concerned with Cambodia post-Khmer Rouge] is serious and worth reading…He…gives a rather positive account of Khmer Rouge programs of social and economic development. “
Noam Chomsky. ibid
“Cambodia is more similar to France after liberation, where many thousands of people were massacred within a few months under far less rigorous conditions than those left by the American war, then perhaps a rather different judgement is in order. That the latter conclusion may be more nearly correct is suggested by the analyses mentioned earlier. “
Noam Chomsky. Ibid.
Mordechai
A search later
02.03.2005 21:11
"...the US war had killed 800,000 people (which seems to be a considerable exaggeration) and that according to the US Embassy, 1.2 million had died since (that would be from April 75 through 1976 -- the statement was flatly denied by the Embassy)"
"t's true that the KR (not just Pol Pot, I believe) were rabidly racist, and had support for that. There was an element of what Vickery calls "poor peasant chauvinism." How large an element it was is another point of dispute. Vickery thinks a lot; Kiernan thinks less. Not easy to determine. We can't answer questions like that easily even for far more familiar and intensively studied societies: our own, for example."
"Whether these estimates are right or wrong, no one knows, and no one cares. There is a doctrine to be established: we must focus solely on the (horrendous) crimes of Pol Pot, thus providing a retrospective justification for (mostly unstudied) US crimes, and an ideological basis for further "humanitarian intervention" in the future -- the Pol Pot atrocities were explicitly used to justify US intervention in Central America in the '80s, leaving hundreds of thousands of corpses and endless destruction. In the interests of ideological reconstruction and laying the basis for future crimes, facts are simply irrelevant, and anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is targeted by a virulent stream of abuse. That runs pretty much across the spectrum, an instructive phenomenon. But one consequence is that no one can give a serious answer to the question you raise, because it is about US crimes."
So Chomsky denounces Pol Pot's murderous regime as well, however he quite rightfully also denouces the US bombing during the five years prior to him coming to power.
not left, not right, the middle finger
Chomsky from 1977
04.03.2005 14:13
The point is 1) I believe that the major atrocities of the Khmer Rouge happened in the later years of the regime so Chomsky may have been right - in 1977 - in saying that the death toll was in the thousands - it didn't rise into the hundreds of thousands till later. 2) Info about Cambodia in 1977 was sketchy and hard to come by. Everyone commenting on it then - the US government, Chomsky or anyone else - was making an educted guess. To guess and get it wrong is not denial of genocide.
Incidentally, I undertand the death toll for Cambodia to have been 1.5 - 2 million in total, half of these (0.75 - 1 million) killed by the USA from 1972-1975 and the other half (another 0.75 - 1 million) killed by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979.
steve3742
you cant make omlets without braking eggs
04.03.2005 19:53
revolution means violance. it is natural to hate those who oppress you. and if you hate then you want to kill. if your poor you want to kill rich people if your black asian white people (in 3world and elsewere) if your muslim jewish.
how else you going to get rid of people who oppress you. talk to them.
cambodians were angry with there countries middleclass and so killed them.
no revolution has past without violance. france russia palestinian, all violance.
you cant make omlets without braking eggs.
truthteller
yeah
05.03.2005 11:36
peasant
Steve3742 is professional liar
10.12.2006 18:01
yer chlompsky is fascist and imbecil .
period
baba