WEEKLY SELECTION/RIGHTS-CAMBODIA: Rocky Road Ahead in Efforts to Try Khmer Rouge

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 1999 (IPS) - A United Nations panel that studied atrocities committed in Cambodia has recommended that a UN tribunal be set up try Khmer Rouge officials on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

But officials acknowledged a tribunal would face many challenges and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he will make a decision on establishing such a body on Mar. 15, when he officially released the report of the three-member panel.

A copy of the findings, obtained by IPS Wednesday, indicated that the panel, chaired by Ninian Stephen, strongly favoured setting up a court to try Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity from 1975 to 1979.

During that period, when Khmer Rouge founder Pol Pot seized power in Phnom Penh, an estimated two million Cambodians were killed or died from famine and preventable disease, according to human rights experts.

“The group believes that a UN tribunal must have jurisdiction over crimes against humanity and genocide,” the report said. “These two crimes, especially crimes against humanity, constituted the bulk of the Khmer Rouge terror.”

The panel also argued that any tribunal should be entrusted to try other crimes that marked the Pol Pot years, including forced labour and torture.

Pol Pot died last year but the report indicated the political perils the United Nations would face if it attempted to put remaining Khmer Rouge leaders on trial for their role in the “killing fields” of the late 1970s.

The Stephen panel contended that Cambodia could not be trusted to organise a trial on its own, or even to host a foreign court, because any judicial process “would be subject to manipulation by political forces in Cambodia”.

The group noted that the transition from authoritarian rule in Cambodia had been incomplete, with continued factional fighting. Last year, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen seized control over the leadership after the ouster of his co-leader, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, and disputed national elections.

Any UN tribunal should be placed in a city “somewhere in the Asia-Pacific region”, although outside Cambodia itself, the report said.

“A tribunal in such a city would preserve for Cambodians the sense that trials were taking place in their own part of the world and not, for instance, in distant Europe, and would enable Cambodians to follow them closely.”

The panel opposed setting up any UN court in Cambodia itself and was against seeking any Cambodian authorisation that could “permit significant political factors to intrude upon and delay matters”.

While the panel favoured including at least one Cambodian official in the judicial process, it warned that “it might well be impossible to find a judge free of at least the appearance of prejudice”.

Instead, the panel urged the United Nations to set up a tribunal structured along the same lines as war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.

As with those two tribunals, the lead prosecutor for the proposed Cambodia tribunal should be Canadian Justice Louise Arbour who, the panel added, should be assisted by a deputy prosecutor “specifically charged with responsibility for this trial”.

In perhaps the most complex aspect of the proposed tribunal process, the panel insisted that to be effective, the body – like the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals – must be empowered under Chapters Six or Seven of the UN Charter to do its work.

That step, in turn, would require the support of the 15-nation UN Security Council, one of whose permanent members – China – was expected to veto any Cambodia tribunal.

The Beijing government was the Khmer Rouge’s main ally and sponsor during the 1975-79 period, although China and the United States both provided support for the movement and its allies after Pol Pot’s ouster in 1979 by Vietnam-backed forces. China already has warned that it would not be willing to support a UN tribunal of Cambodian crimes that could disrupt the fragile stability in Phnom Penh.

Hun Sen’s government, which has wavered in its support for a trial after requesting UN assistance for a tribunal last year, also is likely to oppose the Stephen panel’s recommendations.

Hun Sen had insisted that any judicial body investigate the crimes both immediately before Pol Pot’s rule – when the United States engaged in a covert bombing campaign against Cambodia and supported the rise of the Lon Nol regime – and after 1979, when a foreign-backed Khmer Rouge rebellion continued to fight.

Both periods could embarrass the United States, which, like China, held the power of veto in the Security Council.

On Wednesday, Hun Sen said in Phnom Penh that his government would favour a truth commission, similar to those set up in South Africa, El Salvador and other former conflict zones, that might provide a general amnesty for those accused of atrocities.

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard declined to comment on the latest proposal, but the Stephen panel advised against any such commission. “The group is frankly not sure whether the Cambodian polity has yet achieved the level of national reconciliation needed to permit the establishment of a commission,” it said.