THE
ROVING EYE On crimes against
humanity By Pepe Escobar
PHNOM PENH - The undated photo, by the
Documentation Center of Cambodia, is as chilling
as it is casual; right beside a black Mercedes,
senior Khmer Rouge brass - in their trademark
black pajamas, sandals and krama around the
neck - pose nonchalantly. We see "Brother Number
One" Pol Pot, his second-in-command Nuon Chea,
Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Vorn Vet. This is what
Hannah Arendt meant when exposing "the banality of
evil". This Monday, in a specially built
complex on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the
initial hearing of the starkly named Khmer Rouge
Tribunal took place by calling some of the most
reviled characters in recent history - including
"Brother Number 2" Nuon Chea and the relatively
sophisticated "Foreign Minister" Ieng
Sary, who convinced quite a few
diplomats, Americans and Europeans included, that
the Khmer Rouge were just trying to build a new,
agrarian society; and that entailed the ritual
killing over two million Cambodians in a 20th
century Asian holocaust.
Sary in fact has
previously admitted in secret meetings that the
Khmer Rouge wanted to shrink the population of
Cambodia from 7 million to 1 million, more than
enough for this agrarian dream - conceptualized by
Khieu Samphan in a Sorbonne thesis, much lauded by
the French at the time - to blossom.
The
angel of history intervened by having Vietnam
overthrow the Khmer Rouge in January 1979 - much
to the displeasure of Cold War Washington, which
later presented to the world the sorry spectacle
of supporting the Khmer Rouge at the United
Nations.
Cambodia is run by a so-called
"democratic dictator" - the wily Hun Sen - who has
made sure none of his former Khmer Rouge comrades
would have to face their crimes against humanity.
Moreover Hun Sen - with Cambodia as part of the
10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations
and subject of massive Chinese investment - will
never run the risk of facing North Atlantic Treaty
Organization liberation via humanitarian war. He's
one of "our" bastards - sort of.
Still two
generations of modern Khmers - who in the past
built one of the most sophisticated empires in
Asia - are waiting for some measure of justice for
the Khmer Rouge via a UN-backed court. The
prospects are not good. Hun Sen wants this to be
the last Khmer Rouge trial.
Only Duch -
the notorious torturer who ran the horrendous
Khmer Rouge prison of Tuol Sleng - has been tried
and sentenced in the so-called Case 001. Pol Pot
planned his exit strategy by dying in 1998.
Some of the charges against Nuon Chea,
Ieng Sary and his high-ranking wife, social action
minister Ieng Thirith make a mockery of their
state-organized genocide; they are accused, among
other acts, of capturing and killing American
yachtsmen and Vietnamese fishermen. Chea, 84 and
Sary claim they are old and ill. Sary even got a
pardon from then-king Norodom Sihanouk in 1996
after being convicted in absentia by the
Vietnamese in 1979. Khieu Samphan has always
managed to be too ill to face justice.
Substantive hearings in Case 002 will not
begin for several more months. The good thing so
far is that the hearings this week are being
broadcast live across the Kingdom. Yet no one
knows whether Chea, Sary and others will speak
during the hearings, or collaborate with the court
for that matter. Chea had the gall to take off his
large dark glasses in court this Monday to say "I
am not happy with this hearing" and then have his
co-counsel get into details.
Have war
will travel It may be tempting to have
historical perspective dissolve in bustling Phnom
Penh, among the young, educated and connected
drinking mojitos in terrace bars facing the
Tonle Sap River and the glitzy headquarters of
pan-Asian trading companies. But it's
impossible not to connect the Khmer Rouge and the
American Empire. It was Richard Nixon's illegal
war in Cambodia - call it VietCam, a precursor to
the current AfPak - plus support for yet another
tin-pot dictator, Lon Nol, instead of King
Sihanouk, that created the conditions for the
emergence of the Khmer Rouge and its power grab in
1975, just as the last American helicopter was
abandoning Saigon in disgrace.
Washington
didn't care much about the Asian genocide and even
grumbled when Vietnam toppled the Khmer Rouge.
And that takes us to the circular ways of
Empire; Khmers would portrait it as a naga
biting its own tail. Think of eternal Cold Warrior
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, recently
arguing that failure in Afghanistan is
"unacceptable", regardless of the costs of war
(just as failure in Vietnam was unacceptable).
Think of Gates telling Newsweek, "I've
spent my entire adult life with the United States
as a superpower, and one that had no compunction
about spending what it took to sustain that
position." Functionaries of Empire parroting His
Master's Voice can't get clearer than this.
There's more; "Frankly, I can't imagine being part
of a nation, part of a government ... that's being
forced to dramatically scale back our engagement
with the rest of the world."
"Engagement"
meant extending a war, illegally, from Vietnam to
Cambodia, and creating the conditions for an Asian
holocaust. "Engagement" means extending a war,
illegally, from Afghanistan to Pakistan, and
sowing extra chaos in South Asia. "Engaging" means
extending an illegal war over Libya - sowing extra
chaos in Northern Africa. "Engaging" means letting
the House of Saud bribe everyone in sight in its
reactionary, counter-revolutionary drive all
across MENA (Middle East/Northern Africa).
So mass murderer Nuon Chea may well be
excused for thinking, "I was just implementing the
dream of an egalitarian, agrarian society. It's
the Empire that should be in the dock for crimes
against humanity, not me." The real Year Zero may
not even have begun.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
