[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 45 (Wednesday, April 22, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3458-S3459]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   JUSTICE FOR THE PEOPLE OF CAMBODIA

 Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, last week, the mastermind of one of 
this century's most horrific crimes against humanity died apparently 
peacefully in his sleep. Pol Pot, founder and leader of the Khmer 
Rouge, architect of the grisly genocide which claimed at least one 
million Cambodian lives between 1975 and 1979, died at the age of 73. 
While some may see Pol Pot's death as final closure on one of the most 
shockingly brutal and despotic reigns in history, his death should not 
absolve the international community from seeking justice for the people 
of Cambodia.
  The scars from Pol Pot's four-year reign of terror remain in 
Cambodia, and on the face of humanity. History will judge us. Did they 
do enough? Did they do what they could? Did they even care? If those 
assessments were written today, the community of nations would be found 
wanting. The fact that Pol Pot lived to his dying day having never been 
punished for his crimes is the best evidence of that.
  When Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge captured the Cambodian capitol of 
Phnom Penh in April 1975, he and his lieutenants began a barbaric 
campaign to exterminate intellectuals, foreigners, bureaucrats, 
merchants, and countless others who did not fit Pol Pot's vision of a 
``pure'' Cambodia. Many thousands more were forced into slave labor 
camps, eventually dying from starvation, torture, and disease. I have 
met some of the survivors of that nightmare who escaped to Thailand and 
ultimately resettled in the United States, including in Vermont. They 
are a living tribute to the invincibility of the human spirit.
  Four years later in 1979 Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were forced from 
power, but they left behind a ghastly swath of death and carnage that 
counted at least one million Cambodians dead and a country that to this 
day is trying to cope with the ghosts of that era. Virtually every 
Cambodian now alive knows or is related to someone who perished under 
the Khmer Rouge.
  Although Pol Pot was the architect of the killing fields of Cambodia, 
those in his inner circle were responsible for carrying out his 
commands. Many of Pol Pot's chief lieutenants still roam the Cambodian 
countryside, reportedly along the Thai border. Men like Khieu Samphan, 
former President of Kampuchea; Nuon Chea, former second in command and 
someone described as Pol Pot's ``alter ego;'' and Ta Mok, a Khmer Rouge 
leader whose portfolio included killing Cambodians who had worked for 
the old Lon Nol government. Ta Mok was nicknamed ``the Butcher.''
  The wanton killing did not end decades ago. In 1996 British mine 
clearer Christopher Howes and his Cambodian interpreter, Houn Hourth, 
were abducted by Khmer Rouge soldiers and later led to a field and shot 
in the back. According to recent reports of interviews with Khmer Rouge 
officials, aides close to Pol Pot ordered the killing. Mr. Howes posed 
no threat to Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge. He was in Cambodia working to 
make the country safer for the Cambodian people by helping remove one-
by-one the millions of landmines sown in the fields. Today, Cambodia is 
infested with mines which continue to maim and kill the innocent.
  I am encouraged that the Administration appears ready to seek some 
formal mechanism to bring to justice key members of Pol Pot's inner 
circle. A number of possible approaches have been suggested, including 
a war crimes tribunal for Cambodia like the existing tribunal for the 
former Yugoslavia, or an international penal tribunal that includes 
Cambodian participation. These ideas and others merit further 
discussion as we examine appropriate ways to seek justice for the 
Cambodian people.
  The United Nations has also named a three-person team to investigate 
the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders. This too, is an encouraging sign.
  Whatever it takes, we must not let the fact that Pol Pot eluded 
justice diminish our resolve to apprehend and punish the members of his 
inner circle who are also guilty of crimes against humanity. History 
will judge us harshly if we turn our backs now.
  I ask unanimous consent that two editorials be printed in the Record.
  The editorials follow:

               [From The New York Times, April 17, 1998]

                        Pol Pot Escapes Justice

       Pol Pot, elusive to the end, died just as the world finally 
     seemed to be serious about bringing him to justice. No 
     punishment, however, could have fit the evil he committed. 
     From 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge wiped out a large 
     fraction of Cambodia's people, and left the rest with a 
     country submerged in violence and pain.
       The Khmer Rouge regime was surely the most bizarre in 
     modern history, its philosophy made up of one part Maoism and 
     three parts paranoia. It emptied the cities and marched 
     Cambodians to the countryside to starve on state farms. 
     Having an education, or even wearing glasses, could get one 
     killed as a class enemy. Thousands of Khmer Rouge's own 
     cadres were forced to confess to spying and tortured to 
     death. There is probably no adult in Cambodia today unscarred 
     by the loss of a close relative. Political life, too, is 
     still poisoned. The nation's spectacular misrule stems in 
     part from the scarcity of educated people and the political 
     habits learned in four years of terror.
       The Vietnamese invasion that ousted the Khmer Rouge in 1979 
     forced Pol Pot and his men into the jungle, where they 
     continue to wage a guerrilla war to this day. Many Khmer 
     Rouge troops have received amnesty and become wealthy and 
     influential members of Hun Sen's Government, including Mr. 
     Hun Sen himself. Pol Pot's death will rob investigators of 
     the chance to try him and to hear about the crimes of Khmer 
     Rouge leaders who are still in positions of power.
       Pol Pot, who became a Communist while on a scholarship in 
     Paris in the early 1950's, never apologized. In an interview 
     last October, the only one he had granted since 1978, he said 
     that whatever he had done he did for his country. He disputed 
     that millions had died but acknowledged that hundreds of 
     thousands had. Those killings were necessary, he said, 
     because the Vietnamese wanted to assassinate him and swallow 
     up Cambodia. His conscience was clear.
       This was said by an old man so weakened by malaria and 
     stroke that he could barely walk. He always had a gentle 
     manner and soft voice, and in the interview smiled 
     constantly. He did not seem a man who could have presided 
     over the deaths of more than a million people. Three months 
     before the interview, however, the Khmer Rouge put him on 
     trial, not for the crimes of his regime but for his murder of 
     a political rival and the man's family. The camera showed the 
     Khmer Rouge troops watching the trial chanting robotically, 
     ``Crush, crush, crush.'' He, of course, had taught them that. 
     The soft-spoken old man of the interview was a mirage. His 
     disciples showed who Pol Pot really was.
                                                                    ____


               [From The Washington Post, April 17, 1998]

                             After Pol Pot

       The reported death of Pol Pot in the Cambodian jungle means 
     that one of this century's most egregious mass murderers will 
     not stand trial or be held accountable for his crimes. But it 
     should not mean that Pol Pot's accomplices now will be let 
     off the hook, and it does not mean that other nations with an 
     interest in Cambodia's future should ease their pressure for 
     a restoration of democracy there.
       Between 1975 and 1979 more than 1 million and probably 
     closer to 2 million Cambodians were executed or died from the 
     effects of torture, deliberate starvation and brutal 
     overwork. Pol Pot was the nation's communist leader at the 
     time; he presided over the deaths of one-fifth of his 
     population. But he was not alone. According to painstaking 
     documentation assembled by the Cambodia Genocide Project at 
     Yale University (partially funded by the State Department), a 
     standing committee, on March 30, 1976, formally established 
     an integrated national network of extermination centers. 
     These were responsible for an estimated 1 million deaths of 
     people who are now buried in 20,000 mass graves. Eight to 10 
     members of that committee are still alive and at large.
       The tendency on the part of the international community 
     will be to abandon efforts to bring to trial those guilty of 
     crimes against humanity. With Pol Pot gone, attention will 
     fade; some believe his colleagues killed him for just that 
     reason. Moreover, some of Pol Pot's onetime comrades are in 
     league with Cambodia's current leader, Hun Sen. It would make 
     diplomats' jobs easier to let them be. It would also be an 
     affront to justice and to Cambodia's many victims.
       The same international fatigue is emerging with respect to 
     Hun Sen, who seized

[[Page S3459]]

     power in a coup last July. Officials from the United States, 
     Japan, Cambodia's neighbors and other nations will meet in 
     Bangkok on Sunday to decide whether to resume some aid to his 
     regime, at least to help organize an election he wants to 
     hold in July. Hun Sen hopes the election will legitimize his 
     authoritarian rule. Some in Bangkok will want to go forward 
     because Hun Sen has allowed deposed prime minister Prince 
     Ranariddh to return to Cambodia, supposedly a gesture of 
     reconciliation.
       But political killings of Ranariddh supporters continue, 
     and no one has been brought to justice for more than 40 past 
     murders; Hun Sen's opponents live in fear and with limited 
     access to the media; no impartial courts or electoral 
     commission exist. Until these conditions change, a credible 
     election is impossible. The United States and its allies 
     should not put themselves in the position of blessing any 
     other kind.

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