After 30 years, the leading members of the Khymer Rouge go on trial for genocide. However, where are the other idividuals who are responsible for the mass murder in Cambodia?
Over thirty years after they were ousted from power, what is left of the crack pot leadership of the Kyhmer Rouge are currently standing trial. Over 1.5 million Cambodians died during four years of Khymer Rouge rule. The leader and architect of the crazy project, ‘Pol Pot’ died around thirteen years ago.
The entire population was forced to abandon the cities and go to work in agriculture. Anyone who refused was tortured and murdered. The John Pilger documentaries are an excellent overview of the period.
Quite right that these men are facing charges of crimes against humanity and genocide. Per head of population, this has to be the worst case of genocide ever committed. Perhaps if Cambodia had been an oil rich country, they outcome may have been different.
Reading around the atrocities in Cambodia, it has made me wonder if some of the other war criminals who decimated the Cambodian population will ever be brought to justice. I refer to the individuals within the US government who launched a secret bombing campaign against Cambodia. In 1969/1970, they dropped of half a million tonnes of bombs on Cambodia, killing in excess of 300,000 people. Much of the bombing has been documented as ‘indiscriminate’ as they didn’t care what the hit. The bombing was thought to have lasted fourteen months, however documents de-classified in recent years shows that the bombing was over fourteen years, starting in 1965, and in actual fact, 2.7 million tonnes of bombs were dropped.
One of the leading figures in the operation was the Nobel peace prize winner, Henry Kissinger. When is that bastard going to face a war crimes tribunal?
Who ousted the Khymer Rouge from power and ended the genocide, was it the the US, or NATO? No, It was the Vietnamese, who despite being decimated by nearly fifteen years of a brutal conflict that had cost them millions of lives, crossed the border and chased Pol Pot and his cronies out.
Cambodia has a bloody history to say the least. There is not a person alive in the country that has not had a family member murdered by the Khymer Rouge. I hope they get the justice that they are looking for. However, it is about time that the others who played a murderous part in the Cambodian genocide are taken to task.
I am not sure who, or how many of the US government of that time are still alive. Kissinger is. He is wheeled out as an expert speaker on world events on various TV stations and talk shows. He is respected by many, but in actual fact he is one of the most despicable men still alive in the world. He has the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands, yet sits with a fucking Nobel Peace Prize on his bedside cabinet.
Comments
A must watch, if you are
A must watch, if you are interested in the subject
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9159164859238659487#
Kissinger is the Eichmann of
Kissinger is the Eichmann of our time,a cruel and vicious butcher who stymied the UN and intimidated defenceless populations by subjecting them to total war.
No wonder the USA want the Hague War Crimes Trials abandoned and what happened to the calls several years ago for Kissinger to be tried for Crimes against Humanity?
The Nobel Peace Prize is a sick joke and if Albert Speer was alive today they would probably award it to him!
Kissinger personifies the cold brutal functionalism of Capitalism and the merciless nature of the State which as we see with the bloodyminded determination to attack Iran totally disregards the consequences for us all in the pursuit of profit and hegemony.For the sake of this they would gladly see the World burn-SCUM!
Don't forget that the U.S.
Don't forget that the U.S. actually funded the Khmer Rouge once the Vietnamese invaded
working class self
working class self organisation
You're forgetting the (approximately) 80 million native Americans killed for the U.S empire.
When the US was forced to
When the US was forced to leave Vietnam they transferred the running of the war to China, ie, their proxy against Russian imperialism.
US special forces and the British SAS were involved in the training of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge cadres.
yes fair comment.
yes fair comment.
Where's Kissinger? Safe in
Where's Kissinger? Safe in his penthouse. What do you expect? Justice is "just us" as dictated by just them, and Kissinger is one of them.
That's basically incorrect.
That's basically incorrect. The US ground troops were prohibited from ground combat in 1970; US combat ground forces were out in 1972. When the NVA swept south from Hue and Danang into Saigon in 1975, the US had already disengaged from almost all military operations in the area-- other than the shipment of armaments to the South Vietnamese government.
Vietnam and China have a long history of, let's just say, less than cordial relations. The US was in no position to transfer "running of the war to China."
China was quite capable of acting independently against the Vietnamese; it remains so to this day.
A quick note about this
A quick note about this bit..
It wasn't out of human solidarity that Vietnam did that but because the Khmer Rouge had been attacking Vietnamese posts along the border.. and, for instance, Cambodians don't think highly of Vietnam, Vietnamese or Ho Chi Minh
But yeah, one of the sad things about Cambodia is that it basically got stuck in the middle of Cold War politics: America and China supporting the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam. If I remember right, this even went to the point that the UN recognised the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia up until 1997 or something.. the only reason these fuckers are standing trial now is because the events feel far enough in the past to be able to bring them up without embarassing anyone 'important'..
Didn't Herman and Chomsky,
Didn't Herman and Chomsky, whilst recognising the episode as genocide, dispute the official death toll, citing a Finnish study?
@working class self organisation, I'm so glad you linked to John Pilger's documentary. I remember reading his coverage of Cambodia in his book 'Tell me no lies' and bursting into tears, it's just horrific!
I didn't know this, do you have more on either points Ed?
a few things: - the Khmer
a few things:
- the Khmer Rouge not only attacked Vietnamese border post, e.g. on the 18th April 1978, they killed more than 3.000 inhabitants of the village Ba Chúc in Vietnam, only two villagers survived
- I do not know how it was in Britain or the States but in Germany, more or less all groups on the left which sided in 1979 with "Democratic Kampuchea" (maoist ones like the KPD/AO and the KBW, some spontaneist groups like the gang of Joschka Fischer) a few years later ended up at the right wing of the Greens
- the main reference of the only "theoretical" text, the Khmer Rouge produced , Khieu Samphan's phd-thesis L'économie du Cambodge et ses problèmes d'industrialisation from 1959 is the 19th century German nationalist economist Friedrich List, this mixed with chauvinist Cambodian nationalism, nostalgia for the "great days of Angkor" and some mao-stalinist paraphernalia constitutes the ideology of the KR
- and in a way, sometimes I feel, that there is a kind of obsession with the person of Henry Kissingers which makes me feel uneasy, he is one out of many bastards, not the primordial villain
I think the thing with
I think the thing with Kissinger is he personifies the cold, sociopathic realpolitik inherent to the state system. But unlike most politicians he doesn't dress it up behind morality, it's just naked. I guess a line for anachists to pursue could be 'if you don't like Kissinger, wait until you hear about the state!'
i remember hearing that oxfam
i remember hearing that oxfam produced a report that mentioned some of the british armies involvement in training the kymer rouge but then the government told them that if they didn't withdraw their report they would lose their charitable status and oxfam being the way they are they withdrew it. just a small piece in all the disinformation..
Never Forget - Michael
Never Forget - Michael Parterniti