Khmer Rouge

NEW DELHI -- The death Thursday of one of the last senior leaders of Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime before his trial concluded underscores flaws in the war-crimes tribunal process that threaten to undermine the pursuit of global justice, according to lawyers, human rights activists and victims. Ieng Sary, 87, who died after a battle with heart disease and high blood pressure, was co-founder and foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge. An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians, one quarter of the nation's population at the time, died of disease, starvation, forced labor and execution during its 1975-79 reign.

NEW DELHI -- The death Thursday of one of the last senior leaders of Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime before his trial concluded underscores flaws in the war-crimes tribunal process that threaten to undermine the pursuit of global justice, according to lawyers, human rights activists and victims. Ieng Sary, 87, who died after a battle with heart disease and high blood pressure, was co-founder and foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge. An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians, one quarter of the nation's population at the time, died of disease, starvation, forced labor and execution during its 1975-79 reign.

Medics working for Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge rulers at a notorious death camp slowly killed prisoners by draining their blood to be used for infusions for privileged cadres, according to allegations presented Monday at a hearing for one of the regime's leaders. Kang Kek Ieu ran the S-21 prison, also known as Tuol Sleng, where more than 12,000 men, women and children were tortured before being executed in the nearby "killing fields" outside the capital, Phnom Penh.

NEW DELHI -- Thousands of people lined the streets of Cambodia's capital Friday for the funeral of King Norodom Sihanouk, a controversial monarch who helped build the young nation after French rule before cozying up to the homicidal Khmer Rouge regime. Sihanouk's embalmed body, which has been lying in state in Phnom Penh awaiting an auspicious date since his October death at age 89, was carried to the sounds of a 101-gun salute from the royal palace to an ornate funeral pyre in a city park specially constructed for the occasion.

In an apparent breakthrough in the talks on Cambodia's political future, exiled Prince Norodom Sihanouk said Wednesday that he is now willing to return to Phnom Penh as the country's head of state, even if he must abandon his coalition allies in the ultra-left Khmer Rouge and enter into a new partnership with the current, Vietnamese-backed government. At a news conference here after two days of talks, Sihanouk said he had given the Phnom Penh government clear conditions for his participation in the regime.

In one of the bloodiest incidents on the Thai-Cambodian border in months, at least 38 people were killed and 42 were wounded Wednesday when traders were attacked as they crossed from Cambodia into Thailand. At nightfall, according to reports from the area, dozens of wounded still lay in heavy brush along the border, out of reach of rescue teams of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Thailand. The attack took place near Ta Phraya, a Thai village about 30 miles northeast of the border town of Aranyaprathet.

While the United Nations has belatedly opened its archives on war criminals of the Nazi period ("Facing up to Horror," Editorial, Nov. 30), it continues to put the stamp of its spurious approval on war criminals of the more recent past. U.N. recognition of the Khmer Rouge-dominated coalition as the government of Cambodia is one of the most disgusting outrages of our disgraceful era of diplomatic history. When Pol Pot and his sadistic cohorts were ousted after repeated brutal attacks on Vietnam from the palaces of Phnom Penh, where they had presided in barbaric luxury over the depopulation of their own country, the opportunity was tragically lost to dismantle their vicious organization and bring the leaders to trial for crimes against humanity.

Nuon Chea, one of the Khmer Rouge's top surviving leaders, made a surprise appearance in a Cambodian court today in support of a former colleague accused of murdering three Western backpackers. Sam Bith, 70, an ex-general with the Khmer Rouge, the Marxist rebels responsible for the genocide of the killing fields, is charged with the 1994 kidnapping and execution of three backpackers from Australia, Britain and France. Sam Bith is the most senior of three commanders charged in the case.

The film "The Killing Fields" gave the outside world a chilling account of Cambodian reality under the rule of Pol Pot and his dreaded Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. More than a million Cambodians died of starvation and violence under the murderous regime but no top leader among the Maoist revolutionaries has been tried for these monumental crimes against humanity.

Indochina is again on the front burner of American foreign policy, and no one is happy about it. This time it is Cambodia, not Vietnam, that is the center of concern. Following the failure to reach agreement at the International Conference on Cambodia in Paris, the sense of disappointment and uncertainty in Washington is tangible. But this is no time to lose sight of our objectives in Cambodia.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Moy Da hasn't seen his sister in nearly 40 years. Like countless Cambodian families, they were separated during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. The brutal communist regime made it official policy to dismantle the nuclear family, which it considered a capitalist relic, and divided much of the population into slave labor camps. In 1975, Moy Da, then 5 years old, and his parents, who died three years later, lost track of 15-year-old Pheap when the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh and marched residents to the countryside.

Never Fall Down A Novel Patricia McCormick Balzer + Bray: 224 pp., $17.99, ages 14 and up When it comes to genocide, Hitler is obviously well covered. There are countless titles for young readers about the atrocities he inspired. The Khmer Rouge, which seized control of Cambodia in 1975 and, in its attempts to create an agrarian form of communism, killed millions of its own people, is less familiar territory, especially for young readers. "Never Fall Down" offers a detailed look at what it was like to live under such a cruel government from the perspective of one of its best-known survivors, Arn Chorn Pond.

During the Cambodian civil war from 1970 to 1998, the Khmer Rouge and other paramilitary groups began decimating that country's ancient sites in search of treasures to sell on the international art market. Along with arms dealing and drug smuggling, the looting and trafficking of artifacts became organized industries, which helped finance one of the 20th century's most notorious regimes. My colleagues and I have documented the painful scars from this plunder - desecrated tombs, beheaded statues and ransacked temples - at archaeological sites throughout Cambodia.

Three top Khmer Rouge leaders accused of helping mastermind Cambodia's "killing fields" in the 1970s went on trial in Phnom Penh on Monday as hundreds of victims and curious onlookers arrived at the court from around the country to witness the proceedings. The U.N.-backed trial is expected to take months. Furthermore, there's often been a significant delay in past tribunals between the end of testimony and the verdict. This reflects in part the highly political nature of these proceedings in a nation where feelings about that brutal period of history are still raw and many of those who served in the Khmer Rouge remain prominent in society.

The Cambodian men gather near a parking lot hunched over chessboards, some contemplating their next move, others squeezed in closely, offering strategy. Some tease opponents or cheer on players. The ages range wildly from 18 to 70, but all share an obsession with Cambodian chess, which varies subtly from the game commonly played in the U.S. They come together every day on a sidewalk on the eastern cusp of Long Beach's Cambodia Town. The smell of tobacco hangs heavy over the group, and a small heap of sunflower seeds sits within spitting distance.

As a U.N.-backed Cambodian tribunal opens Monday to try former Khmer Rouge leaders charged with genocide, critics accuse the Cambodian government of meddling and the United Nations of failing to uphold the court's independence. Standing trial are the four highest-ranking surviving former Khmer Rouge leaders: head of state Khieu Samphan, 79; Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, 85; his wife, Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, 79; and the revolution's chief ideologue, Nuon Chea, 84. They face multiple charges that include war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Before the Serbian massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, before the Hutus slaughtered the Tutsis a decade ago, the Khmer Rouge turned on hundreds of thousands of other Cambodians and in their twisted ideology shot, knifed, clubbed and starved them to death. The United Nations has established war crimes tribunals to try those charged with crimes in the former Yugoslavia, including its onetime president, Slobodan Milosevic, and in Rwanda.

I enjoyed Christopher Reynolds' article on Orange County ["A Swell Time," May 29]. He covered it well, in an entertaining way, but failed to mention Newport's Back Bay. I guess he thought there was nothing of interest there for travelers. Or maybe he had to cut it to save space. Too bad either way. It's a central part ofOrange County. George Carlyle Newport Beach Why did Reynolds sully an otherwise fine survey of coastal sights and doings by referring to "plutocrats" frequenting the Ritz-Carlton and the Montage?

Fifty years of civil war have left Cambodia a desperately poor and damaged nation with about a third of its 15 million people below the poverty line and a per capita gross domestic product of $739 a year. When Brandon and Andrea Ross started Journeys Within, a tour company and B&B just outside Siem Reap, in 2003, they also were struck by the living conditions, especially in the countryside where people lack clean water, healthcare and all but rudimentary education. Living here made Brandon, an American who grew up in Park City, Utah, appreciate his good fortune.