For 'killing fields' survivors, a sliver of hope for justice

The first time he heard the words "United States," Chuck Sart was a teenager living in Thailand in a filthy, overcrowded refugee camp for survivors of Cambodia's "killing fields."

Separated from his family during the Khmer Rouge reign in Cambodia, and unsure whether they had survived, Mr. Sart was swept up by an aid organization in 1983 and eventually delivered thousands of miles away to a home in Massachusetts.

Now a social worker and community leader in this former mill town 25 miles north of Boston, Sart wonders if the remaining members of the Khmer Rouge, which he blames for ripping apart his family and wreaking havoc in his homeland during nearly four years of rule, will ever be brought to justice.

He isn't holding his breath.

Last week the United Nations met to discuss raising money for a tribunal to investigate the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. But for survivors like Sart, justice has been too long coming.

Sart has watched from afar as other despots - Slobodan Milosevic, Rwanda's Hutu leaders, and soon Saddam Hussein - have been prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

Not the Khmer Rouge. No, he says, "We went through a horrible time and nobody cares."

The Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia in 1975, seeking to establish a radical Maoist state. Herded into communal workcamps, scores of Cambodians died of starvation, disease, and overwork. Others were murdered as the communists attempted to rid the country of "intellectual" or "elite" classes. Many middle- and upper-class Cambodians lost their entire families.

Sart eventually learned his family had survived, but they were among the fortunate. One-fifth of Cambodians, or more than 1 million, died under the rule of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who himself died in 1998 without ever having been called to account for the deaths of his countrymen.

"Saddam was a mass murderer - and so was Pol Pot," Sart says, in wonderment at the imbalance of global justice. "You can't just kill a million people and get away with it."

Today, most former Khmer Rouge officers live with impunity in Cambodia. Some hold government jobs. Others serve as village chiefs, a result of the peculiar way Khmer Rouge defectors were put in power after Vietnam's invasion in 1979.

In December, the UN and Cambodia signed a draft agreement establishing the legal framework for a tribunal, which is expected to last three years and cost $40 million. Now the UN is planning an official appeal to fund the tribunal that would indict between five and 10 former Khmer Rouge leaders deemed "most responsible" for the genocide. These developments are the most concrete since talks of criminal proceedings began in the mid-'90s.

Even so, corruption, instability, and the strong-arm tactics of Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former low-level Khmer Rouge leader, make the far-flung victims dubious of plans for justice.

Sitting in a booth at the Red Rose restaurant in Lowell's gritty Pailin Market, a gathering spot for many of the town's estimated 25,000 Cambodians, Vesna Nuon recalls stealing food from his Khmer Rouge captors.

"I stole the communal food even knowing that when you get caught they would kill you. When you're starving, you don't think about anything else," says Mr. Nuon.

Page: 1 | 2