 Former Khmer Rouge leaders must go to trial as soon as possible, the United Nations said on Saturday after the regime's former foreign minister admission to hospital. "The leaders are aging ... that's why we have to start the process as soon as possible," said Michelle Lee, the UN's leading administrator to a planned tribunal of former top cadres of the regime.
| I find this disgusting on more levels than I can count. She's urging "speedy" trials so they don't die of old age before Carla del Ponte gets around to them. Their victims, a significant portion of the population of a rather nice and usually inoffensive country, remain dead, and will be that way until the last trumpet. They didn't receive multi-million dollar trials; they maybe got a death warrant, followed by a shovel to the back of the head, or decapitated with kitchen knives. But the formalities are the important part, and a "speedy" trial takes 30 years to put together. |
Ieng Sary, who could be prosecuted for crimes committed during the communist regime's brutal rule over Cambodia, was admitted to hospital in Thailand with a serious heart condition, his son said on Friday. "He was sent to hospital four days ago. He is very serious, otherwise he would not be sent to the hospital," Ieng Vuth told AFP from the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin in northwestern Cambodia.
| "He'll soon be out of any danger from the UN, and in fact beyond all cares and woe." |
Ieng Sary, 76, is one of 10 former top Khmer Rouge cadres who could stand trial in a genocide tribunal expected to start later this year.
| The world dithered, studiously looking the other way, while 2,000,000 died. In the end, it was the Vietnamese who saved the Cambodians. The UN should have been disbanded at that point. Instead, it goes doddering on, wading through piles of corpses in its dotage: Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, Zim-bob-we... |
He was a member of the inner circle of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader, who is blamed for orchestrating one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.
| He died of old age, too... |
As many as two million people died from starvation, overwork or execution during the 1975-79 rule of the Khmer Rouge, who erased all vestiges of modern life in their drive for an agrarian utopia. So far, only two former regime leaders are in jail awaiting trial, and observers worry that others - including Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's number two, and Khieu Samphan, former Khmer Rouge head of state - could die before the joint UN-Cambodian tribunal is convened.
| And they probably will... |
Lee said Cambodia still lacked $9.6 million in tribunal funds. She said there was not a word yet whether donors would allow $6.9 million they contributed to a UN fund for Cambodia in the early 1990s to be channelled into the $56.3 million tribunal.
| I've got an idea. Find a stout young fellow who owns a shovel and give him $20. I'll bet you could find one easy enough. |
|