The crimes of the Khmer Rouge are well known. Between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot's regime of 'Democratic Kampuchea' turned Cambodia into a 'land of blood and tears' — a vast agrarian social experiment that enslaved the population and led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians.
After nearly three decades of legal impunity, justice is finally catching up with the surviving Khmer Rouge leadership. Following six years of negotiations between the UN and the Cambodian government, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was established in 2006, with the hope that 'the senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge and those most responsible for serious crimes' would finally be held accountable.
But for all its noble rhetoric, the ECCC is plagued with problems. The 'mixed' (joint UN-Cambodian) tribunal is beset by ballooning budgets and the proceedings continue to crawl along at a glacial pace.
In January, the ECCC revised its budget upwards to US$169.7 million — up from an original $56.3 million — and pushed back its expected finishing date until the end of 2011. Meanwhile, wages for 200 Cambodian employees of the ECCC have not been guaranteed beyond the end of April.
So far, just five leading Khmer Rouge have been arraigned by the Phnom Penh court, and the proceedings have yet to move beyond a series of lengthy pre-trial appeals. The first trial, that of Khang Khak Iev — the former head of the Tuol Sleng torture prison in Phnom Penh — is scheduled to begin in July, finances pending.
On 3 April, the Australian government announced it will donate $500,000 to the ECCC, but even after meetings with ECCC officials in New York, the major donor nations are dragging their feet. According to reports, the countries providing the primary funding for the trial — Britain, Germany, Japan and France — are hesitant to commit more money to a trial process that some fear is under the political influence of the Cambodian government and its ruling party, the Cambodian People's Party.
The ECCC presides under the auspices of Cambodia's judicial system, and some donors have cited irregularities in the hiring of key officials, with certain posts going to suspiciously under-qualified candidates.
Similar misgivings were expressed by Amnesty International after the UN-Cambodian agreement establishing the tribunal was signed in June 2003. Due to the 'precarious state of Cambodia's judiciary', Amnesty argued, the UN General Assembly