50 years ago, Khmer Rouge began the era of terrorism in Cambodia. Justice is still far -reaching

Warning: This article includes discussion of genocide and references to severe violence.

50 years have passed since Boukhara Bon’s childhood aimed at climbing trees and making harm to Bennah into a nightmare. The era in which the Khmer was seized by Cambodia is still alive in his mind.

His early memories of the last citizens who welcome black soldiers who acquire black, turn into the amazing memories of evacuation when weapons are threatened in work camps during the new Cambodian year season.

It follows the horror that changes life after terror when the soldiers cut the families and kill randomly. Even children who are hungry are punished as a “stealing” chromosome or a drink from the palm tree from the wild instead of bringing it to mass camps.

“There are a lot of things that … you see but you cannot touch, you cannot eat … (because) you do not share food with the rest of the municipality,” Bonn, who now lives in Gatino, Kyu, remembers. Sunday magazine.

One of his sisters was arrested in this situation and brutally beaten to the extent of permanent brain damage. He said that his parents and his older brothers were forced to watch, but they were unable to intervene. Any challenge meant the implementation of their entire families.

On April 17, 1975, the beginning of the year was Zero, and the Khmer Rouge and its leader’s attempt to “reset” the nation and design it in a new communist society by clearing large areas of culture, traditions and Cambodians.

Today, the survivors and people who have links to Cambodia are reflected in the influence of the Khmer Rouge base for nearly four years, especially how it helped the motivation to sue Paul Pot and his senior leaders in paving the way before the International Criminal Court.

It is also a reminder of how justice appears today.

The promises turned into a disaster

By the mid -seventies of the twentieth century, Cambodia was deeply destroyed, according to Criging Echson, who studied, documented and widely written on the Khmer Rouge organization.

In the Vietnam War, the most amazing Cambodians in particular, the bombing of Viet Kong bases and supply lines on their soil-the country also suffered from a half-decade dictatorship during the era of the military commander who turned into the color of Nol.

Khmer Rouge sold persons trapped for his vision of change: “a new type of the Communist Party, which did not make the same mistakes (former communist parties).”

Instead, this disaster followed.

The cities were largely abandoned, and their inhabitants were forced to radically re -create Cambodia as a non -class, collective, and agricultural society.

The system closed schools, canceled money, ownership of lands and traditional family structures, and the prohibition of religion, temples and devastating artworks.

The objectives of persecution and implementation were widely spread: ethnic and religious minorities, artists, and professionals such as doctors, lawyers, teachers, and any person who is intellectually remotely, including people who were wearing glasses or managed to speak in a foreign language.

“They destroyed the Cambodian culture up to the roots. They destroyed the country’s economy and all its institutions. Attention,” said etcheson, who later worked, and one of the Campodian, one of Campodian.

The regime was expelled in early 1979, but the suffering continued. When Cambodians worked to rebuild the destroyed nation in the 1980s and 1990s, the members of the Khamir Rojin continued to oppose the Vietnamese government, which followed.

Canada’s role in international justice

The nineties were a period that witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the brutal violence of conflicts in the Balkans and in Rwanda.

However, besides these events, there was a new group in the external political scene – and a motivation to build an international court to issue war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, Remember Lloyd Accorke, who was Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2000.

Against that background, the United States approached Canada in 1997 with a proposal: “a clear mission for Paul Pot” before the discovery of “a suitable judicial operation” by the leader of the Khmer Rouge, he said.

Canada has been exploited as a possible partner because of its law that allows delivery and/or the prosecution of the defendants abroad for war crimes or crimes against humanity. After an intense legal analysis, Canada decreased, as Axworth said.

“At that time, caution was the word,” said Axworthy.

But another worker was Canada A failed case against IMRE FindaHe added. the The era of World War II, the Hungarian police captain resettled in Canada After being convicted at home to help send thousands of Jews to the detention camps.

“The complete idea of ​​bringing (Paul Pot) to justice fell, and I was regretted … but I learned from it.” “I think this is what gave us more momentum to participate in the development of the International Criminal Court.”

By the following year, Paul Pot died for natural reasons in a Thai border camp, and the Rome Law-which established the International Criminal Court-was adopted from member states all over the world.

Axworthy describes the court as an important first step in “establishing a stronger law ruling and about the principle of personal and individual accountability” – in exchange for the state accountability – the most dangerous international crimes.

He said it was hoped that he would deter even future atrocities.

If the court is already created, Paul Bot and “transferred it to a place like The Hague” were arrested, “in fact the court will give us the car that we had no.”

Almost at the same time, the Cambodia-with the help of the United Nations-to move forward in an operation for a year of the experience of the senior levels in Khamir Rouge.

ISobel Granger I had already had international peacekeeping tasks and investigations under her belt when the sergeant was appointed in 2015 to Cambodia. There, she conducted an interview with the survivors, gathered material evidence that was still emerging at a later time and drew crime sites to build the strongest possible case against the surviving leaders who have provided orders.

It was often the first person to open many survivors ever about that era.

One of the women reluctantly shared a long -standing story, which is to leave behind because there was no room on a truck. She later learned that she escaped from a trip to the killing fields.

Granger recalled another conversation that left a man in his fifties a spiral ball like a young boy consumes his memories.

Granger, who also traveled to Rwanda and stood before the burial sites in Kigali, said it was important for people to contact the extermination of the survivors.

“The crust of civilization is very thin,” she said. “People actually, if possible, should go to those places to find out what can happen when we don’t see each other as human beings.”

Justice “a long -standing idea”

After Khamir Rouge, Cambodia was led for decades by Hun Sen, the leader of Khmer Al -Hamar for one time and who was later defected. He continues the country’s presidency in the country, although his son took the position of Prime Minister in 2023.

Alexon said, in some respects, Hun Sen allowed international investigators who were surprised over the years, but after the members of Khamir Redly calm down in the Cambodian society and also hindered the efforts in the prosecution outside a handful of the movement of the movement.

ECCC eventually convicted three officials before the court ended in 2022.

Justice, I noticed etcheson, “a somewhat outstanding idea.”

“The entire (judicial) process was a large -scale social political experience to know the amount of justice that we can get in Cambodia. We discovered: some are not as much as many people want.”

“How do you find justice?”

Returning to Gatino, Buchara Bonn chanted Granger’s feelings that people need to remember the atrocities he perpetuated in his homeland.

During the four years of the Khamir Rouge era, an estimated 1.5 million to one million people – a quarter of or more of the Cambodia population at the time – were executed – or died due to hunger, malnutrition or disease.

“I was learning day after day to survive and you are constantly afraid to contact him for his execution,” Bonn said. “If you hear your name, (you) are already dead.”

The stumbling block in a trench hidden under the intense mango tree that was full of bodies. The young man was assigned to graze the cattle and one of them was withdrawn.

For fear of discovering him on GRASTLY, he immediately came out of the exit, and pulled the cow with him to find water where he can wash the wound.

“This killing (from) another person without remorse … this is the thing that (I) is more afraid: this story can return again.”

He said that Cambodia was “the worst hell on Earth.”

“How do you find justice for that? We lost everything.”