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in 2007, they were wrenched from quiet retirements and locked up to await trial at the
ECCC, a “mixed” court which paired UN and Cambodian judges. As the Duch case came
to a close, the message coming out of the court was one of accountability and justice long
delayed.
Behind the scenes, however, the tribunal was unraveling. In March 2012 the interna-
tional co-investigating judge, a Swiss named Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, resigned his post
after months of standoffs with the Cambodian government. At the center of the dispute
was the question of whether the tribunal should pursue two further investigations, known
as Case 003 and Case 004, which the government vehemently opposed. Meas Muth was
named in the third case along with Sou Met (who died in mid-2013); the fourth was
focused on three more mid-ranking DK cadres, all still leading quiet lives in the coun-
tryside.
After his resignation, Kasper-Ansermet released a scathing report describing the “seri-
ous irregularities, dysfunctions, and violations of proper due process of law” that he wit-
nessed at the ECCC. He claimed that Cambodian staff, including his counterpart, the na-
tional co-investigating judge, You Bunleng, had stymied his investigations into Cases 003
and 004 by withholding the official seal of the investigating judges' office and refusing
had a hand in hundreds of thousands of deaths, many more than were killed at S-21 on
Duch's watch. But without government cooperation there was no chance of the cases ever
reaching trial.
At the crux of the dispute were widely divergent conceptions of justice—of why the
tribunal was set up and what it aimed to achieve. The international courts that had been set
up after the Cold War to try the perpetrators of atrocities committed in places like Rwanda
and the former Yugoslavia all blended justice and politics in sometimes uncomfortable
measures. But the Cambodia tribunal stood apart as a product of pure political expedien-
cy. Its fraught and tangled history represented in concentrated miniature the fraught and
tangled relationship between Cambodia and the “international community.” Cambodia's
war crimes tribunal began in politics. In all likelihood that's also where it would end.
There's no doubt Cambodia is in need of some sort of a reckoning. If there's one unify-
ing theme to the country's relationship with its ghastly past, it is the profound lack of res-
olution. After overthrowing the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the ruling CPP promoted rituals
of remembering, but also of forgetting. There was much talk of liberation, of “January
7,” but most perpetrators were amnestied or left alone and allowed to return to civilian
life, often alongside their former victims. For political reasons the history of DK wasn't
properly taught in schools until 2007, and the younger generations still have little sense
of the scope of the tragedy that befell their country.
