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Khmer Rouge Conviction

By Doug Bandow on 7.27.10 @ 4:41AM

The commandant of the brutal S-21 prison run by the Khmer Rouge has been convicted and sentenced by a special court. Reports CNN:

A man who ran a notorious Cambodian torture prison where more than 14,000 people died during the Khmer Rouge regime was found guilty of war crimes Monday and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Despite the sentence, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, will serve no more than 19 years. The judge took off five years for the time Duch was illegally detained before the United Nations-backed tribunal was established, and another 11 years for the time he has already served behind bars.

The verdict -- which also convicted Duch of crimes against humanity, murder and torture -- sparked strong reactions as word spread outside the courtroom. Some said it made them lose faith in the war crimes tribunal.

Alas, most of the Khmer Rouge leadership will never be held accountable. Pol Pot, for one, died years ago.

The S-21 facility--a former school--has been made into a museum. It offers a horrifying picture of man's inhumanity to man. Combine that with a trip to the "killing fields" just outside Phnom Penh, where many of S-21's prisoners and others were murdered and buried, and one gains a sense of the horror of the Cambodian genocide. Still, it is hard to imagine what it meant for around 1.7 million people to be murdered, many through beatings and torture.

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FastJohnny| 7.27.10 @ 10:17AM

1.7 million murders is a conservative estimate when it comes to the purges enacted by the Khmer Rouge. This man who was responsible for the mass murder (and serial murder) will serve less time than many in the Western World convicted of a single murder. This is a very good example of how far the moral highground of the Asian world has come over the years. To these people, life is nothing. It is something to be discarded in the trash heap of power. Even though the US backed Lon Nol government of the 70's was corrupt and lacking, the aspect of state sanctioned mass murder was absent and it was not as swayed by communist influence. Prince Sihounouk, the pre-Lon Nol ruler was removed for similar reasons, state sanctioned murder and a close affiliation to the communist regime of N. Viet Nam. Seems that mass murder and communism goes hand in hand, since the Khmer Rouge were affiliated closely with the communists of NVN. Does anyone now see why the proxy wars and the attempt to stem the flow of communism was so important in the latter half of the 20th century? While unpopular at home, the policy of stemming communist influence in SE Asia came from the idea of allowing people to live free from the horrors of totalitarian and communist governments. In the 60's and 70's we did have the right idea, we did have the moral highground, we were able to stand up and say to the world that we knew what was better for the human condition, the only problem was the ugly head of liberal post modernism reared it's head and made the US effort in SE Asia leave these poor people in the hands of horrific communists and dictitorial rulers who saw it as no problem to put millions to death to support their new world order. All of you hippies, yippies and pinkos who were protesting and spitting on our boys when they came home in the 70's can now see what we were there to prevent and now can understand how you were complicit in the murder of millions.