Khmer Rouge Genocide Recognition and International Penal Justice

Extract

[...] This jurisdiction represents the completion of the construction of international criminal justice with this desire for a permanent and stable institution. It aims to respect international law and humanitarian law. However, the ICC, like international criminal justice, faces politicization of judicial procedures, with the UN's oversight of this jurisdiction, where some countries have a veto power. Then, the slowness of international criminal justice does not only concern the Extraordinary Chambers of Cambodia, it is a recurring problem for international jurisdictions that struggle to admit their legitimacy and authority. [...]

[...] In fact, the crimes committed during this war are unprecedented in History with large-scale massacres of civilians, targeted bombing of cities, and above all the commission of crimes against humanity and genocide. These crimes have been mediated through the work of many historians such as Raoul Hilberg.1 The Shoah concludes with the extermination of more than 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and the term genocide emerges to qualify this voluntary destruction of the Jewish people. These atrocious and war crimes contrary to the conventions of the law of war give birth to a need for peace and above all a necessity to do justice. [...]

[...] This genocide resulted in between 1.7 and 2 million victims, approximately 25% of the Cambodian population. The Khmer political regime implemented a policy of eliminating populations considered 'enemies of the regime' due to their social class, political ideology, or religion, and carried out massive deportations to rural areas as well as forced labor. The Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown in 1979 by Vietnamese troops that supported the establishment of a new Cambodian government, while some Khmer Rouge continued to perpetrate crimes. [...]

[...] Moreover, some Khmer Rouge were granted amnesty due to their repentance, leading to a situation of denial of justice. At the same time, Cambodia remained isolated globally due to a geopolitical context marked by the Cold War, and the Khmer Rouge continued to operate in the region until the late 1990s. As a result, the UN and Cambodia agreed to establish ad hoc tribunals to try these facts and recognize the qualification of genocide for these facts. B. The evolution of international criminal justice with the creation of the ICC In 2003, the UN sponsored the creation of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) to try particularly the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge. [...]

[...] The first conviction dating back to 2010, the judicial process has been particularly slow and has faced the political tensions of the Cambodian regime. Finally, the genocide was recognized for the first time by this court in 2018.4. At the same time as the creation of the Cambodian extraordinary chambers, the UN was developing a permanent international criminal jurisdiction to avoid creating ad hoc jurisdictions for crimes against humanity. The Rome Statute of 2002 provides for the entry into force of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for this purpose. [...]