Shame on the UN

Dear Editor,

I was one of the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime. I really want justice for 73 members of my family, the majority of them executed without evidence of wrongdoing.

But personally, I don’t have faith, and I don’t believe or count on the United Nations’ tribunals obtaining justice for Cambodian victims.

The tribunal is focusing on Tuol Sleng prison (S-21) for the majority of the evidence to prosecute former Khmer Rouge leaders, including Duch, Ieng Sary, Kieu Samphan, Ieng Thirith and Nuon Chea.

But it is forgetting or ignoring a key player, former Khmer Rouge head of state Norodom Sihanouk.

Shame on the UN for wrongly focusing on S21, which was a prison for higher-ranking cadres of the Khmer Rouge’s revolution members. It had little to do with the real victims of the Khmer Rouge regime. S21 prison spilled only a little innocent Cambodian blood.

Again, shame on the UN. In 1979 there were at least a million Cambodians, I and my family included, who fled Cambodia after the Vietnamese invasion.

Many refugees had told the UN that the Khmer Rouge regime was a killing machine. But the UN ignored them and instead harboured the Khmer Rouge by allowing them to retain a seat at the UN from 1979 through 1991, even though they were no longer in power.

Justice has yet to be served 31 years after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime.

The Vietnamese installed the same Khmer Rouge cadres as puppet leaders, and about 85 percent are still ruling Cambodia today.

Savun Neang
Seattle, Washington