EDITORIAL - Justice in the killing fields

How long does it take to wait for justice? In the case of Cambodians, 35 years.

The Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia only from 1975 to 1979. In those few years, however, the Communist Party of Kampuchea under Pol Pot turned Cambodia into killing fields, with the party’s radical experiment in agrarian socialism leaving an estimated two million people dead.

Pol Pot committed suicide in 1998 while being held by a rival faction of the Khmer Rouge, and was not made to account for the genocide perpetrated under his watch. Last Thursday, however, a special Cambodian court backed by the United Nations found two other ranking Khmer Rouge leaders guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced them to life in prison.

There may not be much of life left in Nuon Chea, 88, called “Brother Number Two” when he was deputy secretary of the Khmer Rouge, and “Brother Number Four” Khieu Samphan, 83, president of Democratic Kampuchea. Several survivors of the genocide also expressed disappointment and said the punishment was not enough to give them closure.

But the two men are the highest ranking Khmer Rouge members to be brought to justice, and their punishment helps put Cambodia on the difficult road to healing. As stories of the genocide are revived following the verdict, the world is reminded that for the survivors, the atrocities can be impossible to forget. In the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, victims’ skulls are piled high in a museum as a chilling reminder of the reign of terror and an admonition that it must not happen again.

The Cambodian genocide occurred at the height of systematic human rights violations perpetrated in the Philippines during martial law by the regime of Ferdinand Marcos. While the violations were nowhere near the scale of the Cambodian mass murder, justice has eluded the victims of martial law.

Those who survived rape, torture, and arrest and detention without warrants will receive monetary compensation from assets seized from the Marcos estate. Although the amount can be considered token compared to the suffering, it is the first time that assets seized from a dictator will be used as restitution for human rights victims.

But most of the Filipino desaparecidos remain missing. And the best deterrent to a repeat of human violations is seeing at least some of those responsible brought to justice, as the Cambodians have done. This is something that has eluded the victims of martial law. There is no healing, and we see contraptions such as the “wheel of torture” still used by the police.