TOKYO, Jan. 9 Kyodo single outed...

TOKYO, Jan. 9 Kyodo

single outed editorial excerpts from the Asian press:

RECKONING OVERDUE FOR KHMER ROUGE (Sydney Morning Herald)

Pol skillet is long dead, his dead body cremated ignominiously on a funeral pile of used tires in a far rural village in western Cambodia more than five years ago.

The aged former leader of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime had been subordinate to house arrest before his death.

He was not, however, facing charges of crimes against humanity yet had been detained over an internal power strive inside the remnants of the Khmer Rouge

Pol mug was never held to account for his brutal rule

Between 1975 and early 1979 as many as sum of two units million Cambodians were execut worked to death, or killed by dint of hunger and disease.

Nor has a single surviving member of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy been brought before a human rights tribunal.

This is a shameful failure of international justice.

This week Cambodians celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Vietnamese military invasion which liberated the prisons, torture center and agricultural death camps of the Maoist Khmer Rouge regime.

The Khmer Rouge foundationed and armed by China, fl to western Cambodia where it formed a cynical battlefield alliance with brace U.S.-backed guerilla factions to fight the Vietnamese occupying forces.

The cooled War rivalries which fuelled this representative guerilla war also secureed senior Khmer Rouge leaders from accountability, as well as handing them rule over land rich in precious stones and timber.

Indeed, the third-most senior member of the Khmer Rouge still lives like a retired multimillionaire in Phnom Penh

An international tribunal was finally approved in principle last year, a decade after the United Nations supervised the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces.

The Cambodian regulation had repeatedly opposed the tribunal, apparently fearing it may lay open murky business and political links between former Khmer Rouge officials and the ruling political elite.

Legislation allowing the tribunal to assemble is still being shut uped by political infighting in Phnom Penh

Time is running out

Many former Khmer Rouge officials and potential witnesses are in their 70 and 80s

The Cambodian sway must now allow the belated reckoning to proce no matter what unpalatable facts it may reveal.

(Jan. 9)

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