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Washington Post op-ed by Michael Abramowitz and Mark Sarna
November 20, 2011
Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated one of the great crimes of the 20th century. Some two million people died under this radical Communist regime that ruled Cambodia through a cruel and ruthless system of forced labor, persecution, and execution aimed at bringing about an agrarian utopia. The regime’s actions took the lives of one quarter to one third of Cambodia’s population in the “Killing Fields,” one of the largest cases of mass slaughter since the Holocaust.
After the Holocaust, the victorious Allied forces moved quickly to set up a system of justice at Nuremberg to hold the Nazis accountable for their crimes. The first trial was held less than one year after liberation. Amazingly, it has taken more than three decades for the world to bring the Khmer Rouge to trial. At the end of 2012, only one person had been convicted for crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979.
In October 2012, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum sent a delegation on a bearing witness trip to Phnom Penh to observe the trials of some of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Michael Chertoff—former US Secretary of Homeland Security and federal appeals judge and current chairman of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience—led the delegation. The group also visited memorial sites and met with judges, lawyers, and NGOs monitoring the case, as well as with Cambodian officials and the US ambassador to Cambodia.
Perhaps most significant, the delegation met with survivors of the Killing Fields and heard stories of the immense and continuing impact the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge have had on the people of Cambodia. Every single person in the country has been affected, even those who were not born at the time, by the devastation the regime left in its wake.
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Skulls and bones from a mass grave in Cambodia’s Kampong Chhnang province are now part of a memorial near the grave site. October 2012. —Lucian Perkins for US Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Tang Kim, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, sits with her daughter in front of their home in the Kampong Chhnang province in Cambodia. October 2012. —Lucian Perkins for US Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh, known as S-21, was the most notorious of the approximately 196 Khmer Rouge prisons. It is believed that at least 14,000 people died there. The Khmer Rouge kept meticulous records of all the prisoners and photographed each one. October 2012. —Lucian Perkins for US Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Chum Mey survived for two years in the Tuol Sleng prison, known as S-21, because of his skills at repairing machinery, but he never knew at the time if he would live another day. It is believed that at least 14,000 people died in Tuol Sleng, the most notorious of the approximately 196 Khmer Rouge prisons. Mey was one of the few prisoners to survive. October 2012. —Lucian Perkins for US Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Chum Mey shows where his cell was in the prison, which is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. He goes to the Museum several times a week to tell his story to visitors and sell his book about his life during the Khmer Rouge regime. October 2012. —Lucian Perkins for US Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Inside the Killing Fields Memorial are some of the skulls of victims killed at Choeung Ek by the Khmer Rouge. —Lucian Perkins for US Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Chum Mey is one of the few survivors of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where 14,000–20,000 people died at the hands of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979. October 2012. —Lucian Perkins for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
