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The Cambodian Genocide and International Law

By Dr. Gregory H. Stanton
Presented February 22, 1992 at Yale Law School
Published in Ben Kiernan, ed., Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia, Monograph #41, Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1993

Cambodia has been a party to the Genocide Convention since 1950.  The mass killings committed in Democratic Kampuchea were in clear violation of all the major provisions of that Convention.  Political killings are not covered by the Convention unless their intent is to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.  The evidence has now been gathered that establishes beyond a reasonable doubt the Khmer Rouge intent to destroy Cham Muslims, Christians, Buddhist monks, and the Vietnamese and Chinese minorities.

The Khmer Rouge singled out certain religious and ethnic groups for elimination.  A Khmer Rouge order stated that henceforth “The Cham nation no longer exists on Kampuchean soil belonging to the Khmers” (U.N. Doc. A.34/569 at 9).  Whole Cham villages were destroyed and their inhabitants murdered.  The half of the Cham who survived were forced to speak only Khmer, and their children were taken away to be raised collectively as Khmers (defined as genocide by the Convention’s Article 2e).  Buddhist monks were disrobed and subjected to especially harsh forced labor, killing over half of them.  Christianity was abolished, and only one Christian pastor survived.  Dr. Ben Kiernan has uncovered and translated a copy of the Central Committee’s order to demolish the Phnom Penh cathedral, part of the Khmer Rouge plan to eradicate all religion.  (Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, Pol Pot Plans the Future, Monograph Series 33, Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, Yale Center for International and Areas Studies, 1988, at 4).  His research demonstrates that the Vietnamese and Chinese minorities were especially hit hard (Ben Kiernan, “Kampuchea’s Ethnic Chinese Under Pol Pot: A Case of Systematic Social Discrimination,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 16,  No. 1 (1986) at 18).  A crucial intent in the Eastern Zone massacres of 1978 was to eliminate all Eastern Zone people, because they had “Vietnamese minds” (Ben Kiernan, “Wild Chickens, Farm Chickens and Cormorants: Kampuchea’s Eastern Zone Under Pol Pot,” in Chandler and Kiernan, eds., Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays, Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies Monograph No. 25, 1983).  All Cambodian ethnic Vietnamese who did not flee into Vietnam were exterminated.

To be punishable under the Genocide Convention, the destruction of a group must be intentional.  Intent can be established by a systematic pattern that could only be the result of orders from the top of a pyramid of command.  But intent can be proven more definitely through written orders or through testimony by witnesses to oral orders.  Such direct evidence has now been collected.

The most dramatic evidence of central government intent in the genocide was collected on my trip to Kampuchea in December 1986.  I interviewed numerous eye witnesses with Ben Kiernan.  (The interviews were recorded on videotape.)  The witnesses told us that when the Eastern Zone was evacuated in 1978, every person was given a blue and white checked scarf by Khmer Rouge cadres from Phnom Penh.  Every man, woman, and child from the Eastern Zone thenceforth was required to wear the blue scarf.  As numerous witnesses told me, it was “the killing sign.”  The Eastern Zone people were worked to death or slaughtered.  Those who survived were only saved by the Vietnamese invasion.  The blue scarves were given out as the evacuees passed through Phnom Penh (at Chbar Ampeau), and were distributed by Khmer Rouge cadres acting on direct orders from the Communist Party Central Committee.  The blue scarf in Kampuchea was the equivalent of the Nazi yellow star.  It is the most dramatic proof that the genocide was ordered from the top by government leaders of Democratic Kampuchea.

The Genocide Convention sets forth three legal options for prosecution of those who commit genocide.  Article 6 provides that  “persons charged with genocide… shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction” (78 U.N.T.S. 277, Jan. 12, 1951).

The first legal option under the Genocide Convention, therefore, is trial in Cambodia.

In 1979, two of the architects of the genocide, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, were tried in absentia in Phnom Penh.  The evidence against them was massive.  But the trial was a show trial.  The pathetic “defense” offered by Hope Stevens, an aged communist from the New York branch of the Association of Democratic Lawyers, was actually a confession and a lame attempt to shift blame to Vietnam’s current enemies, China and the U.S.  The hearings departed far from standards of due process and objectivity.  Although the verdict (guilty) was surely justified, it was pre-determined, as anyone who knows communist legal systems could have predicted.

This first option still remains open.  Mok, Pauk, Deuch, Khieu Samphan, and Son Sen have never been tried.  Pol Pot and Ieng Sary could be retried.  Currently there are no plans to hold such a trial.  When Prince Sihanouk spoke in favor of a trial in December 1991, he quickly added that it would not include the two Khmer Rouge on the Supreme National Council, Khieu Samphan and Son Sen.

If such a trial is held, and I hope it will be, it will only be after the Khmer Rouge have been politically defeated and removed from their seats on the Supreme National Council or a successor repository of Cambodian sovereignty.  That is unlikely until elections are held in 1993.

A major defect of this option is that in the common law world, trials in absentia are not generally considered to fulfill the requirements of due process.  Although one of the Nazis convicted at Nuremberg was tried in absentia, that trial was conducted under special rules.  If objections of many common law lawyers to trials in absentia are to be met, the Khmer Rouge leaders must be captured.  That task will not be easy, though it could be accomplished after the Khmer Rouge are defeated militarily.  Even without full defeat of the Khmer Rouge, capture of their leaders might be achieved through use of sophisticated intelligence and surprise attack, but it would certainly require the use of armed force.

The second option is trial by an international tribunal.  No permanent international criminal court has ever been established, as the drafters of the Genocide Convention originally had hoped.  But a special tribunal could be established by treaty between Cambodia and other nations.  The treaty would have to include Cambodia, or the tribunal would lack jurisdiction under current international law.  Many law professors have advocated making genocide a crime of universal jurisdiction, but the Genocide Convention itself does not do so.  For the tribunal to have jurisdiction, therefore, Cambodia would have to be a party to such a tribunal-creating treaty.  This option, too, awaits a Cambodian government that excludes the Khmer Rouge; it could be convened only after the 1993 elections.

Trial by international tribunal would require capture of the Khmer Rouge leaders if the trial is to accord with due process requirements.  So this option also demands the military defeat of the Khmer Rouge, or at least armed capture of their leaders.

The third option is for a party to the Genocide Convention to submit a dispute with Cambodia to the International Court of Justice.

Article 9 of the Convention states:

“Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application, or fulfillment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibilities of a State for genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 [which include conspiracy, incitement, attempt, or complicity to commit genocide] shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.”

Any state that is a party without reservation to the Convention (including the Article 9 jurisdiction of the ICJ) could submit the case to the World Court.  The complaint would contend that Cambodia has violated the Convention by failing to punish those responsible for committing genocide.  It could currently charge that two members of the Supreme National Council, the entity recognized by the United Nations as representative of Cambodia, are themselves responsible for genocide; and that they remain unpunished.

Under Article 36 pf the Statute of the International Court of Justice, the Court would have jurisdiction to hear the case.  Article 36(1) gives the Court jurisdiction over all matters specially provided for in treaties and conventions in force.  Article 9 of the Genocide Convention specially provides for World Court jurisdiction.  Cambodia is a party to the jurisdiction conferred by Article 9 of the Genocide Convention.

Article 36(2) also gives the Court jurisdiction over all legal disputes in which the parties have recognized the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court concerning the existence of any fact which, if established, would constitute a breach of an international obligation as well as the nature or extent of the reparation to be made for the breach of an international obligation.  Cambodia has accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court.  The World Court thus has clear jurisdiction to hear the case.

Any state that is a party to the Genocide Convention has standing to bring a case against Cambodia under the Genocide Convention.  The legal requirement of standing is essentially that a state have a particular stake in bringing a case, through injuries to it or through treaty obligations owed to it.

The Genocide Convention itself is the basis for standing to bring a case.  Under the Convention, any contracting party that has a dispute with another contracting party relating to the application or fulfillment of the Convention has standing to submit the case to the ICJ.  This standing is based on the mutual obligations of the parties to fulfill the Convention.

Australia, Canada, Norway, and the U.K. have had a “dispute” with Cambodia as required by Article 9 since 1978.  In 1978 those nations submitted statements to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights that violations of human rights in Democratic Kampuchea were continuing, including voluminous evidence submitted by the U.S.A., Canada, Norway, and the U.K. (U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub. 2/414/Add. 8).  This evidence contained the factual basis for a charge of genocide.  Democratic Kampuchea rejected the sub-commission’s decision to appoint a member to analyze the materials submitted (U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub. 2/414/Add.9), and it denied all allegations made in the years since.  The dispute is ongoing.  The Commission on Human Rights has voted each year to keep the situation in Cambodia on its agenda and has received evidence each year, including specific evidence of genocide.

The dispute is not moot, as it was in the Nuclear Tests case, because those persons guilty of genocide have never been punished by Cambodian authorities.  In the Nuclear Tests case the problem was that the court held the dispute moot because France had ceased atmospheric nuclear tests.  But in this case, the dispute over the responsibility of Cambodia for genocide continues.  It will not be resolved without adjudication by an international court.  The Khmer Rouge leadership remains free.  They remain part of the Supreme National Council, which holds Cambodia’s U.N. seat.  And they still order mass murders.  Their troops carry out genocidal massacres of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia.  Reports by human rights groups recount continuing abuses and murders in Khmer Rouge controlled camps and areas.

Determination of responsibility for genocide—including past genocide—is specifically within the jurisdiction of the World Court under Convention Article 9.

The World Court would be able to hear the evidence in this case and render its judgment even if Cambodia does not answer the charges or appear before the Court.  Because of its acceptance of the jurisdiction of the World Court, Cambodia has a self-imposed obligation to appear.  But if it does not, the Court is nevertheless authorized by Article 53 of its Statute to hear the evidence and render its judgment.  The Court has exercised this authority numerous times, e.g., in the Corfu Channel and Iranian Hostages cases.

An advantage of taking the Cambodian genocide case to the World Court instead of to an ad hoc tribunal is that Cambodia has already accepted the World Court’s jurisdiction.  Failure to appear by Cambodia thus would have greater significance, amounting to a confirmation of its disrespect for its obligations under international law.

A World Court case has the major advantage that it would not require capture of the Khmer Rouge leaders.  The World Court is not a criminal court, and has no jurisdiction over individuals.  The trial would not be of individuals, but rather of the Cambodian state, which in 1980 was still represented in the U.N. by the Khmer Rouge; in 1986 was represented by the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, which included the Khmer Rouge; and today is represented by the Supreme National Council, which includes two Khmer Rouge leaders, notably Son Sen, who was commander of the entire Khmer Rouge extermination prison system.

What would a World Court judgment accomplish?

The World Court’s judgment would be significant historically, but in addition it would have a direct legal impact on the people who ordered the genocide.

As part of its determination of state responsibility for genocide, it is possible for the court to declare who committed the genocide.  Such a finding would call into effect the duty of all parties of the Genocide Convention to “provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide” and to grant extradition in accordance with their laws and treaties.  It would thereby make the Khmer Rouge leaders into international outlaws, no longer able to roam much of the world from Bangkok and Beijing.

It would quite possibly reduce the support of the Khmer Rouge from other nations and thereby hasten their elimination as an obstacle to peace in Cambodia.

It would establish for all time what happened in Cambodia through a finding by an objective international court.  By such a finding and through better understanding of the causes and process of genocide, perhaps future genocides might be prevented.  For the people of Cambodia, the criminals who slaughtered their relatives, their religious leaders, and their children would be judged; not individually brought to justice, perhaps, but judged nevertheless.

I first proposed that a case be brought to the World Court in 1980, when I founded the Cambodian Genocide Project.  Then the government that would have been served with the charges was the Khmer Rouge’s Democratic Kampuchea itself, which still represented Cambodia in the U.N.  I proposed that the evidence be gathered in a systematic way and the legal work be done to prepare the way for the case.

The Camb