'Killing fields' death toll

Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot. Three names that are synonymous with evil. It is hard to believe that the last of these three is still engaged in acts of brutality. For many people the grim saga of the Cambodian "killing fields" has become something to be read about in history books. But for Cambodia the war is still going on. And this has been underlined by the news that Pol Pot this week ordered the bloody murder of his hated defense chief, Son Sen, and 11 members of his family.

Few writers did more to publicize the horror story that was life under the Khmer Rouge than Sydney Schanberg, a former reporter with The New York Times and author of The Killing Fields.

On 17 April 1995, 20 years after the victorious Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, Schanberg urged Americans to look squarely at something we all know but would rather not confront: our share of the responsibility for having made this demoralized country a monument to how powerful nations can "swallow small ones and then spit them out when their usefulness is over".

The Cold War powers, for their own purposes, extended the Vietnam War in 1970 to Cambodia. For five years, the Cambodian government, as a stand-in for Washington, fought against the Vietnamese communists, backed by Moscow, and the resurgent Khmer Rouge, Cambodian guerrillas who were the creation of Beijing.

Rice farming was replaced by American carpet bombing and Khmer Rouge terror sweeps. And the defeat of the U.S.-backed Lon Nol regime opened the door to years of Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Yes, Pol Pot is a monster. Yes, this man who once killed peasants and intellectuals has now turned on his own friends. Yes, it is time he was arrested and put on trial. But members of the international community also have much to atone for. They must face up to this legacy by helping to bring a lasting peace to a battered and brutalized country.

-- The Hong Kong Standard