Getting Away With Genocide: Cambodia's Long Struggle Against the Khmer Rouge - Softcover

Fawthrop, Tom; Jarvis, Helen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745320279 ISBN 13: 9780745320274

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2004

Synopsis

This book covers the history of Cambodia since 1979 and the various attempts by the US and China to stop the Cambodian people from bringing the Khmer Rouge to justice. After Vietnam ousted the hated Khmer Rouge regime, much of the evidence needed for a full-scale tribunal became available. In 1979 the US and UK governments, rather than working for human rights justice and setting up a special tribunal, opted instead to back the Khmer Rouge at the UN, and approved the re-supply of Pol Pot's army in Thailand. Tom Fawthrop and Helen Jarvis reveal why it took 18 years for the UN to recognise the mass murder and crimes against humanity that took place under the Killing Fields regime from 1975-78. They explore in detail the role of the UN and the various countries involved, and they assess what chance still remains of holding a Cambodian trial under international law - especially in the light of the recent development of International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia.

About this title

About the Author:

Tom Fawthrop is a British journalist who has covered South East Asia, including Cambodia, for major newspapers and journals since 1979. His reports have appeared in the Economist,the Guardian, the London Sunday Times and he has contributed to BBC radio and TV. He produced and directed the TV documentary 'Dreams & Nightmares' shown on Channel 4 in 1989.

Review:

This book is an insider's account of the twenty-five year struggle to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice. Until 1991, the morally bankrupt real-politik of the West not only supported seating the Khmer Rouge in the United Nations, but opposed trying them for their crimes. Over a decade later, a Cambodian - United Nations tribunal is about to convene, if Western governments will donate the money to support it. After this past decade's trillion dollar wars, is sixty million dollars too much to ask to try the remaining leaders of a regime that murdered two million of its own people? This book could not be more timely. -- Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, Founder of The Cambodian Genocide Project and President of Genocide Watch This book will be essential reading for academics, diplomats, journalists, Cambodia specialists and others who follow the Khmer Rouge trial closely. It will also be of special interest to those who follow other international criminal proceedings concerned with genocide and crimes against humanity. Arguments over the Cambodian model for a 'mixed' tribunal (domestic in form but international in character) will continue for years to come. This book explains how this unique model was created and why. The diplomatic, legal and technical twists and turns detailed here are fascinating, instructive and, at times, alarming. For years to come - as the Khmer Rouge trial unfolds or collapses - scholars and commentators are going to find much in this book to inform their analysis of what happened and why. -- Bill Herod, head of a social service agency in Phnom Penh and a development worker in Cambodia for over thirty years

About this edition

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0745320279
• ISBN 13: 9780745320274
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 350