Extraordinary Chambers

On a steamy Cambodian morning last spring, I wandered through Pailin’s central market. In a few hours, I would meet Nuon Chea, the most senior surviving leader of the Khmer Rouge, and I wanted to bring him a present. But what does one buy an accused mass murderer?

I walked past one stall where a woman fanned flies from thick cuts of bloody meat. At another, glass display cases held clunky gold jewellery encrusted with locally mined gemstones. That might be fitting: the gem trade in this rough town near the Thai border helped to fund Chea and the rest of his regime after 1979, when they were driven from Phnom Penh by Vietnamese troops. For the next two decades, Khmer Rouge rebels continued to launch attacks on the rest of Cambodia from their mountain strongholds. The movement’s last remnants surrendered in 1998, and since then Chea had lived in peace near Pailin.

At last, I stopped at a fruit stand with bunches of ripe-to-bursting grapes and dark purple mangosteens. The fruit basket was a strategic decision. Local journalists said that a stack of American bills, judiciously distributed, could get me past Chea’s handlers for a private meeting with the man. I didn’t want to buy my way in, but I didn’t want to be turned away at his door either. I wanted to sit down and hear him explain his own part in the three-year, eight-month, and twenty-day reign of terror that saw one in five Cambodians die from starvation, disease, torture, or execution.

Cambodians will soon have a similar opportunity. Chea was arrested in September and taken by helicopter to Phnom Penh, where he now shares a detention facility with four other well-known former Khmer Rouge leaders: Khieu Samphan, the former head of state of the Khmer Rouge regime; Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, the former foreign minister and minister of social affairs, respectively; and Kaing Guek Eav (known as “Duch”), head of the Tuol Sleng interrogation centre, where thousands of people were tortured and condemned to death. The prisoners’ cases are being investigated by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (eccc), a UN-backed tribunal created for this sole purpose. One day, perhaps as early as this fall, Chea and the others will be led into courtrooms and put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Chea was still a free man on the day I pulled into the dirt driveway of his rural homestead. A thick-necked man with powerful forearms introduced himself as Chea’s son. He led me past a stately blue bungalow to a rain-weathered hut on stilts at the back of the property. Laundry dried in the sun on the dilapidated porch, next to several potted cacti. As I climbed the plank staircase, the gift basket’s pink ribbons and cellophane crinkled in my hands.

I entered to find Chea dressed in a white silk shirt and a gaudy checkered sarong. He was now in his early eighties, his hair white and thinning, his face hollowed, and his narrow purple lips pursed in distrust. But his gaze was self-assured, lucid, and testing; he waved imperiously, and his son took the basket and laid it beside the refrigerator. I’d have my audience.

In a schoolmaster’s stern tone, Chea was soon explaining that Cambodian history was driven by a series of invasions by outside powers. After French colonization came the Americans, then the Vietnamese. His account was detailed, but with one glaring omission: the Khmer Rouge period itself. The only mention he made of his own government’s rule was to suggest that outsiders had exaggerated the number of deaths. Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, and Chea himself were all merely pawns of outside forces.

When I tried to question this story, he flicked his bamboo fan in irritation and announced that he needed to rest. His son stood up and gestured toward the door. A fruit basket would not be enough to get any serious reflection out of this man, let alone the truth.

In court, Chea’s alleged personal involvement in Cambodia’s devastation will be supported by hard evidence, from captured execution orders to eye-witness testimony. But if the tribunal focuses narrowly on the actions of a few individuals, it risks obscuring the bigger picture; however heinous his crimes, Chea is right that the Khmer Rouge was not simply a homegrown phenomenon. Ideally, the eccc process will expose and condemn the deeds of former leaders, while at the same time reminding the international community of its share of responsibility. That’s a lot to ask of criminal trials, but it seems to be what many Cambodians want — a fact that became cle