LENG SARY
He was summarizing the determinations of the assembly. The great debate was whether to bring the former Khmer Rouge officials to trial for the extermination and genocide of almost 2 million Cambodians. Many of the accused war criminals were very wealthy and bribed current legislators to prevent trials. Also, many of the legislators who were alive and lived through the killings were complicit themselves. Meanwhile those whose relatives had been brutally killed in the killing fields and elsewhere constantly, demanded justice. Western countries generally urged through the UN that the perpetrators be brought to justice, but the Cambodian leadership feared splitting their country apart again and even more bloodshed which the forces of the accused threatened if the government attempted to hold them accountable. The writer, for example, was a leading Khmer Rouge official before he defected, and in any set of trials of others, he would likely be implicated.
