Getting Away with Genocide?

'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. ... 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. ... 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

Twenty-five years after the overthrow of the Pol Pot regime, not one Khmer Rouge leader has stood in court to answer for their terrible crimes. Tom Fawthrop and Helen Jarvis show how governments that often speak the language of human rights shielded Pol Pot and his lieutenants from prosecution during the 1980s. After Vietnam ousted the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, the US and UK governments backed the Khmer Rouge at the UN, and approved the re-supply of Pol Pot’s army in Thailand.

The authors explain how, in the late 1990s, the forgotten genocide became the subject of serious UN inquiry for the first time. Finally, in 2003, the UN and the Cambodian government agreed to hold a trial in Phnom Penh conducted jointly by international jurists and Cambodian lawyers and judges. 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. They assess the prospects for the tribunal that could embarrass some former world leaders and a number of governments.