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Getting Away With Genocide? Elusive Justice and the Khmer Rouge Trial. Tom Fawthrop and Helen Jarvis, Pluto Press, 2004.

Getting Away With Genocide? Elusive Justice and the Khmer Rouge Trial explains why it took so long for the UN to recognise the mass murder committed by the Khmer Rouge and organise a tribunal into who was responsible. Fawthrop is a British journalist who has covered Cambodia on and off since 1979. Jarvis also has a lengthy association with Cambodia including helping to archive much of the evidence of the Khmer Rouge’s crimes. She is currently the head of public affairs for the tribunal.

Their book is a detailed, blow-by-blow account of efforts to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice, starting in 1979 with early attempts by the Vietnamese-backed People’s Republic of Kampuchea to garner international recognition of the Khmer’s Rouge’s crimes. These early efforts were derailed by Cold War politics that saw the West, backed by countries such as China, support Pol Pot as Cambodia’s legitimate representative in the UN and arm the remnants of the Khmer Rouge, contra-style, to oppose the Vietnamese backed government in Phnom Penh. Further complications arose with the UN-backed peace plan for Cambodia in the early nineties, which played down the mass murder committed by the Khmer Rouge in an, ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to bring the recalcitrant guerrilla group into the peace process.

Fawthrop and Jarvis painstakingly examine the successive rounds of negotiations between the Cambodian government and the UN that took place in the mid-nineties to reach agreement on a formula for a tribunal acceptable to all sides. These saw sharp disagreement over issues such as the degree of Cambodian control and where the tribunal would be held. The result of the negotiations formed the basis of the arrangement we see today – a special chamber within the Cambodian court system comprising of local and international judges.All of this is chronicled clearly and precisely, with useful supporting information and detailed footnotes. Those seeking a good primer about the background to the current tribunal would do well to check out Getting Away With Genocide?