Word: khmers
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...official: Pol Pot did not suffer the fate of his 1.7 million victims. That is, there are no outward signs that he was murdered by his compadres in the Khmer Rouge. A Thai military team examined the body of the late despot Friday in a remote north Cambodian village, and declared him free of gunshot wounds, bruises or other evidence of foul play. Next step: Sending the doctors in, to determine if he really died of a heart attack as the guerilla leaders...
Cambodians who survived the unspeakable brutality of Pol Pot's killing fields may take some solace in the fact that the Khmer Rouge leader ended his days in fear -- a fugitive from justice for his crimes against humanity, with the noose closing ever tighter around him. Still, there is something profoundly unsatisfying about accepting that an individual so evil has simply expired before history could deliver the requisite justice and retribution -- as if the movie ends without warning, five minutes before the bad guy gets his comeuppance...
...returned to the jungle to fight on, this time with backers ranging from China to U.S. allies such as Thailand. Meanwhile, in Phnom Penh, a new power struggle developed between the Vietnamese-backed leader Hun Sen and Sihanouk's son, Prince Norodom Ranarridh. As the Khmer Rouge began to splinter during the '90s, both Hun Sen and Ranarridh courted the support of its warring factions...
...Last year, a Khmer Rouge faction arrested Pol Pot and put him on a show trial for his abuses. He told a Western interviewer at the time that his conscience was clear, even though some Cambodians might have died as a result of "mistakes" in implementing his policies...
...Frustrating as Pol Pot's end may have been to the people of Cambodia, it was also, perhaps, convenient to most of the parties involved. Had Pol Pot been put in the dock, his testimony could have been extremely uncomfortable to most of the region's power players -- the Khmer Rouge itself and its original ideological patrons in Beijing; his enemies in Hanoi who had once helped him take power; the government in Phnom Penh, whose leader Hun Sen was once a Khmer Rouge officer; Princes Sihanouk and Ranarridh, who had made cynical alliances with the Khmer Rouge; the Thai...