The Extraordinary Chamber of the Court of Cambodia, specially created to judge this type of crimes, has handed down a life sentence against Nuon Chea, 92, who was the second chief of the Red Khmers and Khien Shampan, 87, former Chief State at the time.

The trial against the two began in 2011 with charges of crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity between 1975 and 1979 in the Asian country. The trial has been accelerated given the advanced age of the accused, who were already serving life imprisonment for other crimes, together with the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Leng Sary, who died in prison in 2015, and his wife Leng Thirith, former Minister of Social Affairs, also deceased in 2015.

The list of crimes for which these two leaders have been sentenced is really long: persecution against the Vietnamese and Muslim minorities, mass murders, extermination, forced deportation of urban centers, torture, political, religious and ethnic persecution, crimes of war and inhuman acts, such as disappearances, forced marriages and rapes.

However, the list of horrors can hardly reflect the magnitude of the facts and the hell that the Cambodian population suffered, in that terrible period of its recent history. The figures collected establish that approximately 1,700,000 people died during the scarce four years in which the Red Khmers controlled the country: almost 40% of the total population of the country at that time.

The Khmer guerrilla movement fought for almost 20 years against the North American intervention in the region and the military dictatorships that accompanied it in Cambodia, forming part, along with the Pather-Laos of its neighbor Laos, and North Vietnam, of the resistance against the "anti-communist" intervention policy of the US in the Indo-China peninsula.

The total victory of the 1975 Vietnamese offensive, with the consequent collapse of the Saigon regime, brought as an immediate consequence the fall of pro-American dictatorships in Laos and Cambodia, and the Khmer guerrillas were finally able to enter the capital Nhon Pen, after several years of siege.

From then on, that country maintained relations only with Maoist China, its main supporter, at the same time as the incidents with Vietnam grew, under the accusation of interference and colonialist pretensions.

The geo-political logic of the time (imperialists, pro-Chinese or pro-Soviet) facilitated to the Red Khmers the implementation of their extreme interpretations of Maoism, "country struggle against the city". A period marked by physical extermination of any influence they considered as bourgeois and / or foreign, which included, for example, literally and forcefully emptying all urban centers, executing professionals or those who knew a foreign language and everyone who had any type of relationship with previous governments.

The discovery of the horror

Finally, in 1979, after constant armed incidents on the extensive frontier, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and, almost without resistance, took its empty capital in just a few weeks, while the Red Khmers took refuge in the jungle and rural areas, to establish a tactics of guerrilla warfare, which in this case turned into civil war.

But the "opening" to the world of the country also meant getting to know what was named as hell on earth. The terrible testimonies, documents and the shocking images of what was planned and thought of a policy of extermination and genocide reached the world. The Khmer guerrillas continued their resistance for years in the thick jungles of the country, guided by their inspirer and maximum leader, Pol-Pot. It was learned that the Government of Beijing, knowing what was going on, deliberately looked away and denied implications, despite being the only supporter during the Khmer government.

Likewise, the US were aware of the enormous crimes going on and yet condemned it only after it became known to the world. The confrontation between the two neighboring and "communist" countries granted the US enough time to rebuild their presence and influence in the region, after their defeat in Vietnam, at a time when they were preparing to re-establish their relations with China. 

Reading of the news

Some might think about what such a late sentence for two old people is for. Surely for the surviving Cambodians it is justice, late justice, but at least a little justice and truth in order to come to terms with the ghosts of the past. But the news has also other readings, for example, it can help us to realize that this relatively recent story has a lot to do with the conflicts and dilemmas that we are facing today. Accomplice silences, the logic of a misunderstood geo-politics and informative silence are also an inseparable part of the crimes against humanity today.

Examples of this are: Yemen, the Islamic State, the conflict in the Middle East or the policies of repression towards migrants. Monsters do not grow and do not develop alone, there is always someone who feeds them out of interest, mistakenly thinking that they are controllable.

And as an epilogue, when the last Khmer guerrilla groups surrendered over in 1998, it was learned that their eternal leader and inspirer, Pol-Pot, had been prosecuted by them and dismissed, ironically, for supposed "ideological deviations”, a few months before and that he died alone and abandoned in a hut. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered deep in the jungle.