It's off to a slow start, but at least it's something. An event a whole generation has been waiting for is finally beginning to begin in Cambodia.

Maybe.

The genocide of the 1970s is close to fading into history without retribution. The perpetrators, Khmer Rouge leaders personally responsible for the deaths of close to two million people over a three year period, have been comfortably sliding into senectitude for almost thirty years. While the world dithered and officials wrangled, time passed, other genocides in other countries came and went, and evil was rewarded with indifference.

Last week twenty-seven judges, seventeen Cambodians and ten others appointed by the UN, swore an oath of office within the walls of the royal palace in Phnom Penh, and now say they expect trials of Khmer Rouge to begin next year.

Excuse me, but it's about bloody time!

Excuse me again, but I'm withholding an opinion on the worth of the process until I hear a bit more.

Since the Cambodian government got the UN to agree that the accused would be tried under Cambodian law by Cambodian judges, and since Cambodia is right up there at the top of the corrupt governments hit parade for the whole darned world, I'm doubting the effectiveness of the international "co-judges" who are supposedly in place to "ensure the process meets international legal standards."

The Prime Minister of Cambodia is a former Khmer Rouge, facryinoutloud!, as are hundreds of top government officials, legal professionals, business leaders, etc.

It's a safe assumption to make that any Cambodian born before the early 60s was either Khmer Rouge or a victim of the Khmer Rouge. Virtually no one was untouched.

The surviving victims know who they are, and they know who and where their torturers are. They've watched them live and shop and raise children and rise to the top in government and business ... and many survivors have very little faith that their suffering, their loss, often of their entire family, their continuing anguish, will be in any appreciable way assuaged.