Revisiting the Killing Fields

Glossing over the atrocities of the era, he said that mass starvation was caused by subordinates who "overimplemented guidelines." For example, he said, his underlings cut people's rice rations from 12 kilograms per month to one kilogram without his knowledge.

What about the vast number of people tortured and executed? In documents issued to those in charge of the notorious S-21 prison, a commander referred to as "Uncle Nuon" ordered his forces to "smash" and "cleanly sweep away" party members thought to be CIA, KGB or Vietnamese agents. The result was that suspects were beaten, whipped or stuffed in tanks of water to coerce confessions, then taken with their families to killing fields where they were bludgeoned or shot to death. Some were executed for sabotaging the regime because they had simply acknowledged a mundane truth like a drop in rice production. "That is my regret. It was from our carelessness, but it was not our intention," said Nuon Chea of the deaths. "It happened in part from interference from foreign countries, and some among the regime's leaders were bad people, too."

Who were those bad people? Which foreign countries? Nuon Chea wouldn't say—partly, he said because pointing fingers could damage relations with those who now give aid to his still impoverished nation. "I want to clarify that in the Khmer Rouge regime there were some mistakes," he says. "But what level those mistakes were, people do not know yet. I don't know how many people died during the regime."

Back in Phnom Penh after that 2004 interview, Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which gathers evidence on atrocities committed during the Khmer Rouge era, rejected Nuon Chea's professions of ignorance. "We have so far identified over 19,000 mass graves around the country," said Chhang, whose sister's belly was sliced open by the regime's cadres when she was suspected of stealing rice. "He can visit some of those graves and he can ask every single Cambodian family how many of their family members have died during the Khmer Rouge regime."

After Vietnamese troops ousted the regime in 1979, Nuon Chea withdrew with Khmer Rouge forces to the area along the Thai border. There the cadres financed a guerrilla war with rubies, sapphires and timber torn from the surrounding hills and sold to Thai generals. The United States and China also bolstered them with weapons to fight Vietnam.

Nuon Chea subsequently surrendered in an amnesty deal along with former head of state Khieu Samphan in 1998, the same year Pol Pot died after a show trial, and the movement finally collapsed. Now trial officials have recommended that five senior party figures be charged. Most Cambodians hope the appearance of these former leaders in court will tell them how the Khmer Rouge came to murder its own people. They also hope the court will start a trend of reining in the powerful.