One of the most outrageous things I learned was that when the communist Vietnamese government learned of what the Khmer Rouge has been doing, they swept in and deposed them from power over Cambodia. The Carter administration was one of I think like two governments that insisted on recognizing the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia at the UN after the Vietnamese kicked them out. IIRC, we were fully aware of what had been happening in Cambodia by that point.
This is true. The full horror of the Killing Fields and the Cambodian Genocide was reported in 1989.
For the next 14 years the US insisted that the genocidal Khmer Rouge and their allies were the “legitimate” rulers of Cambodia and the rest of the world had to witness the actual Cambodian government shut out of the United Nations while the Khmer Rouge occupied their seat there. This went on until 1993.
Pol Pot was never held to account for his crimes against humanity and died a free man.
It’s hard to put into words how angry all this made everyone I knew. Newspapers were running photos of piles of skulls and talking about the tree they used to kill babies in S21. And the perps were attending the UN, bolstered by US support.
One of the most outrageous things I learned was that when the communist Vietnamese government learned of what the Khmer Rouge has been doing, they swept in and deposed them from power over Cambodia. The Carter administration was one of I think like two governments that insisted on recognizing the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia at the UN after the Vietnamese kicked them out. IIRC, we were fully aware of what had been happening in Cambodia by that point.
This is true. The full horror of the Killing Fields and the Cambodian Genocide was reported in 1989.
For the next 14 years the US insisted that the genocidal Khmer Rouge and their allies were the “legitimate” rulers of Cambodia and the rest of the world had to witness the actual Cambodian government shut out of the United Nations while the Khmer Rouge occupied their seat there. This went on until 1993.
Pol Pot was never held to account for his crimes against humanity and died a free man.
It’s hard to put into words how angry all this made everyone I knew. Newspapers were running photos of piles of skulls and talking about the tree they used to kill babies in S21. And the perps were attending the UN, bolstered by US support.