to that statement yes we are starting to this one because we had time liquids exceed disrupt an economy. bridge. the truck please report starts nov seventeenth on d w. you re watching t w news i m terry martin coming up in the next fifteen minutes the japanese man who fell in love with a hall of brawl so much that he proposed the story of modern law and the virtual foul ups later in the program. but first the trial in cambodia and what s being called the country s norm back moment for the first time former senior officials of the brutal regime have been convicted of genocide perpetrated
aspect of the starvation that in forced labor the rapes the forced marriages the the the murder it s all on the record now and that s that that s an incredible record tell us looking at today how much would you say that the country has been able to recover from the from the reign of terror and from the loss of millions of lives spent on even but. there is how there is there s a real strong cultural revival since the trial started you have a new awareness that this is what happened and when you think of. the number of of. of victims and the destruction of the society it s remarkable however it s not a democracy it s an authoritarian regime that recently has gotten rid of the
overthrown i was shocked and horrified by all that was hidden from me the torture centers the killing fields. now the verdict comes almost forty years after the events that you re describing there after the fall of the khmer rouge regime the trial lasted for years as well why does it take so long for justice to be done. well this is a joint un cambodian trial this is the cambodian government is led by one cent who is a former middle level c mere was contrary he did not want to trial and it took a lot of political will on the part of the un to come up with a compromise then you it was in the country there are all kinds of different compromises so it was it was a long slog but it was a very thorough one and the critics of the length i think should just read choice in the fact that now the record is straight there was witnesses corroborating every
a witness in this trial what did you see there. i saw a country that was emptied of society i lived there during the war and was shocked that the streets were empty the people were gone there were no markets there was no life there is no the go to swear and shops were closed schools were closed there is no music there is nothing and then you go into the country to the labor camps and i was under serious government guard so they didn t let me poke around any more than allowed but it was what was missing that was so horrible that people were living in work camps they did not look good and i was shown what was supposed to be a model camps and even though the leaders which is one of the reasons i was asked to testify even the leaders admitted to me that social welfare as they put it wasn t wasn t right but. the still once they were all the commissioner
witness how important would you say the burdick is today. oh it s critical i can imagine cambodian history or this is siding without this trial and without the final verdict that said yes this was genocide as you noted it when it s been forty years it took decades to finally get this trial because it could have been penned just on so many world powers so that cambodians no longer have to worry that that what they went through was their imagination there were many deniers and. it just it s it is a it s brings to a really important conclusion the saga and the sense that yes there is justice now you were in cambodia in the nineteen seventies during the reign of terror that s why you were called to as a mature as