Long-awaited justice for victims of the Khmer Rouge. Mike Abramowitz

A few hours outside of Cambodia’s capital, 58-year-old Taing Kim, a delicate woman who spent several years as a nun, lives in a gray concrete house in the middle of a quiet village amid a sea of rice paddies. She settled in Kampong Chhnang nearly 30 years ago and makes her living by farming and selling firewood. She was married in 1980 but says her husband left her when he learned of her past.

Taing Kim is one of thousands of victims who have filed to be heard in the trial of three of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, the murderous party in power from 1975 to 1979 that tried to forcibly create an agrarian utopia in Cambodia — and killed some 1.7 million people along the way. Nuon Chea, the No. 2 leader in the Pol Pot regime; Khieu Samphan, the former head of state; and Ieng Sary, who was foreign minister, face charges of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes.

When the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia begin opening statements on Monday, it will mark the first time the international community has held senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge to account for the system of torture, starvation, forced marriage and execution they created for people like Taing Kim. The chambers are a hybrid court of Cambodian and international judges, established by a treaty between the Cambodian government and the United Nations. The trial will constitute one of the most significant international legal cases since 1946, when the Nazi high command was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced in less than a year.

These days, the gears of international justice grind more slowly. Great power rivalries and ambivalence have effectively shielded the Khmer Rouge from accountability for three decades. Parties that were ambivalent, or outright hostile, at various junctures include China, the Khmer Rouge’s strongest international patron, and the current government in Phnom Penh, which is led by former Khmer Rouge member Hun Sen. After Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978, the United States supported the Khmer Rouge diplomatically because of Cold War politics, but in the 1990s, after Cambodia held U.N.-sponsored elections, Washington became one of the driving forces behind creation of the tribunal.

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