The U.N. Commission on Human Rights and Cambodia, 1975-1980
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Buffalo Journal of International Law Volume 3 Number 1 Article 3 7-1-1996 The U.N. Commission on Human Rights and Cambodia, 1975-1980 Jamie Frederic Metzl Harvard Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/bjil Part of the Human Rights Law Commons, and the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Metzl, Jamie Frederic (1996) "The U.N. Commission on Human Rights and Cambodia, 1975-1980," Buffalo Journal of International Law: Vol. 3 : No. 1 , Article 3. Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/bjil/vol3/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Buffalo Journal of International Law by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE U.N. COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND CAMBODIA, 1975-1980 Jamie Frederic Metz On 3 March 1978, Evan Luard, the British Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, stepped to the podium to address the U.N. Commission on Human Rights regarding the situation in Cambodia. Luard, a United Nations scholar and proponent of furthering human rights principles through foreign policy,1 was not one to take such violations lightly. After referring to "reports of systematic and arbitrary executions, and of other gross violations of human rights, involving many thousands of deaths within Democratic Kampuchea," Luard asserted that, The facts which I have described - and they are facts confirmed by innumerable witnesses - represent a challenge to this Commission. The need for the allegations to be investigated and clarified if this Commission is to do its job is clear... It is for the Commission on Human Rights to take the initiative in instituting such an investigation. There is no other body that can do so... The Commission is the organ of the United Nations concerned with such matters and as such bears a unique responsibility. The United Kingdom therefore proposes that the Commission should make a thorough study of the human rights situation in t Harvard Law School; St Antony's College, Oxford, D. Phil, 1994; Brown University, B.A., 1990; UNTAC Human Rights Officer, 1992-1993. The ideas presented in this paper are further developed in the author's book WESTERN RESPONSE TO HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN CAMBODIA, 1975-80, New York: St. Martin's Press, (1996). ' See EvAN LuARD, HuMAN RIGHTS AND FOREIGN POLICY (1981). 68 BUFFALO JOURNAL OFINTERNATONAL LAW [Vol.3 Cambodia.2 In many ways, Luard's statement in Geneva represented the high point of Western human rights response to the mass abuses committed under the Democratic Kampuchea regime (1975-1978). Such responses had only slowly and gradually developed. Immediately following the full American withdrawal from Vietnam and Cambodia and the communist takeovers in Indochina in April 1975, America and its Western allies had largely turned their backs to Indochina. One State Department official described a common attitude of his colleagues at this time as "who cares what those f-ing Gooks are doing."3 As an observer of United States opinion noted in 1976, "Americans have somehow blocked [the Vietnam experience] out of 4 their consciousness.. Despite such "Vietnam fatigue" and the extreme isolation of Pol Pot's Cambodia, allegations of mass killings in Cambodia gradually became more accepted by the Western media and concerned observers in the West in the years following the war. This process had begun with Frangois Ponchaud's February 1976 articles in Le Monde describing the human costs of the April 1975 Khmer Rouge evacuation of Phnom Penh and the other cities of Cambodia.5 In 1977, publication of Ponchaud's Cambodge Ange Zero6 and John Barron and 2 Evan Luard, Speech Delivered at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Geneva, Mar. 3, 1978, Foreign Policy Documents No. 25, Crown Copyright, 1978. See also ECOSOC, U.N. Doc.E/CN.4/SR. 1466/Add. 1, (1978). ' Interview with Kenneth Quinn, Washington, D. C., (August 6, 199 1). Cited in GEORGE C. HERRING, AMERICA'S LONGEST WAR: THE UNITED STATES AND VIETNAM 273 (1986). See also THE PRESIDENT'S NEWS CONFERENCE OF MAY 26, 1975, in PUBLIC PAPERS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, VOLUME 1 - JANUARY I To JUtY 17, 1975, at 641 (1977). ' Francois Ponchaud, Le Cambodge NeufMois Apres I- Un Travail Gigantesque,LE MONDE, Feb. 17, 1976, at 1; Francois Ponchaud, Le Cambodge NeufMois Apres ll- Un Noveau Type D 'homme, LE MONDE, Feb. 18, 1976 at 2. 6 FRANCOIS PONCHAUD, CAMBODGE ANtE ZERO (1977). 1996] COMMISSION ONHUMANRIGHTS AND CAMBODIA 69 Anthony Paul's Peace with Horror,7 both of which estimated that 1.2 million people had died since the communist victory, increased awareness of alleged atrocities in Cambodia. Jean Lacouture's influential review of Ponchaud's study in the March 1977 New York Review of Books furthered this process. Lacouture asserted that; After Auschwitz and the Gulag, we might have thought this century had produced the ultimate in horror, but we are now seeing the suicide of a people in the name of revolution, worse in the name of Socialism.8 Barron and Paul's work reached an enormous audience by its partial serialization in Reader's Digest, where it was stated that villages had turned to "charnel houses where unburied corpses lie putrefying in the sun."9 Although the version of a nightmarish Cambodia put forward by Ponchaud, Lacouture, Barron, and Paul was questioned by the likes ofNoam Chomsky,'0 Hildebrand and Porter," and Malcolm Caldwell, 2 the views of such people became increasingly marginalized as more information regarding Cambodian horrors became available. By 1977, one French journalist after discussing the disputed claims as to the number of Cambodians who had died since the Communist takeover asserted that, even taking into account the disparities in the figures and the differences of opinion over what deaths are to be blamed on the Khmer Rouge, the reality of the Cambodian nightmare can no longer be questioned.' 3 7 JOHN BARRON AND ANTHONY PAUL, PEACE WITH HORROR: THE UNTOLD STORY OF COMMUNIST GENOCIDE IN CAMBODIA (1977). 8 Jean Lacouture, The Bloodiest Revolution, NEW YORK REviEw OF BOOKS, Vol. XXIV, No. 9, May 1977, at 46. " John Barron and Anthony Paul, Murderin a Gentle Land,READERS DIGEST, Feb. 1977, at 228. 10 Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Distortionsat FourthHand, THE NATION, June 1977, at 789-794 (book review). " GEORGE HILDEBRAND AND GARETH PORTER, CAMBODIA: STARVATION AND REVOLUTION (1976). 12 Malcolm Caldwell, The CambodianDefence, THE GUARDIAN, May 8, 1978. "3Stdphane Groueff, The Nation as ConcentrationCamp, NATIONAL REVIEW, Vol. 29, No. 34, Sept. 2, 1977, at 988-989. 70 BUFFALO JOURATAL OFINTERNA TIONAL LAW [Vol.3 A similar statement was made by Martin Woollacott of the Guardian,who had previously doubted the veracity of the atrocity reports. "Even if the figures are wildly wrong," Woollacott wrote, "by as much as 50 or 75 per cent, what remains still constitutes one of the 4 worst atrocities in this most brutal of centuries.' Although Cambodia never became a major issue of concern to Western governments during the 1975-1978 period, this emerging consensus did pressure governments to act. In Britain, the Cambodia issue was first broached in May 1976 by MP Patrick Wall, who cited media reports that halfa million people had been condemned to death and "everyone over the age of twelve and educated has been or will be liquidated." Responding to Wall's call for Britain to raise the Cambodian "genocide" in the U.N. as a threat to world peace, Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ted Rowlands replied, While I, too, have read with great concern the recent reports of events in Cambodia, I do not think they constitute a threat to world peace. Nor, I should add, have I any means of verifying the truth of allegations that have been made." Two months later, however, when the same MP brought up the same issue, the U.K. Minister of State asserted that, It is clear from the considerable amount of information and evidence that has become available that abuses and atrocities have occurred, although we cannot 16 accurately assess the scale of the abuses and atrocities. Given the limitations of British intelligence capabilities regarding Indochina," the difference between these two statements suggests the important role played by press accounts. Through 1977, a number of British MPs claimed made claims similar to Wall's. 8 In March of that year, Under-Secretary Luard SGUARDmN, Sept. 6, 1977. 15 Hansard, 908 PareL. DEB., H.C. (5' ser.) 1398-1399 (1976). 16 Id., 914 PARL. DEB., H.C. (5' ser.) 1355-1356 (1976). 17 Letter from former senior official of British Foreign Office to author, name withheld upon request, (May 3, 1994) (on file with author). 18 Hansard, 929 PAnU. DEB., H.C. (5th ser.) 379-380 (1977); 938 PARL. DEB., H.C. (5"' ser.) 651-652 (1977). 1996] COMMISSION ONHUMANRIGHTS AND CAMBODIA 71 responded in parliament that the official policy of the British government was that Cambodia's actions were "primarily a domestic matter and not a matter for the United Nations." Luard asserted, however, that "if anything, it is a question for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and I would be glad to see that body discuss the matter."19 In November, Luard stated that the British government was considering whether it could raise the matter at the next meeting of the Commission.2 By December, as popular pressure in the United Kingdom grew and all of the main churches of England began to prepare a joint call to the government to aid the Cambodian people, the Foreign Office announced that Britain would bring the matter to the attention of the U.N.