The Khmer Rouge Weren't Defeated ...

 ... they simply ran away:

Thirty-nine years ago, the world’s response to Khmer Rouge atrocities shattered the “never again” promise once and for all. In three years, 10 months, and 20 days, the Chinese-backed Cambodian communists killed roughly 20 percent of their population (1.5 to 2 million people). When the Vietnamese tried the Khmer Rouge leaders in absentia in 1979, they were widely ridiculed for their efforts. After the world learned of Cambodia’s “Killing Fields,” China, the United States, and the United Nations protected and rearmed the perpetrators while Western leftists, led by Noam Chomsky, attacked “the extreme unreliability of refugee reports” of crimes against humanity. Although the United Nations spent $2 to 3 billion dollars during their Cambodian occupation (1992-1993), no Khmer Rouge leaders were captured, much less held legally accountable.

Three decades after the crimes, the ECCC, a mixed UN-Cambodian war crimes tribunal, was established to try the regime’s surviving senior leaders. The fact that the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, and Ieng Thirith, were brought to trial within their lifetimes was very good and silenced longtime critics (like myself) who had to give credit to the ECCC and especially the devoted investigators who worked for decades to bring them to justice. While the UN lawyers and judges were a mixed bag, the generations of investigators, led by Craig Etcheson, Steve Heder, Rich Arant, Sorya Sim and Steve Spargo, did a remarkable job building onto the pre-ECCC research of David Hawk, Ben Kiernan, David Chandler, Youk Chhang, Sara Colm, Helen Jarvis, Doug Niven, Chris Riley, Nic Dunlop, Nate Thayer, Rithy Panh, Elizabeth Becker, and many others.

By far the ECCC’s most important legacy was the creation of an unassailable historical record that will withstand the test of time and make historical revisionism virtually impossible. However clear the historical facts seem to Western scholars, they remain unclear to some Cambodians and for good reason. Over the course of three decades, Cambodians were subjected to the competing and contradictory propaganda claims of the U.S.-backed Lon Nol regime (1970–1975), the Khmer Rouge (1975–1979), the Vietnamese-installed People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979–1989), the State of Cambodia (1989-1992), the United Nations Transitional Authority Cambodia (UNTAC) (1992–1993), and since 1993 the iron-fisted Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). It is now clear for all to see, in meticulous detail, who did what to whom.

 

(Sidebar: read the whole thing.)

The demons were allowed to run for three decades before capture and what amounts to an exhibition trial.

The Nuremberg trials tended to be more swift (but not always iron-clad as some of war criminals ended up serving only part of the time they were sentenced). 

The anniversary of the Khmer Rouge's being driven out reminds one that the evil was never stamped out at once but allowed to disappear until such time as fad or pressure dictated some cosmetic action be taken:

“January 7 has been dubbed the second birthday of Cambodians. Without Victory Day, many of us would not have lived to see this day, and nothing would resemble the present,” Hun Sen said.

“This is a historical fact.”

 

... says the man who now hands Cambodia over to the Chinese who were also complicit in the murder of two million Cambodians.

Also:

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was met by an honor guard and red carpet in Myanmar on Friday, just as protests by coup opponents broke out in other parts of the country over fears his trip will provide more legitimacy to the junta.

His two-day visit for talks with Myanmar’s military rulers was the first by a head of government to Myanmar since the army overthrew the elected administration of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1 last year, sparking months of protests and a bloody crackdown.

Cambodia is current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has been leading diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis in Myanmar and which adopted a five-point “consensus” peace plan in April.

Some other ASEAN countries including Indonesia have expressed frustration at the junta’s failure to implement the plan.