There is now competing evidence showing that two Ukrainian government fighter jets, not a surface to air BUK missile, shot down Malaysian passenger jet MH17 over Ukraine on July 17, 2014.
But whoever the perpetrator behind the heinous shooting is or was, at one point in time, the Western media was abuzz with fervent calls for justice. Those who had shot the innocent plane down were war criminals, it was said, and sooner or later would have to be tried in an International court of justice.
The fervency of trials, justice and war crimes has since died down, putting a dampener on all of the aggressive expostulations on virtue. Recently, however, a pint of justice is scheduled to be served as the world waits for verdicts against two leaders of the Pol Pot regime.
But whoever the perpetrator behind the heinous shooting is or was, at one point in time, the Western media was abuzz with fervent calls for justice. Those who had shot the innocent plane down were war criminals, it was said, and sooner or later would have to be tried in an International court of justice.
The fervency of trials, justice and war crimes has since died down, putting a dampener on all of the aggressive expostulations on virtue. Recently, however, a pint of justice is scheduled to be served as the world waits for verdicts against two leaders of the Pol Pot regime.
An U.N. backed war crimes tribunal has taken over three and a half decade and over $200 million (pocketed mostly by the judges and their cohorts) to arrive at this juncture.
[Does the world even remember the Khmer Rouge?]
A young Cambodian said he is interested in justice being served, but believes that the money could have been better spent in improving the nation’s infrastructure. He isn't interested in investing in the historical past.
But victims of the genocide think otherwise.
But victims of the genocide think otherwise.
A woman, whose children died of starvation during the Khmer Rouge brutality, said she still remembers walking down the jungled paths without food or water, numbed by the grief of her dead children. She said she is willing to wait eternally for justice.
The two Pol Pot cronies are geriatric men; while one, like Hanna Schmidt in Bernard Schlink’s The Reader, claims to have been a pawn in the Pol Pot drama, doing nothing knowingly, another argued that the Khmer Rouge was not a genocidal or criminal contraption, just an ideological apparatus of its time.
The crux is time: If a crime as vast and irrefutably evidential as the Khmer Rouge genocide takes 40 years and resource that could restructure the Brooklyn Bridge in a year, then wouldn't the shooting down of MH17 would be a blip in the radar of war crime? It would take roughly fifty years or more for such a crime to be tried in the Hague.
The world is not a just place across the board, never has been.
The crux is time: If a crime as vast and irrefutably evidential as the Khmer Rouge genocide takes 40 years and resource that could restructure the Brooklyn Bridge in a year, then wouldn't the shooting down of MH17 would be a blip in the radar of war crime? It would take roughly fifty years or more for such a crime to be tried in the Hague.
The world is not a just place across the board, never has been.
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