Introduction

The quest to address the legacy of mass violence is a politically complex endeavor that does not necessarily foreground the needs or desires of victims.Indeed, victim claims may contradict the motives of those in power or become overshadowed by the drive to establish international legal norms and regimes of justice.The international push for a tribunal to hold accountable those responsible for the deaths of some 1.7 million Cambodians from 1975-79 did not begin until after the fall of the Soviet Union.Until that time, Cold War politics shielded the former Khmer Rouge from prosecution; indeed a reconfigured Khmer Rouge coalition claimed Cambodia's place at the United Nations even after the Vietnamese drove the brutal regime from power in 1979.Co-Prime Ministers Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen wrote to the UN in 1997 requesting the creation of a tribunal -some claim to intimidate remaining Khmers Rouge into defecting to the current government -but changed his position soon afterward.Nonetheless, international pressure for a court continued and, after a series of lengthy negotiations, the Cambodian government and United Nations reached an agreement in 2003 to establish the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), more commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT).Hun Sen agreed to the tribunal against a backdrop of mounting international criticism of his regime's widespread human rights abuses and corruption. 1 Dunncan McCargo refers to the ECCC as "the play-withina-play" that characterized the political drama between Hun Sen and the international community.2 From the start, Hun Sen sought to limit the scope of prosecutions to create a narrative of the Khmer Rouge regime that assigned culpability to a small group of elite actors.Members of the international community pushed for more widespread prosecutions and sought both retributive justice and truth recovery.For transnational human rights organizations and a larger international community, the KRT processes are anticipated to produce spillover effects that would transform the judicial system, and perhaps usher in a gradual regime change in this impoverished country.3 Truth recovery, they also hope, would facilitate a process of national "reconciliation, " which is mentioned in the June 2003 agreement between the United Nations and the Royal Government of Cambodia.4 As the KRT draws to a close, its impact on victims, politics and international norms has only begun to be debated.Thirty-five years since the crimes took place and with over $200 million spent on two trials to date, how has this court affected justice for genocidal violence, national reconciliation, historical truth and the culture of impunity in Cambodia?This special issue of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal addresses such questions through new analysis and reflection.The following essays provide an even-handed analysis of the KRT's contributions and limitations.The politics surrounding the court's establishment, political interference from the Cambodian government and a lack of resources have all constrained the tribunal's accomplishments, particularly in meeting the multitudinous needs of victims.Alexander Hinton's article provides insight into the significance of the KRT to victims of S-21 and how the "deeply personal" struggle of healing and truth seeking does not necessarily align with the priorities of the transitional justice community.Drawing on his unique access to late S-21 survivor Vann Nath during the Duch trial, Hinton emphasizes the importance of the painter's Buddhist beliefs, arts (to educate the public through the painting of atrocities committed at S-21), his confrontation with a former S-21 guard, and his testimony against Duch.5 Vann Nath's unique personal journey over time led him to internalize the Buddhist precept of karma, a cosmic justice.6 Hinton argues that the tribunal's limited temporal jurisdiction puts forth "a 'truth' bleached of historical processes and an understanding of the factors that enable the Khmer Rouge rise to power." 7 Indeed, transitional justice mechanisms such as the KRT that offer sweeping promises of truth, justice, personal healing and national reconciliation, are bound to fail.Yet supporters push forward with such efforts as part of a "transitional justice imaginary." 8 In essence, practitioners and supporters of internationalized courts such as the KRT are incentivized to represent the court as a success both to satisfy donors and to secure their membership in the transitional justice community.9 In its discursive representation, this transitional justice community places greater emphasis on constructing a linear narrative of transition from a barbaric society to a modern liberal democracy.Supporters of the KRT can thus claim agency in shaping this normative discourse of human rights

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