“I’m not ashamed of being a Khmer Rouge. I followed orders,” he said, adding: “I want to bury the past.”
Researchers say political pressures complicate Cambodia’s reckoning with its history as a result of ex-prime minister Hun Sen’s policy of reconciliation, which reintegrated most Khmer Rouge into society.
Pol Pot himself was tried in absentia, convicted of genocide and sentenced to death by the Vietnamese-installed authorities in 1979, but he was never brought to justice before an internationally recognised court.
A special tribunal sponsored by the United Nations convicted three key Khmer Rouge figures before ceasing operations in 2022, but other former cadres continue to live freely.