Cambodia

Over the course of the last thirty years, Cambodia has experienced one of the most dreadful human rights records in modern history. The worst was between 1975 and 1979 under the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the "Khmer Rouge," who carried out war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity on a scale that left more than one quarter of the population dead and the remainder in a semi-permanent state of shock. Though the situation improved markedly with the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, and has advanced since then, the improvement has been unsteady and relative. Even today, following the end of the three decades of civil war in 1998, human rights remain more a theoretical aspiration than a reality for the vast majority of Cambodia's population. The situation is exacerbated by a judicial system that remains fundamentally unreconstructed from its authoritarian roots and a "culture of impunity" among elite segments of society in which the powerful prey at will on the society at large.

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