BriefingAsia-Pacific

A Friend of the Dead Ready for a Khmer Rouge Tribunal

A Friend of the Dead Ready for a Khmer Rouge Tribunal

In late 1979 Craig Etcheson was an impressionable 23-year-old who divided his time between rock concerts and first year Ph.D. studies in mathematical models of war at the University of Southern California School for International Relations. The Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple and The Grateful Dead were his bands of choice.

Then Vietnam invaded Cambodia and lifted the veil on the true scale of carnage committed by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. Images from the Killing Fields shocked the affable Etcheson. The slaughter of about one third of Cambodia's population in the previous three-and-a-half years was something the young mathematician found incomprehensible.

His immediate response to those feelings was to study the events in detail.

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