AT least a million innocents have died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge over the past 20 years, but until now, none of Pol Pot's disciples had been tried for murder. And there's the rub.
Life tends to be cheap in a country where weapons and an OK Corral mentality abound. But the value of a foreigner appears to be further up the price scale than a local Khmer, judging by the justice dished out this week in a tiny Cambodian courthouse.
Justice was served in the name of three Westerners - two Britons and an Australian - when former Khmer Rouge guerilla Chuon Mean was given a 15-year jail term on Wednesday for his role in the death squad that executed the trio.
Though he denied ever having participated in any other killings, Mean had been a member of the Maoist guerilla movement for 10 years, and police officers say it is farcical to believe that he had never before fired a shot in anger.
The flip-side of the equation is that people die everyday in Cambodia and the impact on their families is as devastating as it is for the families of Dominic Chappell, Kellie Wilkinson and Tina Dominy.
Yet, a Khmer family has little recourse for justice when no foreign governments loudly complain and demand the capture of those responsible. Instead, they must console themselves and know that it is unlikely anyone will ever stand before a judge for killing their kin.
A young Khmer man assisting with interpretation at the trial of Mean told calmly how four of his brothers had been killed by the Khmer Rouge. He did not appear bitter and had not even considered it odd that the trial was going ahead thanks to the full might of a police force which had not lifted a finger on his own family's behalf.
