Some 20,000 Vietnamese and 90,000 Cham are believed to have died under Pol Pot — compared to well over 1.3 million Khmer, according to the most conservative estimates. One Khmer woman, who lives in exile and travelled to Phnom Penh for the August 7 verdict, said that the court’s decision not to consider a genocide charge on behalf of the Khmer left her feeling like victims were being denied their “right to the precise term for what was done to us” — it was as though “history had not been understood.” For Ung Billon, another Khmer who is the president of a victims’ association in France called Les Victimes du Génocide des Khmers Rouges and who also came for the verdict, it was “an insult.”
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