Mass atrocity invokes humanitarian impulses in all of us. But when a genocidaire casts himself as a victim, the right response is less straightforward. This article analyzes a recent hearing of one of Cambodia's most feared Khmer Rouge cadres who stands trial before a newly established hybrid tribunal and suggests the consequences of responding to war crime trials with polemics rather than principle.

This article seeks to explore whether the position of juvenile victims, vis-à-vis the Cambodian criminal law, has changed with the passage of the new criminal legislation and whether this change is positive or otherwise. The quality of this change, henceforth, will demonstrate to the reader whether the overall reform of the juvenile justice component of Cambodia's criminal justice system, which has spanned over the last 15 years and has been funded by the international community, has been a success. The author has limited the scope of this inquiry to a comparison between the various domestic laws applicable to juvenile victims and did not include comparisons with international law, model laws or juvenile laws of other states. Being the first publication of its kind, this analysis limits its claim to the analysis of the relevant statutory provisions rather than ‘practice notes’ which have yet to develop.