Comrade Duch is today’s Cunt of the Day.

Sentenced to 35 years in prison, Duch, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity for overseeing the torture and execution of thousands of people at Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia during the 1970s.

This first verdict from Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal is cause for celebration. If you’ve the stomach for it, read up on what went on in Tuol Sleng. During the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge attempted to recreate an 11th century agrarian society; temples and libraries were destroyed, and the people were herded out of the cities and towns to work in the countryside where over 2 million people died of overwork, starvation and disease.

Oh yeah, and let us not forget the executions and the Killing Fields. Ammunition was short folks, so the executions were mostly carried out using iron bars, hammers, axe handles, machetes - you get the picture. 

You might well ask what the rest of the world did about the Khmer Rouge, and the answer to that is that they did pretty much fuck all. In a letter to the New York Times last year, UNICEF representative Richard Bindle wrote:

The trials are occurring 30 years after the end of the Pol Pot regime because United Nations member states continued for more than a decade to recognize the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia's government and allowed them to occupy the country's United Nations seat. The victims of the genocide were held hostage by cold-war politics, for which the world should feel enduring shame.

The tribunal's sentence, and Duch's imprisonment, are very small steps along the path to right very serious wrongs, and we should celebrate that many other cunts involved in crimes against humanity in Cambodia, no matter how old and frail they may be, will hopefully face justice yet.

Sponsored by people who think that UK attorney general Dominic Grieve is a cunt. Today he defended the decision of the CPS not to lay any charges in the death of Ian Tomlinson. Get this, "He rejected suggestions that the death of a police officer by a member of the public in similar circumstances would have been treated differently." This had our sponsors rolling in the fucking aisles. Give it a shot if you've got the balls - randomly push over a copper and see what happens to you.