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However, this year, for the first time, there is the real prospect that there could be some justice for the two million dead and the six million survivors of the concentration camps. The Cambodian government and the United Nations have now finalised the framework and budget to put on trial senior leaders and those individuals most responsible for the crimes of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.

The trial will be held in Cambodia in accordance with Cambodian law, a civil law regime modelled closely on the French system, incorporating international standards, and staffed jointly by Cambodian and foreign legal experts.

On Dec 20, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced it would take about $19 million (745 million baht) a year for three years, or a total of $56.3 million (2.21 billion baht), to try the surviving perpetrators, most of whom are living freely in Cambodia's border regions. They are old men now, household names throughout the country whose crimes are common knowledge and their faces familiar. If the special court does not proceed promptly, those men too will go, as their leader Pol Pot did in 1998, smiling all the way to their grave.

Mr Annan appealed to the international community to pledge its support. Nobody has responded. So far only Australia, Japan and Franc have made pledges totalling $6 million (235.4 million baht) and all prior to Mr Annan's request.

Sadly, the UN appeal seems to have been lost in the media's tsunami coverage. It is hoped the world's outpouring of decency may spill over and extend to funding this long-awaited trial. At $56.3 million, the entire three-year trial would cost less than either the Rwandan or former Yugoslavian courts spend in the Hague in six months. Assessed in human terms, the trial will need $28 (1,098 baht) per victim or just $9 (353 baht) per survivor.

There is no possibility of compensating the people of Cambodia for the evil inflicted on them. Nor is it possible for outsiders to pretend that they can actually understand the effect of one in every four people in a land being deliberately tortured and senselessly killed. But like the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and the international criminal tribunals that have followed it, the Khmer Rouge trials represent humanity's desperate attempt to apply the discipline of law to those so-called leaders who use their powers to attack the foundations of civilisation.

In Cambodian's case, the trial could potentially also signal an end to impunity and enhance the rule of law. But mostly it would be vindication to the two million dead and, in a very small but important way, help the struggling survivor's wounds to heal. For that alone, the cost certainly does not seem too high a price to pay.