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1993-now Kingdom of Cambodia
Sihanouk returned as king, and the name Kingdom of Cambodia was again used. The Khmer Rouge withdrew from participation in the political process, and continued armed conflict until 1997. As the military strength of the Khmer Rouge declined, this conflict became more and more sporadic.
2. The proposed Tribunal
The atrocities of the Khmer Rouge began to be documented in the period of the People's Republic of Kampuchea. For example, the S-21 "Tuol Sleng" was established from 1975 to 1978 as a security office for interrogation and extermination of prisoners. The site, in a suburban Phnom Penh high school, has been a museum to the victims since 1980. Assessment and documentation of the many cases has continued through the subsequent two decades, and a substantial record is maintained by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam).
In 1979, the PRK government had held a trial, in which Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were convicted and sentenced to death in absentia for their crimes. However, the trial was not accepted internationally because of concerns about the processes, and because of the diplomatic isolation of the PRK government.
Responses to the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, and in Rwanda, included the establishment by the United Nations of international tribunals at The Hague and at Arusha, respectively. International pressure for some kind of legal resolution of the atrocities in the period of Democratic Khmer also increased, as did pressure within Cambodia itself.
In 1997, the Cambodian government asked the United Nations for assistance in organising a process for the Khmer Rouge trials. This led to the adoption of a resolution in the UN General Assembly in December 1997, enabling the Secretary-General to negotiate. Negotiations dragged on, with Cambodia producing a draft law in 1999, and that law passed the National Assembly in 2001.2 The United Nations negotiator, Hans Correll, objected that the law did not give effect to the agreement between the United Nations and the Royal Government. Early in 2002,