Joseph A. Mussomeli, US Ambassador to Cambodia (Photo: US Embassy in Phnom Penh)Ambassador's Residence
July 25, 2006
Good morning. I am honored to welcome you all to my house today. A few months ago we had several hundred victims of the Khmer Rouge sit right where you are now sitting, and I told them how the greatest crime of the 20th century has gone unpunished for 30 years. As we all know, between April 17, 1975 and January 7, 1979 -- a period of less than four years -- the Khmer Rouge systematically tortured, starved, and eradicated over 2 million fellow Cambodians. No one was safe, not if you were a Cham Muslim or a Vietnamese, or a Buddhist monks or a city dweller, not if you had a diploma or wore eye glasses. All of these people and many others -- along with their families – were murdered in one of the worst genocides ever.
But some say these crimes were too long ago, too far in the past, and that we should stop dwelling on the past. They say that we should look to the future; that we should not waste so much money on these trials; that the money should instead be used to feed the hungry or to give medical care to the sick. Certainly the poor ought to be fed and the sick ought to get medical care. But is that all we are? Is that all we need? Is our hunger for food all that matters?
There is a Biblical passage that goes: “Man does not live by bread alone.” We all can understand what that means: that we are not just animals with animal appetites. That food alone cannot satisfy all our hungering. Man is also a spiritual creature and a moral creature. Would anyone argue that we should not have Buddhist temples? That we should tear down the great Christian cathedrals and the great Islamic mosques because the money could be better used to feed the hungry? Most of us realize that we have spiritual hungers that need to be nourished, and that temples and churches help satisfy that hunger.
And man also hungers for something else at least as important as food. We hunger for justice. And for too long we have been denied justice. The Cambodian genocide stands alone as having failed to bring any of the guilty to justice. From the Nuremberg Trials to the more recent international tribunals to try the mass murderers in Serbia and Rwanda, the victims, their families, and the international community have been given some semblance of justice, some degree of retribution. But not Cambodia.
So some argue that expending scarce funding for a 30-year old crime is absurd, but I hope most Cambodians would disagree. In Cambodia those who were responsible for the genocide for the most part live safe, free, even prosperous lives among the very people they terrorized. There is not a single family in Cambodia that was not affected by the genocide. The Khmer Rouge declared that they would bring the country to the “year zero.” They kept good their promise and now 30 years later the country is still lost and broken.
Cambodia’s brokenness is more than just political and economic. It is also psychological and spiritual. All the flaws of modern Cambodia -- from trafficking in persons to the drug trade and from the plundering of its natural and cultural resources to the rampant corruption that pervades all levels of the government – all have been exacerbated by our failure to bring the leaders of the Khmer Rouge to justice. The culture of impunity that we see throughout Cambodia today is rooted in the belief among its people that no crime is so great that it must be punished, and that whatever any Cambodian does is fine because it cannot possibly be worse than what the Khmer Rouge did –- and got away with doing.
There will be severe limitations on how far Cambodia can progress and reform until some degree of justice is rendered. But the killers are growing old. In another decade they will likely all have died quiet, peaceful deaths. Just last week Ta Mok died. Death, which had already stolen from so many Cambodians their lives and their happiness, has now stolen from them a chance for justice.
Highly intelligent, a devoted friend and dedicated public servant, Ung Choeun, better known by his nom de guerre Ta Mok – Grandfather Mok – was likely directly responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of his fellow Cambodians. Neighbors and old comrades wept when they heard of his death. And that is another important reason to press forward with the tribunal and to regret that Ta Mok was never brought to trial: mass murderers are too conveniently labeled as madmen or sadists. As the Catholic writer, Thomas Merton, once remarked about the Nazis, labeling the killers as insane or inherently evil wrongly permit us the comfort of believing that normal people, ordinarily decent people, could never commit these crimes. That it is only the insane and the cruel that could do so. But the real horror of these crimes, as Merton pointed out, is that most perpetrators are neither insane nor pathologically cruel people.
How will our hunger for justice ever be satisfied if the tribunal does not continue? If the tribunal is delayed any longer? If more of those guilty of this crime are allowed to quietly end their days in peace, having never acknowledged their crimes or accepted responsibility for the horrors they inflicted on their fellow Cambodians.
All those who died and all those who suffered: their deaths and their pain need to be vindicated, need to be sacramentalized. The victims of the genocide deserve justice; the victims of the genocide demand justice. Cambodians deserve to have their hunger for justice satisfied.
But some say these crimes were too long ago, too far in the past, and that we should stop dwelling on the past. They say that we should look to the future; that we should not waste so much money on these trials; that the money should instead be used to feed the hungry or to give medical care to the sick. Certainly the poor ought to be fed and the sick ought to get medical care. But is that all we are? Is that all we need? Is our hunger for food all that matters?
There is a Biblical passage that goes: “Man does not live by bread alone.” We all can understand what that means: that we are not just animals with animal appetites. That food alone cannot satisfy all our hungering. Man is also a spiritual creature and a moral creature. Would anyone argue that we should not have Buddhist temples? That we should tear down the great Christian cathedrals and the great Islamic mosques because the money could be better used to feed the hungry? Most of us realize that we have spiritual hungers that need to be nourished, and that temples and churches help satisfy that hunger.
And man also hungers for something else at least as important as food. We hunger for justice. And for too long we have been denied justice. The Cambodian genocide stands alone as having failed to bring any of the guilty to justice. From the Nuremberg Trials to the more recent international tribunals to try the mass murderers in Serbia and Rwanda, the victims, their families, and the international community have been given some semblance of justice, some degree of retribution. But not Cambodia.
So some argue that expending scarce funding for a 30-year old crime is absurd, but I hope most Cambodians would disagree. In Cambodia those who were responsible for the genocide for the most part live safe, free, even prosperous lives among the very people they terrorized. There is not a single family in Cambodia that was not affected by the genocide. The Khmer Rouge declared that they would bring the country to the “year zero.” They kept good their promise and now 30 years later the country is still lost and broken.
Cambodia’s brokenness is more than just political and economic. It is also psychological and spiritual. All the flaws of modern Cambodia -- from trafficking in persons to the drug trade and from the plundering of its natural and cultural resources to the rampant corruption that pervades all levels of the government – all have been exacerbated by our failure to bring the leaders of the Khmer Rouge to justice. The culture of impunity that we see throughout Cambodia today is rooted in the belief among its people that no crime is so great that it must be punished, and that whatever any Cambodian does is fine because it cannot possibly be worse than what the Khmer Rouge did –- and got away with doing.
There will be severe limitations on how far Cambodia can progress and reform until some degree of justice is rendered. But the killers are growing old. In another decade they will likely all have died quiet, peaceful deaths. Just last week Ta Mok died. Death, which had already stolen from so many Cambodians their lives and their happiness, has now stolen from them a chance for justice.
Highly intelligent, a devoted friend and dedicated public servant, Ung Choeun, better known by his nom de guerre Ta Mok – Grandfather Mok – was likely directly responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of his fellow Cambodians. Neighbors and old comrades wept when they heard of his death. And that is another important reason to press forward with the tribunal and to regret that Ta Mok was never brought to trial: mass murderers are too conveniently labeled as madmen or sadists. As the Catholic writer, Thomas Merton, once remarked about the Nazis, labeling the killers as insane or inherently evil wrongly permit us the comfort of believing that normal people, ordinarily decent people, could never commit these crimes. That it is only the insane and the cruel that could do so. But the real horror of these crimes, as Merton pointed out, is that most perpetrators are neither insane nor pathologically cruel people.
How will our hunger for justice ever be satisfied if the tribunal does not continue? If the tribunal is delayed any longer? If more of those guilty of this crime are allowed to quietly end their days in peace, having never acknowledged their crimes or accepted responsibility for the horrors they inflicted on their fellow Cambodians.
All those who died and all those who suffered: their deaths and their pain need to be vindicated, need to be sacramentalized. The victims of the genocide deserve justice; the victims of the genocide demand justice. Cambodians deserve to have their hunger for justice satisfied.
1 comment:
The Cambodia National police and Army are infested by the former Khmerouge and Viet namese spy! reforme them, and we Cambodian will find justice!
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