Youk Chhang (Photo: Tang Chhin Sothy / AFP / Getty)HEROES & PIONEERS
By John Kerry
Time Magazine
"Cambodia is like broken glass," says Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia. "Without justice, we cannot put the pieces together." Putting the pieces together is the mission of the man who made himself the keeper of Cambodia's darkest memories.Standing up to powerful forces that feared reopening the past, Chhang has documented the three years, eight months and 20 days of cruelty that claimed the lives of 1.7 million Cambodians under Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge. Six hundred thousand pages of documents, maps of 20,000 mass graves and 4,000 transcribed interviews with former Khmer Rouge soldiers are testimony to Chhang's conviction that there is no future without making peace with the past. They will provide the evidence at a long-delayed tribunal on the genocide, which it is hoped will finally start this year.
Confronting painful history is never easy. But for Chhang, 46, it is personal. Under Pol Pot, his sister was accused of stealing rice. A soldier slashed open her stomach to prove her guilt. Her stomach was empty. She died a slow and horrible death. This is one of the unspeakable acts that have gone not only unpunished but unexplained.
The tribunal will allow the world to hear the architects of these crimes speak about why they inflicted such suffering. In pain revisited, there will be a chance for a nation's healing and in Youk Chhang, a hero confronting the past's villains.
Senator Kerry brokered the U.N.'s Cambodian-genocide tribunal
2 comments:
Well done, Mr. Youk Chhang. Heartfelt congratultions! Every Khmer should be proud of you.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
Dear Mr. Youk Chhang,
I do not know what truth are you looking for but what I learn from your research is basis on total condemnation on the Khmer Rouge. This show that you are not an independence researcher free from any government and favoring propagandas medias. It is likely you're part of the Hanoi propagandas spear head to blame all things on Khmer. What about America, China, Vietnam and Sihanouk himself? Would you dare to publish the truth about the Vietnamese crime, the Chinese and Sihanouk or America? Is it a crime for an invader to to stage a trial and executed former Khmer Rouge in the country? maybe your research is trying very hard to find all fault toward the Khmer Rouge. People needs to know reasons behind the CHAOS. Who is responsible for the millions of death not looking for a scapegoat here. Oh it is nice that your government has signed an agreement and except any American involvement in war crimes, how nice and is the Vietnamese to sign it next? Some just have no ideas that them are at own fault. Believe good people are the one end up dead while real killers roaring and abusing the whole nation no doubt about it. Is there any censorship in the truth? oh some correction to be made "it say 3 years 8 month and 20 days under Pol Pot" but Pol Pot didn't entered the city yet and the death told were already been done by the American B-52s and Hanoi shelling the city.
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