PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia is to build a Khmer Rouge genocide museum and library, funded by the United States, as a permanent reminder of the "Killing Fields" atrocities of Pol Pot's guerrilla movement, its director-to-be said on Monday.
Documentation Centre of Cambodia head Youk Chhang, who has been cataloguing the ultra-Maoist regime's crimes for more than a decade, said the museum would be on the site of an old re-education camp in the capital.
"Genocide does not discriminate. It kept happening in the last century and one way is to use education as a tool help to prevent genocide," he told Reuters.
Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge soldier who defected to Vietnam in the late 1970s, handed over the land on April 17, the 33rd anniversary of the 1975 downfall of Phnom Penh to Pol Pot's peasant army.
In the next four years, an estimated 1.7 million people were to die of starvation, execution, disease or forced labour.
A $56 million United Nations-backed court has charged five top cadres with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Cambodia has appealed to its donors for another $114 million in funding to see the trials through to a conclusion.
Documentation Centre of Cambodia head Youk Chhang, who has been cataloguing the ultra-Maoist regime's crimes for more than a decade, said the museum would be on the site of an old re-education camp in the capital.
"Genocide does not discriminate. It kept happening in the last century and one way is to use education as a tool help to prevent genocide," he told Reuters.
Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge soldier who defected to Vietnam in the late 1970s, handed over the land on April 17, the 33rd anniversary of the 1975 downfall of Phnom Penh to Pol Pot's peasant army.
In the next four years, an estimated 1.7 million people were to die of starvation, execution, disease or forced labour.
A $56 million United Nations-backed court has charged five top cadres with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Cambodia has appealed to its donors for another $114 million in funding to see the trials through to a conclusion.
2 comments:
To my knowledge, the Khmer Rouge tribunal has not charged any Khmer Rouge leader arrested so far with the crime of genocide under article 4 of the Khmer Rouge tribunal law, and it is doubtful if any would be charged with this crime in the end.
The arrested Khmer Rouge leaders have been charged only with:
. crimes against humanity;
. war crimes
. grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (willful killing...)
So the proposed name of the planned museum, "genocide museum", would not reflect the crimes with which, and for wich, the Khmer Rouge tribunal has charged and will eventually convict the Khmer Khmer leaders. It could even play a misleading role.
It is more appropriate to name the planned museum:
'Museum of Communism',
or, to reflect the consequences of Communism,
'Totalitarian Museum'.
Here are a set of broad characteristics of Communism the Khmer Rouge rule had already reflected and probably had aimed to eventually reflect:
General Goals:
1. End of exploitation of labour of all forms; social ownershership of property;
2. Consensus on all public questions, therefore, no laws, no discipline, no coercion;
3. Satisfaction of all material needs;
4. Collectively shared duties and work;
5. Self-government (even democracy becomes redundant.
State:
1. Abolition of legislative and executive functions (no longer necessary;
2. Distribution of administrative tasks by rotation and election;
3. Dissolution of all armed and coercive forces;
Economy:
1. Elimination of markets, exchange and the role of money;
2. End of division of labour, rotation of all tasks;
3. People enjoy a variety of types of work and leasure;
4. Work-time reduced to a minimum;
5. With abolition of scarcity, all wants are satisfied and the idea of private property becomes meaningless.
Society:
1. Principle of cooperation extends to all public affairs;
2. Social, cultural, regional and racial differences disappaear as sources of conflict;
3. People explore their capacities to the full with othr people's freedom as the only constraint;
4. Households are based on communal arrangements, monogamy persists, though not necessary as a lifetime commitment.
Overall objecives:
1. Planned expansion of production and abolition of material scarcity
2. 'Administration of persons' to be replaced by 'administration of things', i.e. 'withering away of state'
3. Principle of justice to be gradually established: 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need'.
Source: David Held, Models of Democracy, 2nd ed.(Oxford: Polity Press), pp142-143
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
sihanouk wanted to burn all those bones!
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