Fighting for justice

Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Op-Ed by Phiny Ung

As the verdict was on the news headline, I received several calls from close friends for their thought and caring about me as a victim. I wasn’t as excited as they were because I have to try to explain to them the complexity around the ECCC and the implication of the Cambodian Royal Government to the judicial system they have created.

It is a very disappointing outcome which the article “Derisory sentence for Khmer Rouge killer highlights the impotence of liberalism” by Gerald Warner, July 27th 2010, Telegraph (UK) points out every reason in which I totally agree with the writer, to see the justice system being influence by political manipulation based on the so-called Cambodia National Interest. PM Hun Sen uses it merely to conceal himself and his clan who were also Khmer Rouge cadres as an excuse to secure deals especially with the UN and the donor countries that provide funding to run the tribunal and other aids.

It seems that the international community put the Khmer people at a test for the second time with the ECCC after UNTAC spent 2 billion dollars in 1993. The corrupt Khmer leaders and people, together with the opportunist power brokers have been corroborated to bring this situation to Cambodia and Khmer innocent people.

How can we call it Justice when there is no mechanism for impartial establishment of the judicial system, and yet we are compelled to accept the court decision?

It is very sad to see the surviving victims who gathered, waited for the verdict and wept to express their emotion after an event to another. I look at the innocent faces and feel their pain because they can’t elaborate enough to ease their anger and feeling of betrayal apart from what they have said.

For me, the pain and suffering are still raw and it hurts me more when I learn everyday about the act of human rights abuses are still continued and unpunished no matter how big or small the crimes are. The rich, the powerful and the poor, they are all human beings but they are all being treated differently although there is only one existence of the fundamental principle of human rights. Ironically we have to fight for it, for ourselves, others and most importantly the dead victims who are unable to fight for as they would if they could.

After 35 years I still remember my father’s face when he looked at me from the back seat of the bicycle he was riding when he was taken away by a KR soldier. His glance was expressing his goodbye through that pale and frightened face of his fragile frame. Two years later I heard my sister’s unmistaken voice calling for my mother when they took her with the same transportation and passed our hut, she was 3 months pregnant. My mother and my older sister went after and begging them to see her at the interrogation centre. An hour later they allowed only my distraught mother who was picked up by a kind villager, back to our hut where I waited with my younger siblings. Mother was not able to talk or weep, fell very ill and was in bed for more than 3 months but still gathered her strength to cradle my 7 years old niece (the daughter of my older sister who was a widow) in her arms and surrounded by four other small children every night after they all came from minding ox or buffalo.

The following year, two brothers had been taken with their entire mobile brigade to bludgeon to death. Four young men managed to escape, went into hiding and told us about the experience.

This is not an extraordinary story, I am sure there are plenty more shocking and devastating stories than this but they have gone untold. It is very difficult to talk or write about it and it is impossible to measure the pain and suffering we have endured as no scholar or expert can do that for us. The surviving victims have an obligation for a duty of care to provide their witness account of the horrendous crime, especially those who are free and able to do so for the justice that all victims, survived and dead have been deprived.

We don’t want the ECCC to fall apart which will serve PM Hun Sen and his clan desire for it to be, but we all want the ECCC to be able to deliver a justice that the tax payers of the donor countries are satisfied with its virtue and worthwhile for the sweat and blood money they all paid for.

Gerald Warner has raised many valid points in his article because it is too obvious that most people would be aware of the convictions he has asserted. If the majority in the world would take the stand like him on this issue and the World’s Untold Story in the CNN Program on 27.7.10 featuring corruption within the ECCC personnel, together with more and more of the victim’s voice demanding for their legitimate rights, perhaps the justice for crime against humanity would not be easy to exploit or manipulate by the perpetrators and opportunists.

Phiny Ung
28.7.10