As Khmer Rouge victims come to terms with the Duch sentence, a Singapore-based couple is bringing a picture of hope to Cambodians
Jul 31, 2010
By Mahdev Mohan and Vinita Ramani Moha
TodayOnline.com
In 2008, Singapore lawyer Mahdev Mohan and his wife, ex-journalist Vinita, set up Access to Justice Asia to represent Cambodian minorities in the war crimes trials of senior Khmer Rouge leaders. Mr Mahdev, 31, is the first Asian lawyer to act as legal counsel to the victims at the tribunal hearings. Currently an Assistant Professor of Law at the Singapore Management University and Associate Fellow of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, he and his wife were there when this week's milestone verdict was handed down.
ON MONDAY, about 800 people - survivors, media and victims' advocates like us - listened in rapt silence at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal grounds as Judge Nil Nonn declared the former head of Cambodia's notorious S-21 prison guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
When Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was given a 35-year prison sentence for his "shocking and heinous" deeds which claimed more than 12,000 lives in the '70s, some former victims cheered.
But that was before they did the math.
They soon realised, Duch would serve no more than 19 years, taking into account his time served and mitigating factors. And with parole a possibility, Duch, 67, could spend as little as 12 years behind bars - considerably less than the 20 years or more which Cambodian courts mete out for less-serious crimes.
When we asked court spokesman Lars Olsen why the judges hadn't explained Duch's actual prison time more clearly, he retorted that the calculation was a "legal technicality". The response floored us. Imagine telling that to S-21 survivors like Chum Mey, who lost his wife and children to the Khmer Rouge, and seemed in a state of shock when his lawyers explained the verdict's intricacies.
In 2008, Chum Mey had hoped that participating in Duch's trial would give him a sense of closure. "I want to stay alive to give evidence," he had told us. "I survived the Khmer Rouge, and if I die before the trial, what was the point of surviving?" But standing outside the courtroom after the verdict, all Chum Mey could manage was: "I really cannot say anything. I am too sad."
The United Nations-backed court is the latest in a series of international criminal tribunals intended to bring war criminals to book and provide closure for victims and their families - but not always succeeding in either regard.
Last Monday's verdict, the first delivered against a major Khmer Rouge figure, brought things full circle for us. Sitting in that same courtroom in November 2007 while working for NGOs in Cambodia, we had been moved by victim testimonies at Duch's first pre-trial hearing. Soon after, we established Access to Justice Asia (AJA), a non-profit dedicated to assisting unknown or unrepresented communities in Asia that have gone through conflict.
AJA has been well-received by Cambodian victims; many survivors we spoke to over the next three years became friends. Even though we do not represent him, Chum Mey tells tourists during his daily rounds at S-21 about the maythievi (lawyer) from Singapore and his team who struggle to find justice for Cambodians.
REPARATIONS FALL SHORT
For the past three years, Khmer Rouge victims like Chum Mey have been encouraged by the court to participate in its trials as "civil parties", with the promise that they will have a voice in the proceedings and the right, among other things, to request collective reparations.
Chum Mey does not want financial reparation. He would be content if S-21 were converted into a monument or a public memorial which could serve to educate future generations about the lives of the persons who perished there. His hopes were dashed when the only reparation the court ordered was the compilation and publication of the judgment containing civil parties' names and Duch's apologies to victims.
The reparation ordered by the court is a far cry from the sort of reparations we have come to expect from international courts.
At the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, for instance, governments have been ordered to ensure that each civil party receives a copy of the judgment in their native language; establish trust funds for education or medical treatment; hold commemoration ceremonies to honour victims; provide security to victims; and investigate related contemporary human rights abuses. Unfortunately, the tribunal has eschewed such innovative measures and settled instead for something unimaginative and expedient.
The court's preference for expediency over recovery has unsettled many victims, including indigenous survivors we represent in the upcoming trial of four surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders, which is slated to begin next year.
QUESTIONING THEIR FAITH
Over the past two years, we have worked with the Khmer , ethnic Khmers with roots in South Vietnam, to document their evidence. The Khmer Rouge falsely persecuted them as traitors with "Khmer bodies but Vietnamese minds".
Having just emerged from genocide, and with historical reasons not to trust any official information-gathering exercise, it has not been easy for our Khmer Krom clients to speak freely about the atrocities they suffered.
We have had to work hard to gain their trust and confidence. Working with local community leaders and international experts, we filed extensive data and legal petitions to the court. Our efforts paid off earlier this year when 15 Khmer Krom clients were formally admitted as civil parties for the upcoming trial.
However, in light of the Duch verdict, our clients have asked us if their new-found faith in the court is misplaced.
The court's reparation order has little resonance for our clients. Some are illiterate or do not have access to media sources, and may never get to read the judgment. Others feel that Duch's apology is insincere since he asked to be acquitted.
Sitting in Wat Pratheath, in the south-western province of Takeo, one of the civil parties, Tun Soun, swept his arm to indicate that everything around us used to be a crime site - mass graves, stupas-turned-torture centres, canals once filled with bodies. For Tun Soun, publishing half-hearted apologies on pieces of paper insults the memory of the departed.
LIFE REPLACES DEATH
In anticipation of such paltry reparation measures, Access to Justice Asia shifted its sights in January to oral histories and photography, which can be used to chronicle the Khmer Krom story.
Mass graves are ubiquitous in Cambodia; the only visual documents that exist are those documenting death. We need to offer its communities a different way of perceiving themselves and their stories, and we think the way is through photography and short films of daily life. While the desire to repeat their stories of suffering is still strong, we'd like to reflect back to them images of continuity and life, not death.
To the court's affiliates, these non-legal measures may appear insignificant. But last week, when we brought with us the printed photographs taken by our summer intern photojournalists, villagers in Takeo gathered around us - ecstatic and proud to sift through the photos and find their faces mirrored there.
Most of these people don't have a single photo of themselves. What little they might have had by way of mementos of lost family members was destroyed. That was the Khmer Rouge's prevailing mantra: All family ties had to be broken, all attachment to culture, community and religion erased. To have a joyous photo of a grandmother, a parent or a child may help them to fearlessly remember and speak up.
Speaking last week in Singapore, Dame Sylvia Cartwright, a judge at the court, described evidence she heard from Cambodian victims and the fact that their desire for "personal revenge" may never be satiated. With respect, not all Cambodian survivors are motivated by vengeance when they express dissatisfaction with the court's decisions. Many have legitimate expectations of justice, participation and commemoration inside and outside the court-room.
We hope that at the next trial, the court will fulfil these expectations and enable Cambodians to return to a dignified and meaningful life within their communities.
'Whose justice is it?'
As part of a team of trial monitors who had a ringside view of the daily tribunal proceedings for four months, Singaporean lawyer Delphia Lim, 25, learnt that justice can be chilly.
"We saw raw human emotion from victims and perpetrators alike giving their testimony, juxtaposed against the seemingly cold and at times harsh legalism of the court setting," she said. "We learnt that cold hard justice doesn't always lend itself to reconciliation and healing."
It was curiosity and the desire to witness "what I believed would involve the best and worst of human experience" that drove Ms Lim to get involved last year with the Asian International Justice Initiative.
As trial monitors, the team's role was to publish independent assessments of the proceedings, which were circulated to lawyers and the special Cambodian court created to try serious crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Another fellow law graduate from the National University of Singapore, Ms Sangeetha Yogendran, 24, spent seven months with the court's Victims Support Section.
She also interned with Access to Justice Asia (AJA) doing outreach work, interviewing survivors and representing victims. When Monday's verdict was revealed, her immediate reaction "of joy and relief" gave way to mixed emotions. "It was very difficult watching the victims and the civil parties deal with their reactions, especially because I felt that the reparations award was somewhat of a joke," said Ms Sangeetha.
Ms Lim's attention was on S-21 prison chief Duch. "He looked shaken ... At the same time, the disappointment from the civil parties in the courtroom was palpable. I wondered, if this is justice, whose justice is it?"
Both young legal eagles have been left with a hunger for more such work. Ms Lim continues to take time off to assist AJA in Cambodia, thanks to "an understanding boss and team" at Drew and Napier; while Ms Sangeetha, who is taking the bar course, looks forward to interning at The Hague next year with the victims section of the International Criminal Court.
Jul 31, 2010
By Mahdev Mohan and Vinita Ramani Moha
TodayOnline.com
In 2008, Singapore lawyer Mahdev Mohan and his wife, ex-journalist Vinita, set up Access to Justice Asia to represent Cambodian minorities in the war crimes trials of senior Khmer Rouge leaders. Mr Mahdev, 31, is the first Asian lawyer to act as legal counsel to the victims at the tribunal hearings. Currently an Assistant Professor of Law at the Singapore Management University and Associate Fellow of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, he and his wife were there when this week's milestone verdict was handed down.
ON MONDAY, about 800 people - survivors, media and victims' advocates like us - listened in rapt silence at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal grounds as Judge Nil Nonn declared the former head of Cambodia's notorious S-21 prison guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
When Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was given a 35-year prison sentence for his "shocking and heinous" deeds which claimed more than 12,000 lives in the '70s, some former victims cheered.
But that was before they did the math.
They soon realised, Duch would serve no more than 19 years, taking into account his time served and mitigating factors. And with parole a possibility, Duch, 67, could spend as little as 12 years behind bars - considerably less than the 20 years or more which Cambodian courts mete out for less-serious crimes.
When we asked court spokesman Lars Olsen why the judges hadn't explained Duch's actual prison time more clearly, he retorted that the calculation was a "legal technicality". The response floored us. Imagine telling that to S-21 survivors like Chum Mey, who lost his wife and children to the Khmer Rouge, and seemed in a state of shock when his lawyers explained the verdict's intricacies.
In 2008, Chum Mey had hoped that participating in Duch's trial would give him a sense of closure. "I want to stay alive to give evidence," he had told us. "I survived the Khmer Rouge, and if I die before the trial, what was the point of surviving?" But standing outside the courtroom after the verdict, all Chum Mey could manage was: "I really cannot say anything. I am too sad."
The United Nations-backed court is the latest in a series of international criminal tribunals intended to bring war criminals to book and provide closure for victims and their families - but not always succeeding in either regard.
Last Monday's verdict, the first delivered against a major Khmer Rouge figure, brought things full circle for us. Sitting in that same courtroom in November 2007 while working for NGOs in Cambodia, we had been moved by victim testimonies at Duch's first pre-trial hearing. Soon after, we established Access to Justice Asia (AJA), a non-profit dedicated to assisting unknown or unrepresented communities in Asia that have gone through conflict.
AJA has been well-received by Cambodian victims; many survivors we spoke to over the next three years became friends. Even though we do not represent him, Chum Mey tells tourists during his daily rounds at S-21 about the maythievi (lawyer) from Singapore and his team who struggle to find justice for Cambodians.
REPARATIONS FALL SHORT
For the past three years, Khmer Rouge victims like Chum Mey have been encouraged by the court to participate in its trials as "civil parties", with the promise that they will have a voice in the proceedings and the right, among other things, to request collective reparations.
Chum Mey does not want financial reparation. He would be content if S-21 were converted into a monument or a public memorial which could serve to educate future generations about the lives of the persons who perished there. His hopes were dashed when the only reparation the court ordered was the compilation and publication of the judgment containing civil parties' names and Duch's apologies to victims.
The reparation ordered by the court is a far cry from the sort of reparations we have come to expect from international courts.
At the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, for instance, governments have been ordered to ensure that each civil party receives a copy of the judgment in their native language; establish trust funds for education or medical treatment; hold commemoration ceremonies to honour victims; provide security to victims; and investigate related contemporary human rights abuses. Unfortunately, the tribunal has eschewed such innovative measures and settled instead for something unimaginative and expedient.
The court's preference for expediency over recovery has unsettled many victims, including indigenous survivors we represent in the upcoming trial of four surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders, which is slated to begin next year.
QUESTIONING THEIR FAITH
Over the past two years, we have worked with the Khmer , ethnic Khmers with roots in South Vietnam, to document their evidence. The Khmer Rouge falsely persecuted them as traitors with "Khmer bodies but Vietnamese minds".
Having just emerged from genocide, and with historical reasons not to trust any official information-gathering exercise, it has not been easy for our Khmer Krom clients to speak freely about the atrocities they suffered.
We have had to work hard to gain their trust and confidence. Working with local community leaders and international experts, we filed extensive data and legal petitions to the court. Our efforts paid off earlier this year when 15 Khmer Krom clients were formally admitted as civil parties for the upcoming trial.
However, in light of the Duch verdict, our clients have asked us if their new-found faith in the court is misplaced.
The court's reparation order has little resonance for our clients. Some are illiterate or do not have access to media sources, and may never get to read the judgment. Others feel that Duch's apology is insincere since he asked to be acquitted.
Sitting in Wat Pratheath, in the south-western province of Takeo, one of the civil parties, Tun Soun, swept his arm to indicate that everything around us used to be a crime site - mass graves, stupas-turned-torture centres, canals once filled with bodies. For Tun Soun, publishing half-hearted apologies on pieces of paper insults the memory of the departed.
LIFE REPLACES DEATH
In anticipation of such paltry reparation measures, Access to Justice Asia shifted its sights in January to oral histories and photography, which can be used to chronicle the Khmer Krom story.
Mass graves are ubiquitous in Cambodia; the only visual documents that exist are those documenting death. We need to offer its communities a different way of perceiving themselves and their stories, and we think the way is through photography and short films of daily life. While the desire to repeat their stories of suffering is still strong, we'd like to reflect back to them images of continuity and life, not death.
To the court's affiliates, these non-legal measures may appear insignificant. But last week, when we brought with us the printed photographs taken by our summer intern photojournalists, villagers in Takeo gathered around us - ecstatic and proud to sift through the photos and find their faces mirrored there.
Most of these people don't have a single photo of themselves. What little they might have had by way of mementos of lost family members was destroyed. That was the Khmer Rouge's prevailing mantra: All family ties had to be broken, all attachment to culture, community and religion erased. To have a joyous photo of a grandmother, a parent or a child may help them to fearlessly remember and speak up.
Speaking last week in Singapore, Dame Sylvia Cartwright, a judge at the court, described evidence she heard from Cambodian victims and the fact that their desire for "personal revenge" may never be satiated. With respect, not all Cambodian survivors are motivated by vengeance when they express dissatisfaction with the court's decisions. Many have legitimate expectations of justice, participation and commemoration inside and outside the court-room.
We hope that at the next trial, the court will fulfil these expectations and enable Cambodians to return to a dignified and meaningful life within their communities.
'Whose justice is it?'
As part of a team of trial monitors who had a ringside view of the daily tribunal proceedings for four months, Singaporean lawyer Delphia Lim, 25, learnt that justice can be chilly.
"We saw raw human emotion from victims and perpetrators alike giving their testimony, juxtaposed against the seemingly cold and at times harsh legalism of the court setting," she said. "We learnt that cold hard justice doesn't always lend itself to reconciliation and healing."
It was curiosity and the desire to witness "what I believed would involve the best and worst of human experience" that drove Ms Lim to get involved last year with the Asian International Justice Initiative.
As trial monitors, the team's role was to publish independent assessments of the proceedings, which were circulated to lawyers and the special Cambodian court created to try serious crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Another fellow law graduate from the National University of Singapore, Ms Sangeetha Yogendran, 24, spent seven months with the court's Victims Support Section.
She also interned with Access to Justice Asia (AJA) doing outreach work, interviewing survivors and representing victims. When Monday's verdict was revealed, her immediate reaction "of joy and relief" gave way to mixed emotions. "It was very difficult watching the victims and the civil parties deal with their reactions, especially because I felt that the reparations award was somewhat of a joke," said Ms Sangeetha.
Ms Lim's attention was on S-21 prison chief Duch. "He looked shaken ... At the same time, the disappointment from the civil parties in the courtroom was palpable. I wondered, if this is justice, whose justice is it?"
Both young legal eagles have been left with a hunger for more such work. Ms Lim continues to take time off to assist AJA in Cambodia, thanks to "an understanding boss and team" at Drew and Napier; while Ms Sangeetha, who is taking the bar course, looks forward to interning at The Hague next year with the victims section of the International Criminal Court.
4 comments:
Cambodian Gangster "TRG" part 3
CPP vs. trg "tiny rats group"
From a simple gesture made by Aki Ra whom was once a Khmer Rouge due to his younger age and lacked of life experience, thus he has no choice but to join the Khmer Rouge and has been indoctrinated to by ill minds of the regime leaders and led him to lay all these mines in Cambodia. No one can blame Aki Ra for joining the Khmer Rouge, it was a choice with choices. This has clearly shown that Cambodia was once a dangerous place in a dangerous time that led to the atrocity since Hitler Days against the Jews. But questions remain to be illusive as to whom invented these mines, bombs and other life threatening pieces of destructions, and brought into the gentle land of Cambodia. Cambodia is not a country that has a capacity to invent such destructive objects that can kill. Cambodia is a country that believes in Buddhism, to say that this country is a country of evil and killed all these lives and to blame Cambodia alone is rather ludicrous and insane and that perpetrators are still on the loose. No one dare to look into China, US and Russia which were the countries that have the capacity to invent such objects that can kill, having said that, it leads us to the Trial of Khmer Rouge. The entire regime rest assure on one man and his name is Duch or Kaing Gek Iev. How can one man did all these killings when he was just a prison guard. Who gave the orders to kill? What crimes have these victims done against the state that deserve such torture and suffering and severe punishment that no one had ever seen in history of mankind? Where did the Khmer Rouge get their method of killings from? Who show Khmer Rouge how to kill? What purpose behind these killings? Who will gain from these killings at the end? There are so many questions that must be answered and yet, there is only one man to be convicted at the end. How can one man get 35 years and now reduced to 19 years sentenced be equal to 1.75 millions of lives that this regime has destroyed? Millions of dollars have been spent, many effortless hours have been put into the process, not just in Cambodia, but the across the golbe. There has to be more than a one man show. Why Duch? Why Kaing Gek Iev? Why him and why now? What about Khieu Samphon? What about Noun Chea? What Khieu Khanarith? What about Sihanouk? What about those that we dont know about that are still alive today? At the end...the life of one Khmer do worth nothing, when Angkor was such a great legacy to all who are known as Khmers and live in one of the greatest Empire of its time.
Thank You. My tears have been shed and my blood has been spilled. Along the way I have lost more than 20 members of my relatives, but above all what is really precious to me, it was time and education to which that I have lost during my younger days.
Cambodia, my country, I will make a vow to you that one day I shall return to lead you before my days are done.
X-MEN
Democratic Kampuchea Pol Pot Khmer Rouge Regime's leaders and members:
Pol Pot
Nuon Chea
Ieng Sary
Ta Mok
Khieu Samphan
Son Sen
Ieng Thearith
Kaing Guek Eav aka Samak Mith Duch
Chea Sim
Heng Samrin
Hor Namhong aka Samak Mith Yaem
Keat Chhon
Ouk Bunchhoeun
Sim Ka
Hun Sen...
Committed:
Tortures
Brutality
Executions
Massacres
Mass Murder
Genocide
Atrocities
Crimes Against Humanity
Starvations
Slavery
Force Labour
Overwork to Death
Human Abuses
Persecution
Unlawful Detention
Cambodian People's Party Hun Sen Khmer Rouge Regime's leaders and members:
Hun Sen
Chea Sim
Heng Samrin
Hor Namhong aka Samak Mith Yaem
Keat Chhon
Ouk Bunchhoeun
Sim Ka...
Committed:
Attempted Murders
Attempted Murder on Chea Vichea
Attempted Assassinations
Attempted Assassination on Sam Rainsy
Assassinations
Assassinated Journalists
Assassinated Political Opponents
Assassinated Leaders of the Free Trade Union
Assassinated over 80 members of Sam Rainsy Party.
Sam Rainsy LIC 31 October 2009 - Cairo, Egypt
"As of today, over eighty members of my party have been assassinated. Countless others have been injured, arrested, jailed, or forced to go into hiding or into exile."
Executions
Executed over 100 members of FUNCINPEC Party
Murders
Murdered 3 Leaders of the Free Trade Union
Murdered Chea Vichea
Murdered Ros Sovannareth
Murdered Hy Vuthy
Murdered 10 Journalists
Murdered Khim Sambo
Murdered Khim Sambo's son
Murdered members of Sam Rainsy Party.
Murdered activists of Sam Rainsy Party
Murdered Innocent Men
Murdered Innocent Women
Murdered Innocent Children
Killed Innocent Khmer Peoples.
Extrajudicial Execution
Grenade Attack
Terrorism
Drive by Shooting
Brutalities
Police Brutality Against Monks
Police Brutality Against Evictees
Tortures
Intimidations
Death Threats
Threatening
Human Abductions
Human Abuses
Human Rights Abuses
Human Trafficking
Drugs Trafficking
Under Age Child Sex
Corruptions
Bribery
Embezzlement
Treason
Border Encroachment, allow Vietnam to encroaching into Cambodia.
Signed away our territories to Vietnam; Koh Tral, almost half of our ocean territory oil field and others.
Illegal Arrest
Illegal Mass Evictions
Illegal Land Grabbing
Illegal Firearms
Illegal Logging
Illegal Deforestation
Illegally use of remote detonate bomb on Sokha Helicopter, while Hok Lundy and other military officials were on board.
Lightning strike many airplanes, but did not fall from the sky. Lightning strike out side of airplane and discharge electricity to ground.
Source: Lightning, Discovery Channel
Illegally Sold State Properties
Illegally Removed Parliamentary Immunity of Parliament Members
Plunder National Resources
Acid Attacks
Turn Cambodia into a Lawless Country.
Oppression
Injustice
Steal Votes
Bring Foreigners from Vietnam to vote in Cambodia for Cambodian People's Party.
Use Dead people's names to vote for Cambodian People's Party.
Disqualified potential Sam Rainsy Party's voters.
Abuse the Court as a tools for CPP to send political opponents and journalists to jail.
Abuse of Power
Abuse the Laws
Abuse the National Election Committee
Abuse the National Assembly
Violate the Laws
Violate the Constitution
Violate the Paris Accords
Impunity
Persecution
Unlawful Detention
Death in custody.
Under the Cambodian People's Party Hun Sen Khmer Rouge Regime, no criminals that has been committed crimes against journalists, political opponents, leaders of the Free Trade Union, innocent men, women and children have ever been brought to justice.
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