Let History Judge

Hillary Clinton guided through the Genocide Museum of Tuol Sleng by Youk Chhang - Cambodia Tribunal Monitor.

 

by School of Vice

DC-CAM wanted on stand

Whatever one may think of former KR ‘Brother Number 2’ Nuon Chea’s dark and calamitous past involvement in Democratic Kampuchea’s murderous rule in the seventies, or the farcical theatre being staged by the ECCC over this KR trial, it is hard for one not to notice one salvaging, positive aspect emerging out of this whole cynical episode, which is that at least his defence team is doing a job as independently and courageously in the interest of their client as indeed any good lawyer is expected to. Under circumstances veered by political manipulations and interferences, the team refuses to buckle under by conforming to approved norms and half-veiled threats. Not even the most powerful man in the country appears to be exempt from their legal probing and – in such unsavoury climate – risqué scrutiny.

Thus, the lawyers questioned the propriety of Hun Sen’s recent public statement that the KRT and its unravelling constitute an apology and provide an incontestable justification for Vietnam’s intervention some 30 years ago in putting to an end one of its main sister movements which it came to regard at the time as an unacceptable aberration. So it is to their considerable credit that the lawyers now bring under public spot light the instrumental role of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia and its dubious, colourful director Youk Chhang by calling for him to appear on the stand to corroborate the not inconsiderable body of documentary evidence his US- funded organisation has gathered over the years for the sole aim of facilitating the prosecution process and thus lending credence or legitimacy to what many see as “the Trial of the Century”. But whist the enormity and nature of the crime committed against the Khmer people merits such acclaim, and whilst DCC and its director has prospered financially by making a business and a drama out of painful memories, how much substance or support – if any – has the Centre been able to deliver towards fulfilling the Trial’s professed mission to heal a nation’s wounds?

The task of unearthing ‘evidence’ and documents relating to the Democratic Kampuchea period was always going to be complicated anyway. Firstly, the collapse of the DK regime did not mark any conclusive end to that regime’s influence in either personnel or political-military terms, unlike the fall of the Nazi regime in Europe at the end of World War ll. Secondly, this legacy has meant that any surviving historical documents pertaining to the DK period would have been placed firmly in the possession of those who overthrew that regime and replaced it, and subsequently because so many individuals and actors who now man this latter regime themselves had once been cadres and administrative personnel of DK, in addition to the historical, controlling presence of the Vietnamese who had re-installed them in power and given them a second lease of life, it would be logical to conclude that the release of DK period documents for any public related study would have been at the selective discretion of those who held them.

It was in this context that Youk Chhang’s predecessors – one Ben Kiernan, an Australian and his associates whom many in America would call “a bunch of Commies” - were hired by the US State Department to do the same work in the belief that their ideological inclinations would endear them to the power that be and hopefully easing their sought access into the regime’s dark alleys! Kiernan was later rumoured to have run off with the programme’s funding . . . and his replacement by Chhang - a survivor of the KR regime - may have been made with a view to restoring or repairing some of the damage done to the Department’s image through its Cambodia research programme.

So in this sense, it is entirely reasonable of Nuon Chea’s defence team to demand that Youk Chhang or DCC’s appointed representative appear before the KRT, if only to shed light upon the documentary evidence DCC has collated and made available before the Tribunal. And while the team is at it, I suggest it queries what – if any – DK related documents have been collected that might implicate or exonerate known former KR cadres and affiliates who are presently at large in the country or embedded within the ranks of the RGC, including Hun Sen, Chea Sim, Heng Samrin et al as well as any documents relating to Vietnam’s concerned policies and practices in the same period? After all, being a pig means one should have no fear of boiling water? Just a thought, that’s all.

Let the boiling water judge the pig[s]!