KI Media: Ms. Theary Seng's Interview with Deutsche Welle

Theary Seng's Interview with Deutsche Welle
June 2012

Ms. Theary Seng with two young Khmer delegates at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany, June 2012.

Deutsche Welle: CIVICUS Cambodia. Theary C. Seng is the founder of the Cambodian Center for Justice & Reconciliation, and the founding president of CIVICUS: Center for Cambodian Civic Education, registered with the Ministry of Interior. After a 2-year stint as a commercial lawyer, Theary, in March 2006, joined the Center for Social Development, a local human rights organization based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia as its executive director until her removal in July 2009 by a politically-motivated court injunctive order.

Cambodia is an oppressed country, but it is your home and you have decided to live and to work here – nevertheless of your memories. How would you describe the status quo of Cambodia in present – is it a democracy with enlightened people and a free press?

Theary Seng: Yes, Cambodia is once again my home. When I am overseas, I am restless to return home; when I am home, I am restless by the prevailing violations, the constant abuses and the extreme poverty! Oftentimes, these occurrences strike most brutally against women and children.

Yes, Cambodia is a democracy, but a very immature one; we are still very much taking infant steps toward learning the mechanics and principles behind what it means to be a democracy, to live in freedom, to speak one’s mind equally as a woman as that of a man, to have and respect different ideas, to embrace basic quality education for all, both rich and poor, both girls and boys alike.

Cambodia has the facade of a democracy; we are not lacking in documentary rights. To contrary, we are one of the first countries to ratify every international treaty. Domestically, for example, we have one of the most beautifully written, liberal Constitutions in the world.

However, we are slow to actualize these technical words and highfalutin concepts into a living, breathing reality. The leaders and politicians are the slowest—intentionally and unintentionally so—in embracing the ideals and principles of democracy and practicing them. This is not surprising but extremely frustrating and destructive for us, the common people.

We know from history that people in power rarely give up power voluntarily; it needs to be demanded by the oppressed. The Cambodian leaders are no different, but in many instances, worse because of the natural inclination toward the abuse of power combined with a long history of violence and impunity as well as ignorance and an arrogant spirit of unteachability.

The common people, on the other hand, are embracing and hungering for democracy, which is the breathing of free air. However, their yearnings are limited by the tyrannical power of the leaders as well as by their lack of opportunities in education and employment, which facilitate the growth of democracy into maturity.

All to say, Cambodia is a democratic embryo, struggling to survive into a stage where it can live on its own.

DW: You say: “Cambodia has only a society of "subjects" and “survivors”, not of “representatives” nor “citizens”. We have been "subjects" of colonialism and the monarchy; the Khmer Rouge made us "survivors". Your organization will change that and encourage your people to raise their self-awareness in a democratic way. Is it necessary to start this kind of civic education with the youngest, who have no memory?

TS: Like many poor countries of the South, Cambodia is experiencing a “youth bulge” where 70 percent of our 14 million people are under the age of 30. That is to say, they were born after the Khmer Rouge genocide, and as you rightly noted, they have “no memory”. But only in the sense of direct, experiential memory. “No memory” in this sense does not equate to mean they have not been impacted.

Many Cambodian survivors experienced trauma, with many, to this day, debilitated by post-traumatic syndrome disorder or PTSD. (We shouldn’t really call it a disorder, as it is only natural that anyone who experienced the hell that we had undergone SHOULD experienced trauma! To not be affected by such gross unleashing of evil would be instead a disorder, don’t you think?!)

And this trauma passes on to the second generation. As violence perpetuates violence, so trauma is passed on to the new generation, even if they themselves did not experience the first instance of direct impact. We see this in real terms in the high rate of alcoholism, of domestic violence, of daily “random” violence, of impunity. These “bad habits” are being unconsciously breathed in by the young people.

In this context, we Cambodians—young and old—are survivors, Here, I mean that both young and old possess the “survivor mentality” of living only for the moment, with porous boundaries between right and wrong.

Compounded to this, we Cambodians have never lived under a democracy where there is a two-way dialogue and open discussions. We have been subjects of the king, of the French colonialism, and Vietnamese occupation. And subjects do not talk back. In our history, we lived under directives and fiats – of the leaders to the people, of the husband to the wife, of the man to the woman, of the parent to the child; it’s a one-way command with no talking back.

In this light, in this embryonic democracy we are living in, it’s not as if we are returning to something we had experienced before; we have to altogether learn a new habit, a new way of living. Thus, we must focus on the young people.

Habits are hard to break, especially bad ones and especially engrained by the passage of time (in the older people!); we need to instil good habits from an early age, so that they are hard to break!

Since democracy has been dropped onto Cambodia (not a bad thing; I am simply stating this to indicate the nature of its introduction), the human rights community has been busy training on political rights—of expression, of voting, etc.—and mainly engaging the adult population.

CIVICUS Cambodia sees the importance of continuing this work, but for the other NGOs. We want to broaden this work to focus on the young and the day-to-day interaction, of “civic” or “civil” engagement” of living, by toning down the volume, of not having every little issue turn into high drama or a matter of life and death.

Many Cambodians live daily in high stress where a non-issue often erupts into fatal incidences; it is because we have not learned an alternative way of communication; a different mindset or mental shift is needed that not everything is a shouting match, that it is okay to agree to disagree.

Related, up until now, the democracy education has been focused on “rights”, and scarce on “responsibility”.

For me, a citizen is simply defined as a person who knows and exercises her rights with responsibility. Responsibility is only the other side of the same coin; it cannot be divorced from rights.

Now, we Cambodians know well what our rights are. We can continue to learn some more, of course, but what is missing now and what we need to move toward is the exercising of those rights we know we have, and to exercise them with responsibility.

DW: You and your family are victims of the Khmer Rouge. Now you are accessory prosecutor at the Trial. 30 years (!) after the Khmer Rouge Regime the first adjudgements are given and after all the media coverage – you are not satisfied?

TS: The Khmer Rouge Tribunal had the potential to provide a satisfactory measure of justice, not perfect justice, as no such thing exists on this earth, but a degree where we victims could have accepted.

(I should parenthetically add that when I use the term “victim” for myself, I do not mean the kind normally associated with victimhood and victimization or powerlessness. I use the term victim intentionally as the term carries legal consequences, unlike the term “survivor”, and thus is stronger. I disagree with individuals who say that we should disuse the term “victim” and instead embrace the term “survivor”, that we should want to graduate from “victim” to “survivor”. I think this is a wrong way to think about the issue and does a disservice to the victim-survivors; it is stronger to have the options of being known by both terms when we choose the occasion. For example, I applied to become a “civil party” as a “victim” as there are legal rights associated to this term; not so with “survivor”. Victims connote “legal injury” which gives rise to reparations.)

However, this KRT has squandered that opportunity and has turned the pursuit of justice into a political theatre of deceit and for revising history to serve powerful interests of certain individuals, of the ruling party, of certain regional and international powers (e.g. Vietnam, Thailand, China, the US).

As you may know, I had been a supporter of this KRT from its beginning days of operation in July 2006; it is only recently that the scale tipped for me where I can no longer support and lend legitimacy to a sham.

This KRT, despite its crumbs of benefits, is full of deceit. Deceit runs contrary to truth. Truth is a pre-condition of justice. Thus, this KRT uses the tool of “justice” to perpetrate injustice. I cannot accept such an assault on my suffering, such soiling of my parents’ memories and those of 1,700,000 other victims who perished.

DW: A sentence from William Wilberforce has become your motto: “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” So, you think for civil education of people it is necessary, to remember always a regime of injustice like the Khmer Rouge?

TS: I like this statement by abolitionist Wilberforce a lot, mainly because today’s Cambodia has a devastating problem of modern-day slavery, which scars further an already scarred broken society. Another reason I like it is because it gives us no room to claim ignorance for our inaction in light of great injustices. It forces us to confront our own cowardice and forces the issue of our personal responsibility. The statement makes us uncomfortable about injustices, which is a very, very good thing.

Yes, civic education is highly, deeply important in the rebuilding of a society which has been shattered from every possible angle, at every level. What is education but knowledge which opens the way to understanding, which in turns open the way for reflection and wisdom?

However, it should be emphasized that we want to elevate honorable memory and do away with hatred and negative memory. By “negative memory”, I do not mean to include the remembrance of the pain or the suffering or the atrocities; we must remember but we remember with understanding, with honor, with a redeemed spirit hopefully leading to forgiveness, with a will to want to redeem the darkness for something more positive. By “negative memory”, the kind we must do away with, I mean the memory that eats our inside, paralyzes our present and debilitate our future. We have the power to choose what we want to remember, and for me I choose to honor what is true, and from those truths, only what are honorable and edifying, memory which leads me toward healing and forgiveness.

I see all this being done through civic engagement and education, which is the more needed in a place like Cambodia.