ECCC Circus Maximus Stupidus: No money to help the dying victims but has money to publish this ad

NO FUNDS TO HELP THE VICTIMS: Vann Nath's photo shown during his funeral

KR victims such as Vann Nath died in poverty and poor health without receiving a single dime of help from the ECCC. On the other hand, the ECCC has enough funds to publish the advertisement below in a major newspaper in Phnom Penh. What do you think of this ICKY (oops, we meant ECCC) Circus Maximus Stupidus on display in the Kingdoom of Wonder?

ECCC advertisement published in a major newspaper in Phnom Penh. To show how DUMB the ECCC is: Ieng Thirith, who may be freed soon, is still included in the ad.

(Cartoon by Sacrava)

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'History cannot be hidden' as Khmer Rouge leaders tried

Chum Mey visits S-21, a Khmer Rouge secret prison in Phnom Penh, where he was held for four months in 1978. The brutal communist regime killed his wife and daughter. (Photo: Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY)

Tuesday, September 14, 2010
By Calum MacLeod
USA TODAY

"People don't believe you can try the Khmer Rouge under this kind of government, who are Khmer Rouge themselves" - Son Chhay, opposition whip

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The Khmer Rouge shot and killed his wife and child. They tortured him with electric shocks and yanked out his toenails. They turned rice paddies into "killing fields," where the corpses of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were left to rot.

So for all that, jailing one old man for 19 years doesn't feel like justice to Chum Mey.

"It's a shame we don't have the death penalty anymore," says Chum, 79, inside S-21, a former Khmer Rouge secret prison where he was once jailed.

The subject of Chum's dismay is Kaing Guek Eav, 67, the former commandant of S-21 who is also known as Comrade Duch. In July, an international tribunal here convicted Duch of carrying out the torture and killings of 12,000 people.

Duch is one of five former Khmer Rouge leaders arrested on charges of crimes against humanity. All are accused of taking part in killing as many as 3 million people from 1975 to 1979 — roughly one-third of Cambodia's population at the time, the United Nations says — in a ghastly attempt to turn back the clock on Western influences here and create an agrarian communist paradise.

Cambodians — including the 100,000 who fled to the United States by 1990 — have been waiting for more than 30 years to see justice for the Khmer Rouge, whose rule was followed by a Vietnamese occupation, civil war and U.N. oversight.

But Duch's sentence has angered survivors who say it is far too light for a man whose guards smashed the skulls of children against trees to prevent them from avenging the death of their parents. They ask how the tribunal can deliver justice when only five of the hundreds of former Khmer Rouge cadres and collaborators living freely in Cambodia are to be tried before it. Human rights groups say the U.N. is risking its credibility if the tribunal fails to satisfy the victims.

"I think it's not right. Somebody kill a lot of people, but they are still alive," says Wendy Lim, 57, who works the counter at the Phnom Pich Jewelry store in Long Beach, Calif., home to many Cambodian-owned businesses.

A mother of four who arrived in the USA in 1983, she wipes tears from her cheeks as she recalls the brutality of the Khmer Rouge, which killed her brother. Apologizing for her imperfect English, she says Duch's sentence was too light: "Not good — in the jail too short. He should die."

Others, however, say no tribunal will satisfy everyone and warn that justice is difficult in a country where despite a turn toward elective politics some alleged Khmer Rouge still hold powerful positions.

"This court could keep going for another 50 years because of all the crimes that were committed," says Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which is researching the genocide.

The Khmer Rouge's rise

Cambodians have been at the mercy of colonialism, communism and invaders for decades.

The French made Cambodia part of their Indochina empire in the 19th century, reaping profits from the harvesting of rice and rubber. At the height of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, Soviet-backed North Vietnamese army troops hid in Cambodia's jungles to attack non-communist South Vietnam.

The United States, backing the South with U.S. troops, bombed the bases repeatedly and aided attempts by Cambodia military to oust the Vietnamese. Hundreds of villages were destroyed. A militia arose from the countryside, calling itself the Khmer Rouge, or Red Khmer, the name given them by the French (Khmer is the predominant ethnic group of Cambodia). Led by Pol Pot, a Khmer who once studied radio electronics at a Paris engineering school, the Khmer Rouge vowed to bring order and equality.

After a brutal campaign, Pol's soldiers surrounded the capital in April 1975. Phnom Penh fell five days after the U.S. Congress ended an airlift of food and weapons to the besieged city.

Cambodia was renamed Democratic Kampuchea. In what it called "Year Zero," the Khmer Rouge set out to cleanse the country of Western influence and traditional Cambodian culture. Banks were closed, money eliminated, schools shuttered. City residents were herded into the countryside to farm. Lawyers, teachers, property owners and Buddhist priests were ordered to be exterminated.

Pol's handiwork resulted not in utopia but poverty, famine and mass murder. It ended when Vietnam's army invaded in 1979.

"Our project was to transform the nature of society," Nuon Chea, one of the four remaining accused Khmer Rouge leaders awaiting trial, says in a newly released documentary film, Enemies of the People, winner of the 2010 Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

During its rule, the Khmer Rouge established labor camps, farm collectives and 196 prisons where people were starved, worked to death or killed, often after digging their own graves. In the film, an admitted Khmer Rouge executioner identified as Suon talks about how his hands grew tired from slitting throats so he switched to stabbing his victims as they lay face down with their hands tied. Like Duch, he says he was following orders.

"If we didn't obey, we would have been killed," says their superior, "Sister Em."

Cambodians who fled the Khmer Rouge for the United States still struggle with the horror they endured. They demand to know why it happened and who is responsible.

Danny You, 45, an urban planner who has lived in the USA since 1984, says he and most Cambodian-Americans he knows have little regard for the tribunals. He thinks those most responsible for the mass killings will never be brought to justice.

"They are corrupt, the government," he says. "How can one guy have killed so many?" he asks, suggesting some are getting away with murder. "I saw the killing. I witnessed everything."

Tom Am, 45, who arrived in America in 1982, agrees: "Someone masterminded it. There were orders from somewhere. There should be others" on trial.

A block down Anaheim Street, the heart of Cambodia Town, or Little Phnom Penh as it is unofficially known, Sam Ty is pleased with the tribunal.

"I think it was good, verdict was fair," says Ty, owner of Pich Kiri jewelry store. "It took a long time, too long."

Sara Pol-Lim, a survivor of the "killing fields" and executive director of the United Cambodian Community in Long Beach, says many Cambodians remain fearful of talking about that period.

Despite distrust in the government, sociologist Leakhena Nou is trying to get the testimonies of Cambodian-Americans about the horrors they suffered in their native land accepted by the tribunal by its Friday deadline.

"Many people are in their 60s and 70s, so this might be their only chance to make a mark on history. They are reclaiming the power that the Khmer Rouge took away from them 35 years ago," says Nou, an assistant professor at California State University-Long Beach.

Questions about the tribunal

Under international pressure, the Cambodian government requested U.N. help in 1997 to establish a tribunal to prosecute senior Khmer Rouge leaders but demanded it exclude thousands of henchmen.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia opened in 2007, with three Cambodians and two foreigners serving as judges. Having passed judgment on Duch, Case 001, the tribunal is to hear its next trial in 2011. But the presence of former Khmer Rouge officials in Cambodia's government, including long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen, raises the issue of whether serious criminals are being shielded from prosecution, critics say.

"People don't believe you can try the Khmer Rouge under this kind of government, who are Khmer Rouge themselves," says Son Chhay, an opposition member of a Cambodia parliament dominated by Hun Sen's party.

Others question whether the tribunal shows the limitations of an international system for perpetrators of genocide.

Human Rights Watch says the tribunal's mandate is being interfered with by the Cambodian government, which could derail additional indictments and trials. The Cambodian government appears to be behind decisions to block additional indictments, it says.

Despite millions dead, "the government is refusing to hold more than five people to account," says Sara Colm, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The U.N. and the tribunal's international donors should not allow political interference with the court to undermine its credibility."

Critics say that has happened.

Sophal Ear, a Cambodian-American political economist in Monterey, Calif., pointed to the 2009 appointment of Helen Jarvis of Australia as head of the tribunal's victims unit as an example of political bias. According to Ear, Jarvis once wrote with her husband: "We, too, are Marxists and believe that 'the ends justify the means.' ... In time of revolution and civil war, the most extreme measures will sometimes become necessary and justified."

"Everyone, including the donors know, that it's a lemon," Ear says of the tribunal. "It either needs to be fixed or it needs to be taken off the lot."

The tribunal is at a crossroads between legitimacy and failure, says Panhavuth Long, project officer at the Cambodia Justice Initiative, which supports the idea of international tribunals. He says the Cambodian government does not want more than five people prosecuted even though Cambodians say many more are guilty. Pol Pot died in a jungle hideaway in 1998.

"Cambodians' dissatisfaction at the (Duch) verdict makes it doubtful they will stay ... engaged for Case 2," he says.

That case involves former deputy leader Nuon Chea, 84, who along with three other Khmer Rouge leaders will be tried next year. Unlike Duch, they have not admitted guilt.

International co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley said the tribunal could prove to be a model for other nations that need international support to tackle serious crimes. "People will look back at this time and appreciate the fact that justice was met to international standards," says Cayley, a British lawyer.

Today, Cambodia is a fledgling democracy with an economy that was growing at 10% a year until the recession. Garment factories have sprung up to take advantage of cheap labor. Tourism is a big source of revenue and jobs. Two million people arrive annually to visit rain forest reserves, sparkling beaches and Angkor Wat, a 12th-century temple.

Chin Yong, driver of a tuk-tuk taxi that is a combination motorbike and carriage, is waiting for a fare near Gold Tower 42, the latest of a few skyscrapers that have gone up recently in Phnom Penh.

On this day, he is more concerned about his poor wages ($5 a day) than seeing justice for the Khmer Rouge. Although he had many relatives die under the regime, he says more tribunals are "not good for the country. We don't want more suffering through the memories."

In the countryside where most Cambodians still live, farmer Tep Naran echoes such sentiments.

"Life for people here is pretty much the same," says Naran, 29, at his home village near Skuon town, Kompong Cham province. "I don't know much about the Khmer Rouge as I wasn't even born then." Of Duch, he says, "He's so old now, why do they want to punish him?"

His father, Tep Sok, who says Duch was his math teacher before the Khmer Rouge, feels differently. "He used to advise me to be a good student, to benefit my family and the whole society. But he must have changed after that," says Tep, 65, who says he wants justice to come for the former Khmer Rouge cadres who live near his village.

In northwest Pailin province, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold, some people defend the regime.

"If there was no Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese would have stolen our land," says Ven Ra, niece of Ta Mok, a Pol Pot commander known as "The Butcher" who was awaiting trial for allegedly directing massacres and died in detention in 2006.

Those kinds of claims are one reason Chum Mey keeps coming to the former S-21 prison, now a genocide museum. When some students arrive, he rises from his seat again to tell what he witnessed here.

"History," he says, "cannot be hidden."

Experts Suggest Tribunal Complete an Exit Strategy [... The KRT may not consider more than the 5 current KR leaders]

A tribunal spokesman said the completion strategy is currently underway as a joint project between the Cambodian and UN-appointed sides of the hybrid court. (Photo: AP)

Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Washington, DC Thursday, 19 August 2010

“It should be defined from today how long the tribunal should have to wind up and what should remain for the assistance for judicial reform in Cambodia.”

With little indication from the Khmer Rouge tribunal that it will try more leaders beyond its initial indictments, observers say the UN-backed court should consider designing its completion strategy.

Issues remain unresolved on how the court might wrap up, how convicted suspects should be handed back to the national judiciary—or untried suspects to local courts—and how the tribunal might begin legacy and capacity building.

“It would be feasible and appropriate for the court to begin to plan how it will wind up its activities when those cases are​​​ fully dealt with in the judicial process,” Heathery Ryun, a tribunal monitor for the Open Society Justice Initiative, wrote in an e-mail.

Any completion plan should take into account “the need to complete outstanding cases in accordance with international​​​ standards; the goals of the court to support rule-of-law​​​​ development in Cambodia and a sense of meaningful justice for Cambodians; and residual issues which may arise after the court disbands, such as use of​ investigatory material, archives, and legal issues that may arise in cases following a final judgment.”

The tribunal has so far tried one suspect, the torture chief Duch, and it is preparing for the potential joint trial of four more senior leaders. But tribunal jurists have been at odds over whether to indict still more suspects.

Lat Ky, a court monitor for the rights group Adhoc, told VOA Khmer the court can begin considering what it can contribute to the national judiciary.

“It should be defined from today how long the tribunal should have to wind up and what should remain for the assistance for judicial reform in Cambodia,” he said.

He cited as an example the slow reconciliation process in Rwanda, which had war crimes courts that went on for years at great cost in time and money. Donors may learn from that, he said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a key diplomat for one of the tribunal’s donor countries said this week that some donors will be looking for a completion strategy before they discuss more funding for the court.

“We do not want to see it dragging on forever,” the diplomat said.

A tribunal spokesman said the completion strategy is currently underway as a joint project between the Cambodian and UN-appointed sides of the hybrid court.

Comrade Duch and the Killing Fields

"Should this Cambodian government make Comrade Duch the sole scapegoat by obstructing the start and completion of Case 002, the tribunal will be considered a failure for the millions of dollars wasted and the irreversible cynicism it has embedded in a society already fractured by fear. If that is the case, let the record show that we survivors have registered our deep disappointment."

When will justice come to more senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge?

AUGUST 17, 2010
By THEARY SENG
OPINION
The Wall Street Journal (USA)

Late last month in Cambodia, Kaing Guek Eav—the killer known to all Cambodians as Comrade Duch—was finally convicted. The former commandant was found guilty by a U.N.-backed tribunal of crimes against humanity in the sadistic murders of at least 14,000 of his countrymen. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Though his conviction was a milestone for Cambodians who have waited years for some form of credible justice, many genocide survivors, including me, felt the punishment was far too soft given the severity of his crimes. After the Extraordinary Chambers—as the tribunal is formally known—deducted five years to redress violations of his rights when he was held illegally in prior military detention, and 11 years for the time he's already served, Comrade Duch would only serve 19 years behind bars: 11 hours of imprisonment for each person he slaughtered.

Yesterday came the welcome news that the prosecutors are appealing his sentence on the grounds that it's too lenient. Cambodians are heartened by the appeal but hope that it will not cause undue delays to the more pressing matter: the case against the "senior" Khmer Rouge leaders, the core of the Extraordinary Chambers's mission.

Since Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ended the Khmer Rouge regime in January 1979, these killers wandered the country with impunity thanks to Cold War rivalries among various communist regimes. Beijing supported the Khmer Rouge, its satellite, financially and militarily. But the Soviet Union, sworn enemy of China, supported Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia. Meanwhile, still smarting from the Vietnam War and viewing China as an indispensable ally, the U.S. backed a coalition government of Khmer Rouge and non-Communist Cambodian forces with Prince Norodom Sihanouk as its nominal head.

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about a peace agreement in 1991 with the participation of all Cambodian factions—including the Khmer Rouge. It would take until June 2003 for the U.N. and the government to establish the Extraordinary Chambers. It was just four years ago that it began to try the mass murderers of 1975-1979.

Comrade Duch was the commandant of only one Khmer Rouge detention center (Tuol Sleng) and only one killing field (Choeung Ek). There were at least 200 detention centers and thousands of killing fields spread across the country. Phnom Penh was not the only crime scene: Almost every rice field, pagoda and school in the country became a site for slaughter.

The Khmer Rouge rounded up their victims—mainly fellow Cambodians evacuated from the capital and major towns—on the grounds that they were tainted by Western imperialism. They gathered them in the middle of the night for mass execution into graves usually dug by the victims the day before.

Bullets were saved for the war against Vietnam. Instead the Khmer Rouge butchered and whacked their own people from behind at the stem of the neck with crude farm instruments like hoes. Those who didn't die immediately were asphyxiated under the bodies piled on top of them in mass graves.

Other detention centers resulted in more deaths than the 14,000 carried out by Comrade Duch at Tuol Sleng. For example, in the Boeung Rai detention center in the heart of the "Eastern Zone" where I was detained as a 7-year-old child, the Khmer Rouge killed 30,000 people including my mother. Every night the guards chained the ankles of all the prisoners. They tried to chain my ankles, but they were too bony and I could slip in and out of the shackles. My job at night was to bring the toilet bucket to other immobile prisoners. One night, a crazy woman in our cell screamed "I'm thirsty! I'm thirsty!" and drank from the bucket. Later, the guards murdered her by squeezing her head with a coconut cruncher to pass the time.

Comrade Duch is "most responsible," according to the Tribunal, for the 14,000 lives stamped out at Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek. But he was not a "senior" Khmer Rouge leader and should not be made the sole scapegoat of this genocidal regime that murdered 1.7 million people.

The heart of the Extraordinary Chambers is the highly anticipated Case 002, the trial of senior Khmer Rouge leaders. (Comrade Duch's was Case 001.) We must press forward to ensure that Case 002 goes to trial as soon as possible.

Should this Cambodian government make Comrade Duch the sole scapegoat by obstructing the start and completion of Case 002, the tribunal will be considered a failure for the millions of dollars wasted and the irreversible cynicism it has embedded in a society already fractured by fear. If that is the case, let the record show that we survivors have registered our deep disappointment.

Ms. Seng, a lawyer, is the author of "Daughter of the Killing Fields" forthcoming from Seven Stories Press.

Caritas Australia slams Khmer Rouge sentence

Wednesday, 04 August 2010
The Record (Australia)

THE 30 July announcement that former Khmer Rouge official and prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known as “Duch”, has had his sentence for murder, torture and crimes against humanity reduced from 35 years to just 19 has been greeted with outrage by Caritas Australia’s coordinator in Phnom Penh.

Contacting head office in Sydney, CA’s Lay Sothy, said the survivors and other victims of the Khmer Rouge regime have waited more than 30 years for justice but the reduced sentence has left his country depressed and disappointed.

“If we consider more than 14,000 lives were lost at his command, and that he will spend just 19 years in prison, it amounts to less than two days behind bars for every life he took,” Lay Sothy said.

Sothy, who was 15 and living in rural Cambodia during the brutal and bloody Pol Pot regime of 1975 and 1979, said the trial and sentence of the man responsible for so many deaths has opened old wounds and brought great pain to the people of Cambodia, but has not brought justice.

“I understand we should forgive the past, forgive wrongdoings and should look to the future,” he said.

“But it deeply concerns me that so much money - millions of dollars - was spent to give victims and families justice, but that this has not been done,” he said.
Sothy, now 45, said that while he welcomed the trial, its result has not satisfied him or anyone else who lived through those terrible times and he believes the 19 year sentence is far too short for such enormous guilt and for so many “Duch” ordered killed.

The international tribunal, which tried the former leader within the Khmer Rouge and chief of the Phnom Penh’s notorious Toul Sleng Prison, found “Duch” guilty on all counts. But the 35 year sentence, reduced to 19 years on time already served, was lenient compared with his crimes, Sothy says, and forcefully criticises the tribunal.
“Survivors of Pol Pot expected the hybrid court to give them full justice so their suffering could begin to heal,” he says.

But he said that this will not happen now as instead of giving the man who was responsible for so many deaths a sentence befitting his crimes, the tribunal took the prisoner’s cooperation, confession and expressions of remorse into consideration and handed down a relatively mild 35 years behind bars, which in reality will become less than 20 years.

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal was established within a United Nations framework. “Duch” was the first of the Pol Pot regime’s elite to come before the tribunal. But Sothy says he and his country-men hold out little hope for real justice.

For Sothy, “Duch’s” so-called remorse was not “from the heart” and was simply another sign that he continues to be a clever politician and player and “very, very manipulative.”

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal: Caught Between Multiple Masters?

August 3, 2010
Seth Korman, Editor-in-Chief, UCLA Law Review
The Huffington Post

Last week, nearly five years after it was created, the Khmer Rouge tribunal handed down its first sentence. It found the defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, or "Duch," the former head of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, guilty of crimes against humanity and violations of the Geneva Conventions, and sentenced him to nineteen additional years in prison. He will be eighty-seven when he is eligible for release.

The public reaction to the sentence has been mostly negative. Many Cambodians expressed frustration, as did some members of the Cambodian-American community, finding the two-decade sentence disproportionate to the suffering of the thousands of victims that passed through Duch's prison, or the million-plus that perished at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

Yet many within the legal community, as well a number of international observers, see the verdict differently.

The Cambodian co-prosecutor explained, "From a legal perspective this is a good judgment. Not only did the court find Duch guilty of crimes with which he was charged, it also adequately protected his rights."

Legal scholars have likewise noted that the sentence was similar to those in other war crimes tribunals, and that Duch duly earned a reduction in sentence through his candor and general cooperation. Former Ambassador David Scheffer writes that, while the sentence was light, the trial succeeded in further establishing a persuasive legal argument against the "I was only following orders" defense, and that the court's "holdings on joint criminal enterprise and superior responsibility spell more trouble for other defendants."

Still others see the trial from a development perspective. Eric Stover, commenting on the verdict, sees the court as a critical building block for a sound, democratic Cambodia, and explains that its "infrastructure for democracy [and] infrastructure for the rule of law" are important to Cambodia's overall development.

The court -- like other international war crimes tribunals -- is thus caught between several constituencies: On one hand, it seeks to uphold rule-of-law norms, provide defendants with adequate legal resources and procedural safeguards, and ensure a modicum of judicial independence from both the Cambodian government and populist sentiment. On another, it must serve the international community that both funds and staffs it and sees in international tribunals a mechanism to spread legal and humanitarian norms. Finally, and most importantly, it must appease the Cambodian people, the true source of the tribunal's legitimacy.

These competing interests -- international lawyers, human rights and development advocates, and victims -- have combined to create in Cambodia a truly unique tribunal, in which each of these parties has a meaningful role.

Yet at the same time, by working to appease each constituency, the court is bound to leave some of them unhappy. In this instance, the victims appear to have received short shrift.

That Duch's sentence appears relatively light compared to the gravity of his crimes is understandably of great concern. After all, the tribunal's legitimacy rests on its acceptance by the Cambodian people. If their faith in the court's work is tempered by a lenient sentence, the tribunal's other legal and institution-building influence is likely to be similarly diminished.

The court therefore has put itself in a difficult position. By following the law and decreasing Duch's sentence (because of an illegal pre-trial detention), the court has appeared to position itself alongside the legal advisors and international commentators, and against the will of many Cambodians. While the decision bolsters the efforts of those who seek to use international humanitarian law as an effective and legitimate prosecutorial tool, it undermines victims' understandably visceral need for closure and retribution.

Furthermore, it puts the court in a real bind, both in handling Duch's appeal and, more importantly, in ruling over the upcoming Case 2, in which four leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime will be put on trial. Given Duch's light sentence, the court will be under real pressure to hand down heavier penalties, as victims might be able to forgive the court's light sentence if it ensures much longer ones in the next trial. Yet such judicial predisposition -- or a need to tip the scales if favor of conviction and long sentences -- belies the notion of a free and impartial judiciary.

In other words, the court will again find itself caught between its multiple masters.

This raises a host of additional questions: Is the court trying to do too much? Should it focus only on providing Cambodian citizens with what they want, and less on legal and procedural safeguards that might prevent the passing of harsher sentences? Or should it ignore popular sentiment, and focus instead on legal accountability, transparency, and rule-of-law creation, even if doing so frustrates the will of the victim community?

By handing down a relatively light sentence in the Duch trial, the court has indicated a desire to balance these various pressures. This, however, has only served to further delegitimize the tribunal in the eyes of many victims.

As it weighs Duch's appeal and conducts the second, more important trial, don't be surprised then if the court reluctantly responds to public outcry and seeks to ensure a more punitive outcome.

Cambodia: Mixed views on Duch Verdict

2 August 2010
Written by Sopheap Chak
Global Voices Online

More than 30 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia, the first guilty verdict was handed out last 26 July 2010 by the Trial Chamber of The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)-popularly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. It was the conviction of Kaing Guek Eav aka Duch, one of four people including Nuon Chea aka Brother Number Two, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith (aka Khmer Rouge First Lady) and Khieu Samphan who have been brought to court for genocide, crime against humanity and other war crimes.

Duch, Tuol Sleng prison chief, was sentenced to 35 years in prison; however, it was reduced to 19 years since he has been in detention in the past 16 years including the illegal detention for five years ordered by the military court in 1999. This verdict sparked mixed reactions from various institutions and individuals particularly those who suffered during the Khmer Rouge period. These reactions can be categorized into three groups.

First, a group of people who are looking forward to the outcome of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal welcomes this verdict by highlighting the event as a historical moment for Cambodia especially to human rights victims. Sovachana Pou, a volunteer teacher and blogger who attended the trial session, immediately wrote a post sharing his feelings:

In the court chamber, I personally witnessed the hybrid justice proceeding live with more than 500 people, most of them are victims. It was a moving experience and historic event for all the victims to wait more than 30 years to finally having some sort of justice.

On one hand, Sophal Ear, a survivor of the genocide and who once gave a remarkable talk for TED on ‘escaping the Khmer Rouge,‘ in February 2009 in Long Beach, California, remembered the words of his mother when the Duch Verdict was announced:

On this momentous occasion, I'd like to step back by reflecting upon and give voice to one victim of the Khmer Rouge: my late mother, Cam Youk Lim […] She didn't live to see this day, but no matter, for her justice would inevitably be rendered the Buddhist way. She decided long ago the Khmer Rouge were Karmic pestilence who would pay the price for their crimes, if not in this lifetime, then in their next life.

Another group of reaction refers to those who are disappointed with the verdict claiming that the sentence is too light for a criminal who supervised the execution of more than 14,000 people. In a letter titled “ECCC brought no fairness to the people of Cambodia” to editor of Phnom Penh Post, Jeffrey Serey Hola highlighted the a press statement of Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR). While CCHR welcomes the reduction of Duch's prison sentence as a good model for domestic courts whose detention practices remain a serious concern, Jeffrey questioned the “light” sentence if the intent is to provide justice to victims. The demand is at least a life sentence for Duch while the death penalty is not legalized in Cambodia.

It is understandable that many wanted him to face the death penalty, even though capital punishment is illegal in Cambodia. The reduced sentence of 19 years for Duch is too lenient for such a vicious mass murder. Duch should at least serve a life sentence […] For those who have lived and experienced such horrors, how could this sentence ever be considered justice? For them, it is just a slap on the wrist. Justice was not served for the people of Cambodia.

This sentiment is similarly shared by Bernard Krisher, chairman of American Assistance for Cambodia and publisher of a local foreign newspaper named Cambodia Daily. Writing from Tokyo, he said that the tribunal sentence is too light and demanded that Duch should be hanged.

As a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people in the 1930s where many of my relatives, including a number of my father's siblings, perished in Hitler's gas chambers, I followed the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunals and was disappointed at the relatively light sentence given to the German and Japanese war criminals at their war crime trials, I feel that Duch should have been hanged[…]

On the other hand, there is another group which neither supports the Khmer Rouge Tribunal nor the Duch verdict. In an interview with BBC, two Cambodian survivors pointed out the credibility problem of the UN-backed tribunal given the fact that it was established only to make good impression in the international community.

Both want to see the top leaders sentenced, they don't care much about punishment for minions like Duch, who would have been killed himself had he not followed orders from above.

Interestingly, even government ministers shared contrasting views on the Duch verdict. While Cambodia's Information Minister Khieu Kanharith is pleased with the verdict, the Foreign Affairs Minister Hor Namhong is disappointed with the light sentence on Duch.

Khieu Kanharith, in an interview by Radio VOA Khmer Service, said:

«វា​បាន​បង្ហាញ​ថា​ ទីមួយ​គឺការ​ប្តេជ្ញា​ចិត្ត​របស់​រាជ​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​កម្ពុជា ក្នុង​ការ​ស្វែងរក​យុត្តិធម៌​ជូន​ប្រជា​ពលរដ្ឋ​ខ្មែរ ​និង​ទីពីរ​ ​វាបាន​បង្ហាញ​អំពី​កម្រិត​ផ្នែក​វិជ្ជាជីវៈ​របស់​អង្គ​ចៅក្រម​របស់​យើង​ ក្នុងការ​ស្វែងរក​យុត្តិធម៌​ជូន​ប្រជាពល​រដ្ឋខ្មែរ»។

Firstly it indicate the government commitment in searching for justice for Cambodians and secondly this show the professionalism of the chambers.

On the other hand, Hor Nam Hong interviewed by Radio Free Asia, expressed his personal statement:

«ដោយសារ​នេះ​ជា​ភារកិច្ច​របស់​តុលាការ​ខ្មែរ​ក្រហម រាជ​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​មិន​មាន​ជំហរ​អី​ទេ។ យោបល់​ផ្ទាល់​របស់​ខ្ញុំ ខ្ញុំ​ឃើញ​ថា វា​មិន​សមរម្យ បើ​ប្រៀបធៀប​ទៅ​នឹង​ប្រជាជន​កម្ពុជា​ស្លាប់​ជិត ៣​លាន​នាក់។ ប្រជាជន​កម្ពុជា​ដែល​គេ​យក​ទៅ​ធ្វើ​ទារុណកម្ម​នៅ​ទួលស្លែង ហើយ​សម្លាប់​នៅ​ជើងឯក​រាប់​សែន​នាក់​នេះ។ កាត់​ទោស​នេះ​ហាក់​ដូច​ជា​ស្រាល មិន​សម​នឹង​ចំនួន​ប្រជាជន​កម្ពុជា​ដែល​បាន​ស្លាប់»

Because this is the work of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, the government has no position (on this matter). My personal position is that it is not appropriate, especially if we compare it to the nearly 3 million Cambodians who had died. Hundreds of thousands of Khmer people have been tortured at Tuol Sleng and then executed at Cheung Ek (Killing Fields). This sentence seems a bit light, not comparable to the number of people who have been killed. translated by Khmerization.

Justice Denied for Cambodians

August 2, 2010
By KUONG LY
Letter to The International Herald Tribune

Last week, a U.N.-backed tribunal convicted Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, for war crimes in what was the first trial of a major Khmer Rouge figure. Many media reports portrayed the verdict in a positive light, but for survivors, victims and their families, there was nothing positive in this outcome.

An editorial in the International Herald Tribune (“Forgotten victims?” July 29) stated that while the sentence handed down by the tribunal may be disappointing, at least Duch was held to account for his war crimes. Unfortunately, “at least” isn’t good enough for me and for those who suffered from the murderous actions of the Khmer Rouge, especially after waiting 30 years for this verdict.

My mother and my late father both endured what are known as the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia. They lost their siblings, parents and home when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in April, 1975.

Somewhere between 1.7 and 2 million people — nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population — were executed or died from disease, starvation and overwork. My family was forced to flee Cambodia and suffered in the poverty of refugee camps for almost a decade before making it to the United States, where we overcame tremendous obstacles in trying to rebuild our lives.

As I followed the trial of Duch and heard him take responsibility for directing the notorious prison, S-21, where more than 12,273 people were tortured and killed, I was confident the court would place him behind bars for life. But last week, he was given a 35-year sentence. Because Duch had served several years in prison while awaiting trial, and the Cambodian government infringed upon his rights while he was detained, his sentence was significantly reduced.

In the end, Duch was sentenced to no more than 19 years behind bars. That translates to one year for every 646 Cambodians he tortured and killed at S-21. This does not include the millions of Cambodians like my parents who suffered under the Khmer Rouge policies he helped implement. The feeling of injustice for me and many others stems from knowing that Duch may walk free at age 86.

Survivors, victims and their families have been asked to see the silver lining in Duch’s verdict. Impunity has finally been broken, many observers reason. A perpetrator of the Khmer Rouge regime was brought to justice by legal proceedings for the world to watch, they say. And in reducing Duch’s sentence by 16 years, some will argue, the tribunal was attempting demonstrate the rule of law and lead by example — in a country where thousands of citizens are illegally detained.

From the beginning, I harbored grave doubts about these legal proceedings. The U.N.-backed tribunal resulted from the lack of judicial independence in Cambodia. I was willing to look past the criticism and cynicism in hopes that a guilty verdict and a heavy punishment in Duch’s case would set a precedent for future international criminal cases. The international community, I reasoned, had an opportunity to deter other ruthless, oppressive regimes from committing genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity. But the tribunal failed to deliver a satisfactory verdict.

If the Duch verdict foreshadows the tribunal’s next case — the trial of the senior Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan — there will be a decline in support from the Cambodian people — and perhaps the world community.

I will never forget how my late father was used like an ox to plow and till the land. Nor will I forget that my maternal grandfather, aunts, uncles and cousins were either starved to death, beaten to death, or disappeared.

No verdict will heal the pain. But for survivors, victims and their families, this verdict was simply not good enough. We may have to accept that the international community denied us — and those we lost — a sense of closure.

More than 12,273 people entered Duch’s S-21 prison and were tortured and killed. While Duch will be in prison for 19 years, the possibility remains that he may one day walk free. Is that justice?

Kuong Ly is an L.L.M. candidate in International Human Rights Law at the University of Essex, where he is a British Marshall Scholar.

"The truth is that there are too many former Khmer Rouge officials now in senior government positions in Cambodia"

Paul Vallely: There are two sides to every history

David Cameron's 'spirit of humility' and Comrade Duch's 'excruciating remorse' are not what they seem

Sunday, 1 August 2010
The Independent (UK)

History is shaped by where we choose to begin to tell our stories. David Cameron learned that last week. The victims of the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia knew it. My 10-year-old son knows it.

We went to see some gladiators fighting Christians in a Roman arena the other day. The Christians won. My son, whose favourite computer pastime for some months has been a strategy game called Rome Total War, was outraged. "This is completely unhistorical," he fulminated. It was not the only solecism.

We were at the historical theme park at Puy du Fou in France on holiday. The massive site contains a variety of historical scenarios: a Roman amphitheatre with gladiatorial combat and chariot races, a Gallic settlement under attack from Vikings, a medieval castle with knights jousting, a palace à la Richelieu with fighting musketeers, and so on.

Historical disbelief had to be suspended again when the Viking raiders were converted, mid-pillage, by a dead saint who rose from a reliquary which the manly Nordics had knocked into the river earlier in their rampage.

You have to understand the difference between history and story, I told my youngster. History, as the old cliché has it, is just one damn thing after another.

But storytellers almost always have a vision of the universe which shapes the way those events are recounted. So was the author of the Puy de Fou spectacles some kind of religious maniac, my lad asked? No, I replied, just a run-of-the-moulin French nationalist who saw the long march of history culminating in the glory that was France. Christianity was that nation's dominating metaphor when it came to putting the Romans, Vikings and any other adversaries in their place.

You can't say this to a 10-year-old, but revisionism is pretty much the norm when it comes to interpreting the past. Indeed tradition, which is often erroneously portrayed as a synonym for conservatism, is just the process of the present paying its dues to the past. Tradition is not a fixed thing; it is a process of managing change.

The American journalist I F Stone pins this down in his Trial of Socrates. Reflecting on the Greek word logos he says: "A thousand years of philosophical thought are embodied in a term that meant 'talk' in Homer, 'reason' in the Stoics and ends up in the Gospel of St John as the creative Word of God." The best stories are filled with such nuance: the reason that Christianity has been so potent for 2,000 years is that it does not just have one story but four; the gospels complement and even contradict in a way which generates the ambiguity and uncertainty on which poetry depends.

There is ambiguity in the relationship between Britain and India, as the Prime Minister found on his travels last week. As he arrived in the place which was once the jewel in the crown of the British Empire he wrote in the mass-circulation newspaper The Hindu that he approached India in a "spirit of humility". (Don't mention the Raj). That century of imperial domination has now been transformed in Cameron-speak into a "shared heritage" which meant that Britain should be India's "partner of choice" in the years ahead.

It was a laudable intent, though bragging about your humility (I won the prize for modesty at Eton, doncha know) is a bit like fighting for peace. Humility is better demonstrated than advertised.

Still, the idea of bringing the two nations' different accounts of their shared past together in mutually acceptable vocabulary is a good idea if you can pull it off. That it is not always possible, as was shown recently in Cambodia where the first major Khmer Rouge figure went on trial since the 1970s regime was overthrown. The fact that it has taken three decades to bring anyone to justice offers a clue as to the intractability of reconciling diverging accounts of the past there.

The man at the centre of the trial, Comrade Duch, who oversaw the mass torture and murder of 14,000 men, women and children at S-21 prison, made courtroom professions of "excruciating remorse" which were adjudged to be genuine. But his excuse that he was just a small cog in the regime was no mitigation, which is why the sentence passed upon him of 35 years, less 16 for time already served, provoked local anger.

The outrage is not merely because this represents only 11 hours in jail for every person killed under his supervision. It is that Duch was in charge of only one of 200 detention centres in which some 1.7 million people died under a planned reign of terror. What about trying the other four senior Khmer Rouge figures in custody, including the deputy of Pol Pot, the leader of the genocidal movement?

The truth is that there are too many former Khmer Rouge officials now in senior government positions in Cambodia. That is why the pursuit of justice has never been full throated. The prime minister, Hun Sen, who was himself a former Khmer Rouge foot soldier who defected to the Vietnamese army which overthrew Pol Pot, has indeed said that no more than the four figures currently in custody will be prosecuted.

That, and the scale of the terror of Pol Pot's attempt to turn back the Cambodian calendar to a Year Zero in which anyone with spectacles was murdered as a potential subversive, leave no room for a peace and reconciliation strategy of the kind masterminded in South Africa by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The versions of history of the two camps in South Africa have not exactly been reconciled. But there has been a common acknowledgement of the need to repair hurt if the nation is to move forward.

The war between black and white in South Africa was, in the end, only a struggle for power in which the whites finally acknowledged that apartheid – the notion of separate development – was a self-deception. The Khmer Rouge never made such an acknowledgement: they lost power because they were defeated on the battlefield.

But there are parallels between South Africa and Northern Ireland; the Irish lost their past in a vision of the future in which increased prosperity, the aegis of the European Union, the phenomenon of globalisation – along with the weariness of the fighting generation as it reached middle age – made the old certainties feel outdated.

The symbols of the past still embody the old ways of seeing things. To the Indians the Koh-i-Noor diamond speaks of colonial oppression and theft; it was sent as a gift to Queen Victoria by the seven-year-old Maharaja of Punjab as part of the punitive settlement of the Treaty of Lahore in 1846. That is why the Indian government keeps asking for its return. To the British, the gem which is the centrepiece of the Queen's primary crown speaks of the power and glory of an imperial heyday. That is why David Cameron, for all his new-found humility, refused last week to hand it back.

History is not only shaped by where we begin to tell our stories. It is moulded by where we chose to end them.

Survivors need a reason to live

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.

Another U.N. crock: Khmer Rouge coddling

Saturday, July 31, 2010
Pittsburgh Tribune (USA)
Opinion

The ridiculously short prison sentence that a United Nations-backed court handed to the man who was the commandant of the Khmer Rouge's central prison is one more example of the U.N. failing to deliver true justice for violators of human rights and their victims.

Convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity -- he oversaw the killing and torture of more than 14,000 people -- Kaing Guek Eav, 67, ostensibly was sentenced to 35 years in prison, a term far short of punishment in proper proportion to his perpetration of evil. But due to time served, including time in "illegal military detention," the court reduced his sentence to just 19 years.

Survivors of Khmer Rouge brutality rightly are outraged. He deserves the death penalty, which Cambodia lacks -- but he's just the sort of butcher for whom an exception is in order.

Any sentence less than death is unfit for Khmer Rouge leaders and unjust for the victims of their repugnant "killing fields." Some might argue that given this criminal's age, it is a death sentence. But that's not the point.

This sentence squanders an opportunity to make an ultimate example of the first senior Khmer Rouge official held accountable for violating human rights -- and that bodes ill for the cases of four other Khmer Rouge leaders awaiting trial by the same U.N.-backed court.

Verdict short on justice but a good beginning for next time

Friday, 30 July 2010
Ronnie Yimsut
Letter to The Phnom Penh Post

Dear Editor,

"My request is that once the trial (exercise) is over, all these pathetic old men (and an old woman) should be either set free to roam the streets of Cambodia or else be sent to a good old folk’s home in China to live out the rest of their lives freely."

First of all, Duch’s recent conviction and sentencing to 35 years imprisonment by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia represents a day of reckoning for many.

At least one of our former tormentors had, at long last, faced the docket in a relatively fair trial.

Duch’s case also represents a minor yet invaluable test for the ECCC, which was made much easier by Duch’s willing cooperation – hence the reduction in his prison term to just 19 years.

Suffice to say, Duch is only a “small potato” or a “small fry”, one of about 120 or so who should be prosecuted as well.

Indeed, Duch is only a scapegoat for countless other of his former comrades.

It is impossible (and also impractical) to prosecute them all, due to the lack of resources, and more importantly, due to the lack of political will.

Still, Duch only has to serve approximately 11 minutes for every single life he had directly and personally murdered (reportedly 14,000 to 16,000 lives, if not more, snuffed out). Duch is expected to serve much less time in prison, assuming that he will get time off for good behaviour, a very good chance for this convert to fundamentalist Christianity.

So we may see Duch on the street, among all of us, sooner rather than later.

That’s a reality – not justice. It’s a slap in our face, to state it simply.

This is one (of many) reasons why I personally did not file a complaint application to the ECCC’s Victims’ Participation Unit.

It would have been a good exercise and might have even made me feel just a tidbit better, as a survivor.

Still, half-full is better than half-empty, right?

It was still a very good day for humanity, all things considered.

Realistically speaking, Duch may sooner or later face street justice (or, the people’s court) in Cambodia.

Regardless of the countless flaws, Duch’s trial was a good exercise and a warm-up for the next case, involving much-higher ranking policy makers during the Democratic Kampuchea regime.

This next case will be a much bigger test and a challenge for the ECCC. It shall make or break the ECCC with its complicated and relatively pricy processes.

My hat is still off for the ECCC and its dedicated staff.

It was Joseph Stalin who once said, “Kill one is murder, kill millions is only a statistic.” My nine dead family members and millions others are simply a statistic. Really?

Lastly, I have only one simple request, as a victim and a survivor (and a somewhat devout Buddhist).

My request is that once the trial (exercise) is over, all these pathetic old men (and an old woman) should be either set free to roam the streets of Cambodia or else be sent to a good old folk’s home in China to live out the rest of their lives freely.

No sense in keeping the old folks locked up in prison (a waste of Cambodia’s limited resources) since there is no death penalty.

Ronnie Yimsut
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

ECCC brought no fairness to the people of Cambodia

Friday, 30 July 2010
Jeffrey Serey Hola
Letter to The Phnom Penh Post

Dear Editor,

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia handed down a reduced sentence of 19 years for Kaing Guek Eav, known as “Comrade Duch”. It is a slap on the wrist for a man responsible for crimes against humanity, which include the murders of as many as 14,000 people, including innocent men, women and children.

Cambodians are still living with reminders of the brutal Pol Pot regime. For those who has lived through one of the most vicious mass murders in history, the sentence is outrageous and beyond comprehension.

The Cambodian Centre for Human Rights welcomed the reduction in Duch’s sentence, as the result of the violation of his rights. They should be ashamed.

Innocent men, women and children were brutally tortured and killed by Duch. Were their lives meaningless to CCHR? How can such comments and the sentence itself be understand by victims and those who lost their love ones?

It is understandable that many wanted him to face the death penalty, even though capital punishment is illegal in Cambodia. The reduced sentence of 19 years for Duch is too lenient for such a vicious mass murder. Duch should at least serve a life sentence.

For those who have not experienced the utter violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I hope they and their loved ones will never be forced to. How could such rights apply to Duch, but not to the 14,000 men, women and children who died by his orders?

For those who have lived and experienced such horrors, how could this sentence ever be considered justice? For them, it is just a slap on the wrist. Justice was not served for the people of Cambodia.

Jeffrey Serey Hola
Lancaster, California

Shame on the UN

Friday, 30 July 2010
Savun Neang
Letter to The Phnom Penh Post

Dear Editor,

"But it is forgetting or ignoring a key player, former Khmer Rouge head of state Norodom Sihanouk ... The Vietnamese installed the same Khmer Rouge cadres as puppet leaders, and about 85 percent are still ruling Cambodia today."

I was one of the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime. I really want justice for 73 members of my family, the majority of them executed without evidence of wrongdoing.

But personally, I don’t have faith, and I don’t believe or count on the United Nations’ tribunals obtaining justice for Cambodian victims.

The tribunal is focusing on Tuol Sleng prison (S-21) for the majority of the evidence to prosecute former Khmer Rouge leaders, including Duch, Ieng Sary, Kieu Samphan, Ieng Thirith and Nuon Chea.

But it is forgetting or ignoring a key player, former Khmer Rouge head of state Norodom Sihanouk.

Shame on the UN for wrongly focusing on S21, which was a prison for higher-ranking cadres of the Khmer Rouge’s revolution members. It had little to do with the real victims of the Khmer Rouge regime. S21 prison spilled only a little innocent Cambodian blood.

Again, shame on the UN. In 1979 there were at least a million Cambodians, I and my family included, who fled Cambodia after the Vietnamese invasion.

Many refugees had told the UN that the Khmer Rouge regime was a killing machine. But the UN ignored them and instead harboured the Khmer Rouge by allowing them to retain a seat at the UN from 1979 through 1991, even though they were no longer in power.

Justice has yet to be served 31 years after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime.

The Vietnamese installed the same Khmer Rouge cadres as puppet leaders, and about 85 percent are still ruling Cambodia today.

Savun Neang
Seattle, Washington

On Trial, Duch Now More Defensive: Observer

By Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
26 May 2009

As his tribunal hearing continues, Duch has become more defensive than he was at the outset, a leading rights advocate and tribunal observer said Monday.

In the beginning of his trial at the UN-backed court, Duch was apologetic, but in recent days, he has begun to defend himself as a victim of the regime’s leadership, said Thun Saray, head of the rights group Adhoc.

“In the beginning, Duch seemed to honestly admit his big mistakes, but later he has tended to be defensive when it came to torturing and killings, [with him] saying he just followed an order from the top,” Thun Saray said, as a guest on “Hello VOA.”

Duch, 66, whose real name is Kaing Kek Iev, is the first to face an atrocity crimes trial at the tribunal. He has admitted to ordering torture and execution of thousands of Cambodians, but he has not admitted to undertaking acts by his own hand.

With his trial underway, the tribunal has faced continued allegations of corruption and mismanagement, but Thun Saray said the tribunal was operating at international standards.

“There is different way from Duch’s trial compared to those of Cambodian local court hearings,” he said. “The tribunal can be a good example for our judicial reform.”

However, callers from Siem Reap and Banteay Meanchey provinces expressed disbelief that the trial could bring real benefit to Cambodia with its limited scope and only five former leaders in detention.

Some said that countries involved in the wars that brought the Khmer Rouge to power should be indicted.

“When the Khmer Rouge forces were fighting the US-backed Lon Nol regime, I saw Vietnamese troops fighting alongside the Khmer Rouge soldiers until their victory and the start of the killings,” said one caller from Banteay Meanchey, named Thany. “I am sorry that they are now not indicted.”