Production, speakers offer glimpse into genocide

Hoeur Kim (right) speaks to area high school students Wednesday while her daughter, Sreng Kim-Chhay, looks on. The women are to present “Escaping the Killing Fields: A Daughter and Mother Tell Their Stories” this evening at Heidelberg University. (PHOTO BY ROB LEDWEDGE)

September 20, 2012
By MaryAnn Kromer - Staff Writer
The Advertiser-Tribune (Ohio, USA)

Heidelberg University is observing Genocide Awareness Week with a series of events that recall the atrocities that took place in Cambodia in the 1970s. The annual observance revisits genocides that have occurred in various parts of the world.

Tuesday evening, a readers' theatre presentation, "April 17: Stories from the Cambodian Genocide," was staged.

Chris Tucci, professor of theater at Heidelberg, wrote the script based on the book "First They Killed My Father" by Loung Ung.

The drama recalls April 17, 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took over the Cambodian government. The military began a purge that claimed more than 20 percent of the Cambodian people over a period of nearly four years.

Researcher Joins Genocide Experts in Austrian Conference

Human sculls are displayed in the stupa of Choeung Ek, a former Khmer Rouge "killing field" dotted with mass graves about nine miles (15 kilometers) south of Phnom Penh. (Photo: AP)

Monday, 02 July 2012
Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer | Washington, DC

“We have to educate our younger generation as to why such crimes took place.”

Genocide experts from around the world are meeting in Austria this week to discuss ways to better educate the public and prevent atrocity crimes in the future.

The symposium, called “Learning from the Past: Global Perspectives on Holocaust Education,” ends Monday.

Organizers say that teaching the history of the Holocaust can prevent racism, ethnic conflict and genocide.

'One Million Bones' raises public awareness of genocide

Courtesy of onemillionbones.com

As a final project for their “Human Rights and Atrocities” course, three students are bringing the “One Million Bones” project to the college, aiming to raise awareness of genocide.

April 26, 2012

BY AMANDA EPSTEIN

The Phoenix

Spearheaded by a group of students in this semester’s philosophy course “Human Rights and Atrocities,” a workshop focused on different perceptions of genocide will be held tomorrow in Kohlberg’s Scheuer room.

The workshop will begin with a presentation by Sana Musasama, a ceramic artist and art professor in New York, on the work she has been doing in response to the Khmer Rouge genocides in Cambodia. After the lecture, the event’s attendees will be making bones using newspaper, wire and plaster for “One Million Bones,” an international education project that will collect one million artwork bones from people across the world for an art installation designed to recognize the millions that have been victims of genocide. The event will conclude with a discussion on perceptions of genocide and a reflection of the project.

A Preventable Genocide - Un génocide évitable

A Preventable Genocide

(Sihanouk - Khmer Rouge)

By Leng Sovady
Unofficial translation from Khmer by Luc Sâr

Veuillez lire l'article en français à la fin du texte anglais

The Cambodian genocide might never take place. In fact, in early 1970, the Khmer Rouge movement virtually ceased to exist. The crackdown against them in 1967, 1968 and 1969 by Prince Sihanouk, then Head of State, had virtually eradicated them. It is estimated that, in January 1970, there were no more than 2,000 Khmer Rouge partisans left throughout Cambodia. They were very poorly armed. In January and February 1970, the situation in Cambodia was perfectly calm on the domestic front and we could travel safely throughout the country. Back then, the Khmer Rouge had no future.

However, an important event ended this happy situation. On March 18, 1970, Prince Sihanouk was removed from office by the Cambodian Parliament through a unanimous vote.

Then traveling abroad, Prince Sihanouk had only one thought in mind: revenge, and he said so himself during his outbursts of rage - a statement that was reproduced by the news media from that time. To get his revenge, he threw himself into the arms of the Khmer Rouge leaders in Beijing and gave them his unconditional endorsement.

We all know the tragic result of this disastrous alliance that brought dishonor to the Prince. It caused the Cambodian genocide where two million people died in less than four years.

Therefore, we can affirm that Sihanouk was the main responsible actor of this genocide. But, he has no remorse about that...

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: The Dark Day of Cambodia

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

EVENTS ON 17 APRIL 1975 - by Mony Visal Khouy

KR soldiers entering Phnom Penh along Monivong Blvd

Source: DC-Cam

17 April 1975 is the day of victory over the U.S. imperialists. The Khmer Liberation Army, “or the Khmer Rouge army,” was able to eliminate the pain and suffering of the Cambodian people during a war that lasted five years, since 1970-1975. 17 April 1975 gave the people of Cambodia much hope, motivation, and happiness knowing that their country had achieved peace and prosperity. It became a peaceful country after people united from their separation from parents, families, and relatives during the war.

My mother and father, as well as the rest of the people in the city of Phnom Penh, came out to congratulate and welcome the Khmer Liberation Army that entered and filled the entire city of Phnom Penh. They felt joyful and happy. My father, like other people in the city of Phnom Penh, raised a white flag, screaming, “Bravo to victory and peace!” with a beaming face filled with hope for the future. But it was not too long after people had become excited and joyful about this peace, that the Khmer Liberation Army, or the Khmer Rouge, began ordering people out of their homes. For three days they would leave Phnom Penh. The Khmer Liberation Army said, “The Americans are going to drop bombs on the city of Phnom Penh. The Khmer Liberation Army will stay to clear out all the imperialists in the city of Phnom Penh and then you can return. Therefore, we ask all brothers and sisters to leave without taking any of your belongings, because you will only leave for three days.” With the threats of their guns, the Khmer Liberation Army forced my family and our neighbors to quickly leave our homes. Anybody or any family that was not willing to leave, the Khmer Rouge Liberation Army would threaten and if they remained stubborn and were not willing to leave their homes, they would be shot and killed.

Cambodian Genocide - 17th April 1975

 

Fall of Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975 and the surrender to the Khmer Rouge before the genocide (Photo: Roland Neveu)

Source: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

On April 17th 1975, Khmer Rouge forces entered Phnom Penh, Cambodia and defeated the ruling Lon Nol Army. The taking of Phnom Penh marked the beginning of the Cambodian genocide. Survivor Sophal Leng Stagg remembers: “On the night of April 16, 1975 we were awakened by the terrible sounds of bombs and guns, close at hand. The explosions were so near that our house shook with each burst. To the mind of a terrified nine-year-old girl, it seemed that the gunfire was aimed directly at me… I soon learned that the people I loved the most would begin to experience the worst horrors imaginable. We knew our lives would be changed forever.”

Holocaust Memorial Day exists to commemorate and teach the lessons of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides.

You can read the testimony of survivors of the Cambodian genocide on the HMD website Mardi Seng Ronnie Yimsut and Sophal Leng Stagg

About the Cambodian genocide.

Between 1975 and 1978 a brutal revolution took place in Cambodia. Led by Pol Pot, a radical communist group the Khmer Rouge seized power following a period of instability. The Khmer Rouge’s interpretation of Marxist/Leninist/Maoist communist models allowed them to believe that they could create a classless society simply by eliminating all social classes apart from poor peasants. They declared the date year zero and ruthlessly imposed an extremist programme to reconstruct Cambodia (Khmer name: Kampuchea). They claimed to be returning society to a golden age when the land was cultivated by peasants. They believed that Cambodia should be ruled for and by the poorest people; that the most members of society should be rural agricultural workers rather than educated city dwellers, who had been corrupted by western capitalist ideas.

Immediately they ordered all the towns and cities to be emptied of people. No-one was excused. People who refused to leave were killed, so were those who did not leave fast enough and those who would not obey orders. The ill, disabled, old and very young were driven out, regardless of their physical condition.

Sinatoons: Cambodia 17 April 1975

Cartoon by V. Sina

"Truth and justice will not bring back to life those who died, but there is no true peace without them": Suyheang Kry

Suyheang Kry talks to students at Hun Sen Ang Snuol High School.

Reflections on Working to Uncover Genocide

Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Suyheang Kry
The Phnom Penh Post

Born eight years after Democratic Kampuchea, I was brought up in a society in which neither my family nor my school taught me about the genocidal regime. When the regime ended in 1979, a politicized national history was created that did not include the Khmer Rouge. Thus, I grew up knowing little to nothing about this tragic period.

As I got older, I became more and more interested in my family’s history during the Khmer Rouge era. Armed with passionate curiosity, I decided to work for the Documentation Center of Cambodia in order to investigate the truth about the regime. Having interviewed hundreds of victims of the regime, I have seen firsthand their remarkable resilience and dignity, despite the barbarous crimes committed upon them. However, ironically, this resilience and dignity were borne partially from a purposeful silence on the past. My father’s words “let bygones be bygones” reflect the sentiments of many victims. However, should we forget the past now that we have peace? Do truth and justice make a difference to those who survived the regime?

My answer is a resolute yes. Truth and justice will not bring back to life those who died, but there is no true peace without them. The brutal violence that devastated Cambodia does not diminish with time; it requires purposeful action and education to overcome the horrors that took place, and commemorating and acknowledging the suffering of victims is the first step towards preventing such atrocities from reoccurring. This is true for both survivors and the next generation, which is why it is imperative that youth learn and understand the truth about Khmer Rouge history to ensure a stronger citizenry as we move forward.

Cambodian school displays anti-genocide slogans

Friday, October 01, 2010
AFP

PHNOM PENH — A high school in the Cambodian capital became the first in the country on Friday to display anti-genocide slogans in an effort to educate youngsters about the murderous Khmer Rouge regime.

Pupils arriving for the first day of the school year at Indra Devi High School were greeted with the message, mounted in blue on the side of the library building. It reflected a growing willingness to discuss the country's bloody past.

"Talking about experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime is to promote reconciliation and to educate children about forgiveness and tolerance," the sign said.

Directly below it, a second slogan, also in Khmer and English, read: "Learning about the history of Democratic Kampuchea is to prevent genocide," referring to the communist movement's name for their 1975-1979 regime.

From early next year, the messages will appear in every high school in the country.

The "Killing Fields" era, when up to two million people died of execution, overwork and starvation, is a much-discussed topic in the classroom, said student So Rithchhaya.

"The teachers talk a lot about it," he told AFP.

"We need the slogans, it can make us remember our history," said the 15-year-old, wearing his boy scout uniform for the unveiling.

Maths teacher Kouy Seak Leang added: "My students cannot know enough about the Khmer Rouge."

More than 70 percent of Cambodia's 14 million people were born after the Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979.

The scheme is backed by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which collects evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities.

"The purpose of placing anti-genocide slogans in high schools is to raise awareness among students and teachers about genocide and genocide prevention," the organisation said in a statement.

The school's unveiling ceremony comes just two weeks after a UN-backed war crimes court announced that four senior regime leaders will stand trial for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It will be the tribunal's second case following the July conviction of former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, for overseeing the deaths of some 15,000 men, women and children at a Phnom Penh detention centre.

An inhuman education

Genocide museum: Tales of hopelessness

September 25, 2010
MAYA JAYAPAL
The Hindu

When we reached Pnom Penh, our guide welcomed us with gifts of checkered cloth which he called krama. It has multiple uses for the Khmer- to keep off the sun when working in the rice fields, to carry food such as vegetables or corn, to give to one's love as a token. And finally the Khmers used it to hang themselves in the ultimate act of desperation when they saw no other option to escape from the brutal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Somehow it seemed an apt, albeit grisly reminder, of the reason I was here — to visit the Genocide Museum.

Pol Pot's prison

It looked like any other average school in Southeast Asia — long three- storeyed buildings whose whitewash has yellowed with the harsh heat and overuse. It was indeed an education for our little group of eight, one that will remain with us a longer time than the education given us by our blue- eyed Irish nuns in the convent schools we went to in South India.

The Genocide Museum was once the Tuol Svay Prey High School in Phnom Penh, and the five buildings in the complex were utilised to house prisoners who were being interrogated by the Pol Pot regime. It was then renamed Security prison 21 (S-21) in 1975 and the unspeakable horrors that went on here have been meticulously documented in the form of hundreds of photos taken by the prison authorities, instruments of torture and row upon row of grinning skulls.

I stopped cold in my tracks when my guide, himself a poignant casualty of that infamous regime, was detailing the events that led to the war in Cambodia. Our guide, a young man in his early forties, was one of six children who were parted from each other. It was only recently that he discovered one sister and brother in Canada. Of the rest he had no idea. What is like to have no past to hang on to? It was a topic that recurred to the four of us siblings and spouses when we were together for our family reunion at our next stop in Thailand where we laughed and got angry and became sad as we recounted childhood memories which bound us together.

The compound is surrounded by the original barbed wire. Building A, which was used for detaining cadres who were accused of leading the uprising against Pol Pot, had cage-like cells each with a bed, blanket, cushion, mat and an iron bucket for holding human waste. There were glass doors to minimise the screams of prisoners during interrogation. In Buildings C and D, the ground floor was divided into small cells by brick walls. And the first floor had larger cells capable of holding more prisoners. In front of the first building were the graves of the seven people who had been discovered- barely alive; the last of the victims. Frangipani trees shaded them, and the white starred flowers lay softly like a benediction on their graves.

Tyrannical regime

There was a gibbet-like structure in the yard, which was once a wooden pole for exercise. The hands of the prisoner were tied to his back and he was lifted in an upside down position again and again until he lost consciousness, then his head was dipped into a barrel of water. The moment he regained consciousness the process was repeated. It was not surprising that confessions were extracted very quickly, even to crimes not committed.

Rooms after rooms are full of photographs of people interrogated, impersonally documented by the interrogators. Most had their arms tied behind their backs. But their eyes tell a different story — of anguish and hopelessness, of sometimes a grim defiance. It is an unremittingly cruel glimpse of the estimated 20,000 prisoners — men, women and fresh-faced children — who passed through these walls. The photographs were mostly of Cambodians, although there were some foreigners too. Pol Pot's twisted ideology meant that anyone with an education was suspect, even one who wore glasses. The guide who took us to Angkor Wat told us that his father was taken away because he was a professor. He was never heard of again.

Pol Pot's dream was concentrated on the growing of rice. To that end he saw no need for urban cities, trade or markets, money or medicine. He wanted to eliminate all these; and educationists such as teachers, doctors and dissidents. Every one had to work for 18 hours a day under the pitiless Cambodian sun on pitiful rations of rice gruel, supervised by pitiless “cadres”.

In another prison (Tuol Sleng), according to an article in a National Geographic issue, there was a notice translated into English with a list of 10 regulations. The tenth read: “If you disobey any point of my regulations, you will get either 10 lashes or five shocks by electrification.” The fifth regulation reads: “While getting lashes or electrification, you must not cry at all.”

The skulls in the Tuol Svay Museum are in a cupboard, ghastly reminders of cruelty. Apparently the most grisly attraction was a map of Cambodia using skulls; fortunately it was dismantled in 2002. And it's said that the Vietnamese found this prison by following the stench of decay.

When does a massacre become a genocide?

Attendance at Duch's trial (Photo: ECCC)

Sep 17th 2010
By B.B.
The Economist
PHNOM PENH

Many advocates contend that the symbolic weight carried by the charge of genocide will prove to the Cambodian public that the Western-backed tribunal—known officially as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia—acknowledges the gravity of their country’s loss. Theary Seng, a survivor who works as a rights advocate in Phnom Penh, believes there is a strong legal basis for prosecuting the regime’s leaders for genocide. Moreover, she says, it can be an effective means of bringing "gravitas to the tribunal”.

CAMBODIA’s United Nations-backed war-crimes court formally indicted four former Khmer Rouge leaders on September 16th. Their trial, set to begin next year, will be the second of its kind. In July Comrade Duch, the commandant of an infamous prison, was handed a 35-year sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity, reduced to 19 years against time served and a period of illegal detention. Next in the dock are the Khmers Rouges’ chief ideologue, Nuon Chea, their former head of state, Khieu Samphan, and Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, both ministers in their government. The four stand charged, like Duch, with war crimes and crimes against humanity—and also with genocide. The court’s new charge should prove most contentious yet.

The term genocide has been used freely by Cambodians and foreign observers alike in reference to the atrocities committed during the Khmers Rouges’ ultra-Maoist revolution. In the mid- to late 1970s it cost the lives of nearly one in four Cambodians; all told, at least 1.7m people died. But the tribunal, started in 2007, only introduced this monumental charge at the end of last year. Investigating judges and prosecutors proposed adding it on the basis of their research into the defendants’ alleged role in the slaughter of Cambodia’s ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslims.

In 1999, UN experts concluded that there was strong evidence pointing to genocide by the Khmer Rouge. Ben Kiernan, a scholar of the Khmer Rouge and founder of Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Project, for one, is adamant that the mass killing in Cambodia constitutes a genocide. In his research Mr Kiernan cites the disproportionate death toll inflicted on those two non-Khmer ethnic groups. He argues further that the regime called officially for the elimination of both minorities.

Many advocates contend that the symbolic weight carried by the charge of genocide will prove to the Cambodian public that the Western-backed tribunal—known officially as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia—acknowledges the gravity of their country’s loss. Theary Seng, a survivor who works as a rights advocate in Phnom Penh, believes there is a strong legal basis for prosecuting the regime’s leaders for genocide. Moreover, she says, it can be an effective means of bringing "gravitas to the tribunal”.

“Genocide” is increasingly being used as a generic label for all the world’s most serious mass crimes. “As a result, the absence of the term ‘genocide’ can be interpreted by survivors as meaning they didn’t suffer as much as others”—ie those who have been deemed survivors of genocide—says John Ciorciari, a lawyer and assistant professor at University of Michigan’s School of Public Policy. He has been tracking the tribunal’s genesis and operations for 11 years in his capacity as a legal adviser to the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which conducts research for the court.

Despite its growing popularity, the concept of genocide maintains a narrow legal definition which hinges on specific intent. This makes it especially hard to prove. Few dispute that the Khmer Rouge led a campaign to annihilate groups of people whom were considered to be incompatible with its revolutionary aims. The question is whether these groups were targeted first and foremost because of their ethnic or religious type, or rather because they represented perceived political and economic enemies. Somewhat perversely, victims belonging to the latter lot fall outside the crime’s definition.

Not everyone involved with the trial is eager to see the charge introduced. Some have argued that introducing genocide will further entangle a process already beset by delays and confusion. The “Extraordinary Chambers” have already suffered extraordinarily complex internal disputes and accusations of various improprieties, political interference and even outright corruption. One sharply pointed criticism sees the charge of genocide as a cynical move foisted on the proceedings by foreign jurists who want to enhance the profile of the court’s work and their role in it—thereby distracting attention from the Western powers’ history of wrongdoing in Cambodia. “This tribunal has from the beginning been muddled by political objectives,” says Philip Short, who wrote a biography of the late Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge’s paramount leader.

Many scholars of the Vietnam war blame the American bombing of eastern Cambodia for having driven much of the peasantry into the hands of the Khmer Rouge. America’s role in Cambodia became even grimmer during the 1980s, after the Khmer Rouge were driven from power by a Vietnamese invasion force. In a terrible exercise of cold-war realpolitik, American agents supported the Khmer Rouge in exile as a means of resisting the regime installed by Vietnam.

Or, perhaps, the court is simply following through on its mandate. “The purpose of the tribunal is to adjudicate the most serious crimes,” as Mr Ciorciari says. “To the extent that genocide is distinct from war crimes and crimes against humanity, it’s productive to consider this specific charge.” There is, after all, evidence to support it.

The Perils of Indifference

The Perils of Indifference by most famous holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has many resonances for us Cambodians. The title says it all - in light of our Khmer Rouge history and the KR mentality of fear and intimidation which continues to exist to this day, as well as human rights abuses of land evictions, using the court as a political tool etc. The middle way does not work in this case: you are either for justice or injustice; you either care or are indifferent. Omission is as much a sin as commission. You cannot be a bystander in life to abuses and still call yourself "moral" or free of guilt. The choice is yours: do you stand on the side of justice or injustice? Simply put, justice is not neutral. It stands on the side of the poor and the oppressed. -- www.thearyseng.com

Elie Wiesel
delivered 12 April 1999, Washington, D.C.

Mr. President, Mrs. Clinton, members of Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, friends:

Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again. Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know -- that they, too, would remember, and bear witness.

And now, I stand before you, Mr. President -- Commander-in-Chief of the army that freed me, and tens of thousands of others -- and I am filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the American people. "Gratitude" is a word that I cherish. Gratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being. And I am grateful to you, Hillary, or Mrs. Clinton, for what you said, and for what you are doing for children in the world, for the homeless, for the victims of injustice, the victims of destiny and society. And I thank all of you for being here.

We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. What will the legacy of this vanishing century be? How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Surely it will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms. These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations (Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin), bloodbaths in Cambodia and Algeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in the gulag and the tragedy of Hiroshima. And, on a different level, of course, Auschwitz and Treblinka. So much violence; so much indifference.

What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means "no difference." A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil. What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?

Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an abstraction.

Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz, the most tragic of all prisoners were the "Muselmanner," as they were called. Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space, unaware of who or where they were -- strangers to their surroundings. They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it.

Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to be a victim of His anger. Man can live far from God -- not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering.

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.

And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.

In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps -- and I'm glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance -- but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.

And our only miserable consolation was that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets; that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on behind those black gates and barbed wire; that they had no knowledge of the war against the Jews that Hitler's armies and their accomplices waged as part of the war against the Allies. If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction. They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the railways, just once.

And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew. And the illustrious occupant of the White House then, who was a great leader -- and I say it with some anguish and pain, because, today is exactly 54 years marking his death -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April the 12th, 1945. So he is very much present to me and to us. No doubt, he was a great leader. He mobilized the American people and the world, going into battle, bringing hundreds and thousands of valiant and brave soldiers in America to fight fascism, to fight dictatorship, to fight Hitler. And so many of the young people fell in battle. And, nevertheless, his image in Jewish history -- I must say it -- his image in Jewish history is flawed.


The depressing tale of the St. Louis is a case in point. Sixty years ago, its human cargo -- nearly 1,000 Jews -- was turned back to Nazi Germany. And that happened after the Kristallnacht, after the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps. And that ship, which was already in the shores of the United States, was sent back. I don't understand. Roosevelt was a good man, with a heart. He understood those who needed help. Why didn't he allow these refugees to disembark? A thousand people -- in America, the great country, the greatest democracy, the most generous of all new nations in modern history. What happened? I don't understand. Why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering of the victims?

But then, there were human beings who were sensitive to our tragedy. Those non-Jews, those Christians, that we call the "Righteous Gentiles," whose selfless acts of heroism saved the honor of their faith. Why were they so few? Why was there a greater effort to save SS murderers after the war than to save their victims during the war? Why did some of America's largest corporations continue to do business with Hitler's Germany until 1942? It has been suggested, and it was documented, that the Wehrmacht could not have conducted its invasion of France without oil obtained from American sources. How is one to explain their indifference?

And yet, my friends, good things have also happened in this traumatic century: the defeat of Nazism, the collapse of communism, the rebirth of Israel on its ancestral soil, the demise of apartheid, Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, the peace accord in Ireland. And let us remember the meeting, filled with drama and emotion, between Rabin and Arafat that you, Mr. President, convened in this very place. I was here and I will never forget it.

And then, of course, the joint decision of the United States and NATO to intervene in Kosovo and save those victims, those refugees, those who were uprooted by a man, whom I believe that because of his crimes, should be charged with crimes against humanity.

But this time, the world was not silent. This time, we do respond. This time, we intervene.

Does it mean that we have learned from the past? Does it mean that society has changed? Has the human being become less indifferent and more human? Have we really learned from our experiences? Are we less insensitive to the plight of victims of ethnic cleansing and other forms of injustices in places near and far? Is today's justified intervention in Kosovo, led by you, Mr. President, a lasting warning that never again will the deportation, the terrorization of children and their parents, be allowed anywhere in the world? Will it discourage other dictators in other lands to do the same?

What about the children? Oh, we see them on television, we read about them in the papers, and we do so with a broken heart. Their fate is always the most tragic, inevitably. When adults wage war, children perish. We see their faces, their eyes. Do we hear their pleas? Do we feel their pain, their agony? Every minute one of them dies of disease, violence, famine.

Some of them -- so many of them -- could be saved.

And so, once again, I think of the young Jewish boy from the Carpathian Mountains. He has accompanied the old man I have become throughout these years of quest and struggle. And together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope.

Anti-genocide slogans to be hung in Cambodian schools

THE THREE BELOW ARE ALL
FORMER KHMER ROUGE CADRE-KILLERS

An example of anti-genocide slogan?

PHNOM PENH, Tuesday 22 June 2010 (AFP) - Anti-genocide slogans encouraging youngsters to study the legacy of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime are to be hung in high schools across Cambodia, organisers of the project said Tuesday.

The Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which collects evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities, said it would start hanging the government-approved messages in 1,700 schools from January.

"This is to remember and to study daily ... so that the students know we have this history," said the centre's director, Youk Chhang.

Referring to the communist movement's name for their 1975-1979 regime, one of the slogans reads: "Learning about the history of Democratic Kampuchea is to prevent genocide."

Even though five Khmer Rouge leaders are being held by a UN-backed genocide court, many young Cambodians are unaware that up to two million people died through overwork, starvation and execution under the brutal regime.

More than 70 percent of Cambodia's 14 million people were born after the Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979 and, as the topic is sensitive among elites who were involved with the regime, little about it has been taught in schools.

Last year Cambodia unveiled its first textbook about the Khmer Rouge regime and began distributing about half a million copies to high schools.

The genocide court in Phnom Penh is scheduled to deliver its first verdict on July 26, in the case of former prison chief Duch -- the first Khmer Rouge leader to face international justice.

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998. The joint trial of four other senior regime leaders is expected to start in 2011, while the court is considering whether to open cases against five other former Khmer Rouge cadres.

Duty of Memory: Please help share your stories under the Khmer Rouge regime

(Photo: AP)

Song interpreted at Khao-I-Dang camp:
ចារទុករឿងខ្ញុំ (Write down my story)
Click here to download or listen (MP3)
Originally posted by mpreuk on Camdisc

Dear Readers,

As you all know, the anniversary of “17 April 1975,” the date when the Khmer Rouge killing started, is just around the corner. In order to commemorate the memory of our loved-ones who lost their lives under the KR regime, we are calling on all of our readers to please help share your life stories under this tragic period. In addition to commemorating the memory of our loved-ones, these stories will also shed light to newer Cambodian generations who did not witness this event.

As survivors and relatives of survivors of the KR regime, such information sharing is our “duty of memory” so that they will never happen again!

Please send your story contributions in Khmer, English or French to us for posting, at the following email address: kiletters@gmail.com.

Thank you very much!

KI-Media team

Opinion by Mr. Uon Sim regarding King Sihanouk

Click on the article in Khmer to zoom in

Cambodia Confronts the "G" Word

The horrors of the Khmer Rouge's rule may be in the past, but the question of whether its crimes amounted to genocide lingers on.

JANUARY 8, 2010
BY BRENDAN BRADY
Foreign Policy

The Khmer Rouge liked to say, "When pulling out weeds, remove the roots and all." Fulfilling this dogma, the ultra-Maoist regime killed the babies of supposed traitors of the revolution and "smashed" -- its euphemism for executed -- pregnant women carrying the children of men whose loyalty was in question. The term genocide is often used reflexively to describe the Khmer Rouge's rule of terror that led to the deaths of at least 1.7 million Cambodians from overwork, starvation, and murder from 1975 to 1979. It was not, however, one of the charges former Khmer Rouge leaders had faced in the three-year-old U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal. This is changing, though, and the new move is controversial.

The hybrid Cambodian-U.N. tribunal has been trying five former top regime officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Its first trial, of Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch), the warden of a prison code-named S-21, where an estimated 15,000 prisoners deemed enemies of the revolution were tortured before being executed in the nearby "killing fields," concluded in November. A verdict is expected in March. Last month, the tribunal added genocide as a charge against the four remaining defendants for their alleged role in the slaughter of ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslims in Cambodia. The charges need to be finalized in the court's closing order, but it is widely thought that they will all be included in the formal charges against the defendants.

Duch admitted to his role in overseeing the S-21 prison. But the regime's chief ideologue, Nuon Chea (known as "Brother No. 2"), former President Khieu Samphan, former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, and his wife and social affairs minister, Ieng Thirith, have all denied culpability for the charges they face. By all reliable accounts, however, they were the chief architects of the regime's catastrophic experiment to forge an agrarian utopia by methods that included forcing the population onto rural collectives; abolishing money, schools, and religion; and exterminating perceived enemies of the revolution.

In 1999, U.N. experts concluded that the Khmer Rouge should face charges for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. They said there was strong evidence -- including Khmer Rouge statements, eyewitness accounts, and the nature and number of victims of each group -- pointing to genocide against the Cham and Vietnamese as ethnic groups and against the Buddhist monkhood as a religious group.

In light of the denial and obfuscation of the former regime's leadership, the court's role in clarifying the historical record is now especially important. "That is part of the healing process," says David Scheffer, a former U.S. war crimes ambassador, "to confront these charges head-on inside the courtroom rather than see them abandoned forever." It was for this purpose of direct confrontation that the tribunal included an innovative "civil party" system allowing victims into the courtroom to air grievances and question the defendants.

Many advocates of minority rights applaud the addition of genocide charges as a way for these groups to reaffirm their rights in Cambodian society. Lyma Nguyen, a lawyer representing a group of 17 ethnic Vietnamese survivors, says the genocide charge would allow her clients to formally pursue the truth about why they were targeted and, in the process, "reconstitute their identity." Lawyer Lor Chunthy said the more than 200 Cham Muslim civil parties he represents are still consolidating their place in Cambodian society. "There is still discrimination against the Cham, so this sends an important message that Muslims in Cambodia are part of the country," he notes. Both lawyers said the groups they represent unequivocally think they were singled out because of their ethnic or religious identity.

Cambodian advocates of the charge also say it carries enormous symbolic weight that will help the tribunal receive local support. "The addition of genocide charges reflects what the millions of Cambodians who survived have wanted since 1979," says court spokesman Reach Sambath. The charge resonates with all Cambodians, he says, because, according to their understanding of the term, it best describes the crimes inflicted upon them. The Khmer term for genocide is pralaay puch sah, as it approximately sounds transliterated from Khmer, and literally means to "destroy from the root" or "kill the seed of the race." Given the Khmer Rouge's maniacal obsession with cleansing society of unwanted elements, it is not hard to see why Cambodians frequently use this particular expression to describe the regime's policies.

But genocide, in an international court, has a strict definition and is notoriously hard to prove. There is little doubt the Khmer Rouge led a campaign to wipe out groups it considered incompatible with the revolution. The question is whether the groups were targeted first and foremost because of their ethnic or religious identities, or because they represented perceived political and economic enemies of the state -- categories that fall outside the crime's definition. The fact that certain ethnic or religious groups suffered disproportionately and sustained severe repression of their practices does not necessarily constitute genocide.

This point is still vigorously debated among academics who study this bloody era in Cambodia's history. "They weren't mowed down because they were Cham. They were mowed down because they resisted and anyone who resisted during that time was killed," says David Chandler, a scholar on the Khmer Rouge and the author of A History of Cambodia. "They were forced to eat pork because they were Cham -- but that's not genocide."

Some observers fear that the genocide charge is being wielded by international powers for political gain. Philip Short, author of Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, a biography of the now deceased Khmer Rouge leader, argues that the term genocide has been bandied around by foreign powers as a "political commodity." Short says that the U.S. government, whose war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s is often believed to have contributed to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, has pushed for genocide to be applied to the regime so it can condemn the crimes and assume a moral high ground, while distancing itself from the circumstances that lead to the horror and terror.

"The Jews were killed in Germany because they were Jews. Not because of any resistance to the Nazis, but because they were considered detritus or scum. In Rwanda, the Hutus killed Tutsis simply because of their racial type," Short says. "But this wasn't the case in Cambodia. This regime was one of the greatest abominations of the 20th century. It's bad enough without now trying to [add] politically motivated charges."

The court's coinciding request for an additional $93 million from donor countries to finance the court over the next two years has also prompted murmurs that ulterior motives lie behind the new charge. "It smacks of a publicity stunt," says Michael Karnavas, the international defense lawyer for one of the accused, Ieng Sary. "It seems like this new charge is a way to show the importance of the tribunal and to help get funding." The court says there is no connection.

Piyamin Yusoh, an enlisted civil party with the tribunal, holds out hope that the genocide charges can draw attention to the persecution his people experienced during the Khmer Rouge's reign. He is the current Muslim leader, or hakim, of Svay Khleang village, the historical heart of Cambodia's minority Muslim community. It was here that the Cham staged a bloody, and unsuccessful, uprising after the Khmer Rouge carried out secret executions of their men. "I'm hoping the tribunal will acknowledge the particular suffering of the Muslim people," Yusoh told me in an interview I did for IRIN News. "We weren't allowed to practice our religion; we were forced to eat pork; our women couldn't wear hijabs. For us, this was humiliating. The Khmer Rouge wanted to annihilate all people who practiced Islam." The Khmer Rouge, he says, tried to "destroy us from the root," referring to what he perceived as genocidal intent.

But, as a participant in the tribunal, Yusoh is an exception -- many victims are unfamiliar with the tribunal and the legal classifications of the Khmer Rouge's crimes. A month before proceedings opened in the Duch trial last February, a survey showing that 85 percent of Cambodians had little or no knowledge of the tribunal was published by the University of California-Berkeley's Human Rights Center. That number would now certainly be lower following the publicity of the initial trial, but it nonetheless reflects the disparity between Cambodia's impoverished countryside and the highly technical legal machine in the capital, Phnom Penh.

For regular Cambodians, the tribunal's most important task may be delivering some sense of justice in the form of concrete results, rather than contributing to endless legal debates that could risk prolonging the process. "Scholars have been debating [whether the Khmer Rouge's crimes constituted genocide] for 20 years," says Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a custodian of primary documents on the Khmer Rouge. "For the victims, it meant watching someone take a piece of wood to the back of your husband's head. You can call it smash, crush, or whatever, but it was, most importantly, what people experienced."

That is how Ly Sarfyas, a 66-year-old woman in Svay Khleang, feels about the tribunal. "I would just like to kill them myself," Sarfyas, who was left without any family after the Khmer Rouge's rule, told me. "It's difficult to wait for the court, but it's what we are relying on."

Khieu Samphan, the Khmer Rouge's 'naive' head of state

Khieu Samphan, detained in November,denies repsonsibility (Photo: Reuters)

Khieu Samphan, the former Khmer Rouge head of state, was charged with genocide by a UN court today but has always denied having a prominent role in the regime, saying he was kept out of Pol Pot's inner circle.

18 Dec 2009
Profile by an AFP writer in Phnom Penh

The 78 year-old had already been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity as a member of the central committee of the regime that oversaw the deaths of up to two million people by starvation, overwork, torture and execution.

Khieu Samphan has never denied the bloodletting suffered under the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, but the former head of state of Cambodia's radical Communist government has also never admitted to a role in the regime's brutal excesses.

Instead, he has styled himself as an intellectual and nationalist who claims he knew little, until long afterwards, of the devastation that was wrought during the Khmer Rouge's nearly four years in power.

"To the compatriots who lost loved ones during this period ... I ask them to excuse my naivete," he wrote in his 2004 memoir Cambodia's Recent History and the Reasons Behind the Decisions I Made.

"I thought I was carrying out my duty for my nation's survival and prosperity. I did not imagine it would lead to such killing," he wrote in the book, which was published as momentum built for genocide trials.

Like most Khmer Rouge leaders at the height of the regime's power, Khieu Samphan was a shadowy figure, his identity cloaked by the secrecy of the movement's inner circles.

But as the Khmer Rouge struggled for power in the civil war that followed their 1979 ousting, he became the public face of the movement as it sought, and was to some extent granted, international credibility.

Born in 1931 in Cambodia's south-eastern Svay Rieng province, Khieu Samphan was highly educated, graduating from high school and university in France.

There he rose to prominence in leftist circles and became a Cambodian student leader.

In late 1966 he served as Cambodia's secretary of commerce, a post he kept for nine months before he fled to the jungle in April 1967 and joined the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) - the Khmer Rouge.

The party eventually seized the country in 1975 and during the regime years Khieu Samphan was appointed head of state as well as to more powerful positions within the party and government.

It was in these roles that genocide researchers say he would have had to have been aware as one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century unfolded.

"Available documentation points to Samphan's knowledge of... atrocities and suggests that he personally contributed to those crimes by making public statements supporting the underlying policies," researchers Stephen Heder and Brian Tittemore write in their book Seven Candidates for Prosecution.

"He publicly endorsed taking measures against the enemies of the revolution in a way that suggests knowledge and support of the policy of executing purported enemy agents."

Cambodia Tribunal Charges Former Khmer Rouge Head of State With Genocide

Cambodia's U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal has charged the Khmer Rouge's former head of state with genocide, the third such charge this week against a former leader of the brutal regime.

18 December 2009
VOA News

A court spokesman says Khieu Samphan was brought before investigating judges of the U.N.-assisted tribunal Friday and charged.

On Wednesday, the tribunal charged two other defendants with genocide for the first time: Nuon Chea, the group's top ideologist and former foreign minister Ieng Sary.

All three have been charged with involvement in the deaths of members of the country's ethnic Cham and Vietnamese communities.

Some Chams, who are mostly Muslims, were among the few Cambodians to actively resist Khmer Rouge rule. The Khmer Rouge brutally suppressed the rebellions in several villages.

All three are also facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as homicide and torture for their involvement in the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.

Although many Cambodians feel their people suffered a genocide, it is difficult for prosecutors to apply the charge to the mass killing.

The United Nations defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

So far, three of five former senior Khmer Rouge members facing prosecution for their involvement in the brutal ultra-communist regime have been formally charged in court.

Prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, was the first defendant to be tried. He faces life imprisonment if found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and murder. A verdict is expected some time early next year.

Duch commanded the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, where about 16,000 people were tortured and taken away to be killed.

The Khmer Rouge aimed to wipe out Cambodia's social classes and create a self-sustaining, agrarian society.

They emptied Cambodia's cities, killed anyone who appeared educated or elite, and forced the rest of the population to work in rural labor camps. Vietnamese forces pushed the group from power in 1979.

Tribunal charges 3rd ex-Khmer Rouge with genocide

Friday, December 18, 2009
AP

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – A tribunal charged the Khmer Rouge's 78-year-old former head of state with genocide Friday, adding new momentum to long-delayed trials against the brutal regime that ruled Cambodia 30 years ago.

Khieu Samphan was brought before investigating judges of the U.N.-assisted tribunal, who issued the charges, making him the third former Khmer Rouge leader this week to be charged with genocide, tribunal spokesman Lars Olsen said.

On Wednesday, the tribunal charged two other defendants with genocide for the first time: the group's top ideologist, Nuon Chea, and the former foreign minister, Ieng Sary.

All three faced charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as homicide and torture. They are being held in the tribunal's jail with two other defendants and are expected to be tried next year.

The tribunal is seeking justice for an estimated 1.7 million people who died from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition as a result of the communist group's policies during its 1975-79 rule.

Olsen said they were charged with involvement in the deaths of members of the country's ethnic Cham and Vietnamese communities.

Some Chams, who are mostly Muslims, were among the few Cambodians to actively resist Khmer Rouge rule. The Khmer Rouge brutally suppressed the rebellions in several villages.

The tribunal tried its first defendant, prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, this year on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture. A verdict is expected early next year.

Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, commanded S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, where up to 16,000 people were tortured and taken away to be killed. A verdict is expected next year, and he faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment if found guilty. Cambodia has no death penalty.

Olsen said it would be determined later whether one of the other Khmer Rouge leaders in custody — former Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, the wife of Ieng Sary — would also be charged with genocide.