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| Poetic Justice along Quay Sisowath with Theary Seng throwing darts at the "war criminals" (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post) |
Ms. Theary Seng ... had invited the public to join her in playing the “Poetic Justice War Criminals Dart Games,” using dartboards depicting the photos of the former Khmer Rouge leaders. She has withdrawn her participation with the court process. Ms. Seng said, “Enough is enough! The court is a farce!” She no longer has faith in the KR tribunal. On the other side of the aisle, Michiel Pestman and Andrew Ianuzzi, co-defense counsels for former Khmer Rouge leader, Nuon Chea, has filed criminal complaints to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, requesting an immediate investigation into alleged interference by the Phnom Penh government officials, naming some of the high ranking officials as culprits.
In the late 1990‘s, the Phnom Penh government officials, consisting of the two Co-Prime Ministers, Hun Sen and Prince Rannaridh, were toying with the idea of bringing the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders to justice. They covertly sought assistance from the United Nations to set up a hybrid tribunal inside Cambodia to try the former Khmer Rouge leaders. However, Hun Sen never had any intention of putting these remaining Khmer Rouge leaders on trial. He was more aggressive in his drive for power and absolute control. Hun Sen has been internationally known as an iron-fist dictator, who would constantly, at any cost, devise schemes to stamp out his political opponents. With the subsequent political turmoil during the coup d’état in 1997, the plan for the tribunal was temporarily shelved.
The plan of establishing a tribunal to try the former Khmer Rouge leaders was brought back to the table in early 2000‘s. After six years of intense negotiations between the United Nations and the Phnom Penh government, the Khmer Rouge tribunal, legally known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), was created in 2006. The legally binding agreements, inter alia, was that the “trial would take place in Cambodia” and the most significant and controversial decision was that the “Phnom Penh government’s insistence of ownership of the trials.”
After a tribunal had become a legal reality, the politicians, legal experts, and the general public joined in a united chorus expressing their grave concerns. The public opined that the Khmer Rouge tribunals would inevitably getting “political interference” from the Phnom Penh government, and as the result, it would lead to an international boondoggle, and more regrettably, a “travesty of justice.” Initially, the United Nations had creditable reasons to believe that they were dealing with the elephant in the room, but without any reservation and without taking the public objections under advisement, the U.N. made a swift decision to place its own reputation, integrity and fiduciary duty, into the hands of the dogmatic and “Paleolithic” mentality of the Phnom Penh government.
