Khmer Rouge Tribunal response

Note: I’ve tried several times to upload photos and each time I’ve crashed the system. One of these days the conflict between me and technology will call a fragile ceasefire. Until then I’ll (and you’ll) just have to settle for text.

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal was surely broadcast across the states and various countries. One of Cambodia’s most notorious leaders during the khmer rouge regime was finally handed a verdict for his crimes. He was found guilty of overseeing (though not directly causing, the court was eager to point out) the deaths of about 14,000 people and he was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Considering illegal detention and time served the sentence was reduced to about 19 years. Fourteen thousand people and the best case scenario is that he’ll serve 19 years. There is also the possibility that he will be pardoned on the king’s birthday, which is quite possible and something Cambodians fear. The larger implication is that Duch could walk out of prison during his lifetime, a thought that makes survivors here both rageful and distraught.

If the verdict weren’t bad enough, the court ruled against any meaningful reparations, claiming the defendant was indigent. Now, claimants weren’t asking for much: a wall at Tuol Sleng prison with the names of the dead, for example, or a small pagoda built to honor the dead. The court offered instead to list the names of the dead on their website – as if most the people living in the country even had a computer or access to the internet!!

They also offered to record the “remorseful sayings” of Duch in a book for the claimants. I assume they would leave out the request for full amnesty that followed his last “remorseful saying.” Ugh. What a mess.

And to top off the beauty of the event, out of 92 claimants 26 of them were rejected on the day of the verdict. Meaning that their claims were denied on Lord knows what grounds, despite the fact that they had been participating in the proceedings for the previous NINE MONTHS. My first interview following the verdict was with one of the rejected civil party members; it turned into suicide counseling when she threatened to kill herself inside the Tribunal so her story would be known!

Court officials made grand gestures about the sound legal nature of the decision, and the great impact and influence it would have on the Cambodian legal system for generations to come. Perhaps all that is true, but claimants don’t really care about that. No, I don’t think there would have been a verdict that satisfied all Cambodians. Forty years (the maximum under Cambodian law) might have been accepted by most, but some people I interviewed still felt anything short of death (and I won’t even get into the details of how one subject described how that death should be experienced) was too good for the man. “He can still tuck his clean shirt into his slacks, can eat well and sleep on a nice bed,” this man said.

If reconciliation was one of the goals of a court procedure, then this court failed in huge measure. What Cambodians want and need is recognition for what they suffered during the Khmer Rouge regime. They have been told to forgive, forget, and move on. “Dig a hole and bury the past,” as the prime minister once famously said. But that cannot be done until the past is acknowledged. Cambodia is a country in a state of Post Traumatic Stress. Stuffing the truth down even further is not the answer. The country needs to get more creative and dedicate some of its rapidly growing wealth (which oddly seems to remain in government coffers) to healing its population. It will benefit the country in the long run to honestly reconcile with its past. It will heal souls and return the “courage” that has been taken from the Cambodian people and that they so dearly need back.