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Cambodia turns its back on its
past
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
PHNOM PENH - Both at work and at home, Pen
Samitthy faces an uncomfortable truth: Cambodia is
losing interest in the acts of murder committed by the
Khmer Rouge during its four-year rule in the late 1970s.
In mid-March, a United Nations team is due to
return to this Southeast Asian country to negotiate with
the Cambodian government ways of setting up a war-crimes
tribunal to try Khmer Rouge leaders.
But at
work, there are readers of Pen's newspaper, Rasmei
Kampuchea, Cambodia's largest circulation Khmer-language
daily, that remind him why stories about bringing the
Khmer Rouge to justice is of least significance these
days.
"No one wants to read about the UN plans
for a trial. The circulation will drop if we write
stories about the Khmer Rouge tribunal," said Pen, the
42-year-old editor-in-chief of the 16-page broadsheet.
This is true of the situation in other local-language
newspapers too, he said. "The tribunal is not a big
story for the Khmer papers; but for the foreign press it
is."
And at home, there is Pen's 11-year-old
son. "He knows about the Khmer Rouge, about [its leader]
Pol Pot, what they did. But the problem is he doesn't
believe it happened," said Pen, whose father, brother
and sister were killed during the Khmer Rouge's bloody
rule from 1975-79.
Some 1.7 million Cambodians
were killed during the Khmer Rouge's rule, due to
executions, forced labor and famine, until Vietnamese
troops came in to oust it in 1979. The Khmer Rouge had
sought to remake society by evacuating cities, forcing
people into collectives, clamping down on intellectuals
and closing down schools and factories.
In this
city by the Mekong River, there are other adult
survivors of the Khmer Rouge oppression who have been
noticing an increasing number of youth doubting the
story of the mass killings. Some youngsters say that
Cambodians could not have been so brutal to fellow
Cambodians.
These shifts in attitude have not
been lost on some of the leading voices in Cambodia
calling for the tribunal to put the Khmer Rouge's
surviving leaders in the dock. They see in the creation
of a special court something more than for its primary
reason, which is to deliver justice to crimes against
humanity committed over 23 years ago.
In their
view, the tribunal will offer the Cambodian victims
their first secure, internationally recognized venue to
share and to seek validation of the stories of horror
preserved in their memories.
Typical of such
advocates is Youk Chhang. "For the victims, the trial is
not only about seeking justice, but a process they can
trust to express the truth," said Chhang, director of
the Documentation Center of Cambodia. "There is no
punishment on Earth for what the Khmer Rouge did," added
Chhang, also a witness and a victim of Pol Pot's
brutality. "The people do not want compensation either;
they get upset if it is mentioned. They feel life cannot
be paid for or purchased."
What the trial will
offer the victims is a place to have their stories of
torment recognized and recorded in Cambodia and
internationally, he said. "The victims feel what
happened to them is not recognized by the government, by
sections of society. That is horrible."
Since
January 1995, the staff of Chhang's documentation center
has been fanning across the country to gather and
preserve as many individual stories of suffering that
occurred during the Khmer Rouge rule. To date, they have
the accounts of over 800,000 victims, recorded the
presence of 19,000 mass graves and obtained statements
from 167 members of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Pol
Pot died in 1998, thus evading his day in court. But he
is survived by other Khmer Rouge leaders, including Ieng
Sary, Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ta Mok and Kaing Khek
Iev.
However, of these leaders only Ta Mok and
Kaing Khek Iev have been arrested for the tribunal. Ieng
Sary has been granted an amnesty by the Cambodian
government. Some of the others are now allies of
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former
member of the Khmer Rouge and head of a
Vietnamese-backed government that ruled the country
after the group's ouster.
"The people who
suffered are scared of going before any tribunal to
appear as witnesses," said Chun Sath, secretary general
of the Phnom Penh-based Cambodian Human Rights and
Development Association (ADHOC). "They want a secure
tribunal to express themselves."
That sentiment,
he adds, is even shared by lower-ranking members of the
Khmer Rouge. "The rank-and-file soldiers want their
leaders tried in a court they have confidence in."
Yet human-rights activists such as Chun Sath are
not too optimistic that a tribunal that meets
international standards will get under way soon, because
of the continuing dispute between the Cambodian
government and UN officials about the shape and form of
this special court.
The Cambodian government had
approved the setting up of a special tribunal, but in
early 2002 the United Nations pulled out of the process,
saying the court as designed by Phnom Penh - with
largely local judges - would not guarantee
"independence, impartiality and objectivity".
Disagreements persist between Phnom Penh and the
United Nations about who will control the tribunal
process. Also in question is whether the Cambodian
judges selected by Phnom Penh to serve on the bench are
sufficiently qualified to preside over mass-murder
cases. "The judges must have a background in
international law, but we have no judges that have such
a background," said Chun Sath.
This dispute,
though, is only the latest episode over the years that
has come in the way of Cambodia finally getting its date
with justice. For a while too, countries such as China
and the United States placed hurdles in the way of a
Khmer Rouge trial, not least because of their past
support for the group.
"These delays keep
hurting the victims," said Chhang. "Lots of victims are
getting old and dying before witnessing a trial. They
would be victimized further if their stories are not
preserved in a tribunal."
(Inter Press
Service)
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