Cambodian 'Justice' Without major personnel changes, the Khmer Rouge trial risks descending into farce.

By SOPHAL EAR

While my mother, four siblings and I escaped Pol Pot's Cambodia in 1976, my
father died of dysentery and malnutrition after a brief stay at a
mite-infested Khmer Rouge "hospital." Although I have harbored grave doubts
about the ability of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal underway in Phnom Penh to
punish the guilty, I hoped for the best and even filed a civil complaint
with the Tribunal's victims unit last year.

But I can no longer in good conscience sit back in silence and watch this
theater of the absurd. As with so many other donor-financed projects, the
Tribunal—set up in 2006 to bring justice to millions of Khmer Rouge
victims—has been mired in an endless stream of corruption and mismanagement
allegations.
The latest news came on August 11, when Uth Chhorn was named to the court as
an independent counselor. Mr. Chhorn is Cambodia's auditor-general and heads
the seven-year-old National Audit Authority, which is supposed to audit the
government's activities. It has yet to make a single report public. His
appointment was sanctioned by the United Nations, which manages the court
alongside the Cambodian government.

This news is only the most recent window-dressing in the Tribunal's brief
history. In February 2007, a kickback scheme was exposed by the George
Soros-funded Open Society Justice Initiative. Two years and seven
international investigations later, basic questions of accountability remain
unanswered. The Cambodian authorities have stonewalled and denied
wrongdoing.

Confidence in the Tribunal was further shaken by the resignation in May of
Keat Bophal, the Cambodian head of the victims unit and an experienced
human-rights defender. She was replaced on May 18 by Helen Jarvis, an
Australian citizen, in a move to "strengthen" the Tribunal. Several years
ago Ms. Jarvis was awarded Cambodian citizenship for her many years of loyal
service to the authorities.

Ms. Jarvis's independence came under further question in May when Michiel
Pestman, a defense lawyer for one of the Khmer Rouge defendants, Nuon Chea,
discovered a 2006 open letter written by the "Leninist Party Faction" of the
Democratic Socialist Perspective, an Australian political party, and signed
by Ms. Jarvis and her husband. It provides a disturbing window into the mind
of a person who played a key role in the Tribunal as its chief of public
affairs until her redeployment earlier this year to handle victims'
complaints:

"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. Against the bourgeoisie and their state
agencies we don't respect their laws and their fake moral principles." Ms.
Jarvis refused to comment publicly about the letter. At a June 10 press
conference, a U.N. legal communications officer said that Knut Rosandhaug,
deputy director of the Tribunal and coordinator of U.N. assistance to the
Tribunal, "fully supports the appointment of Dr. Jarvis as the new head of
the victims unit." Never mind victims, their concerns, and their rights.

To be sure, a coterie of other left-leaning academics and contemporaries of
Ms. Jarvis were to varying degrees little more than apologists for the Khmer
Rouge during their reign of terror, including the late Malcolm Caldwell and
linguist Noam Chomsky. At the time, Mr. Chomsky hedged his statements of
support for the Khmer Rouge with caveats that could later provide plausible
deniability. But he and others praised the work of Caldwell and Khmer Rouge
groupies George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter whose "Cambodia: Starvation and
Revolution" (Monthly Review Press, 1976) ranks with Walter Durranty's New
York Times coverage of Stalinist Russia.

Although the Tribunal has shuffled personnel, the wrong people are leaving.
Ms. Keat's exit deprives the court of both credibility and a passionate
defender of victims' rights. International co-prosecutor Robert Petit will
retire from the court next week because of obligations to return to work for
the Canadian government. Mr. Petit gained acclaim for insisting that the
Tribunal try more than five individuals—contrary to the Cambodian
authorities' wishes. The bungled testimonies in mid-July of witnesses such
as a nurse and a deputy head of S-21, a notorious Khmer Rouge torture
center, were an embarrassing comedy of errors for the Tribunal's judges,
lawyers and victims alike.

The record of the past two years suggests the Tribunal isn't serious about
delivering real justice. The best way to correct this course is for the
court to reboot with a new set of personnel, including the director of
administration, deputy director and head of the victims unit. We, the
victims, deserve no less.

Mr. Ear is an assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S.
Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.