Dacil Q. Keo
PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science
University of Wisconsin-Madison
dqkeo@wisc.edu
Memorializing a tragedy where millions died need not cost millions, thousands, or even hundreds of dollars; nor does the memorial have to be a museum, an imposing monument, or even a symbolic statute. Moreover, the location of the memorial does not have to be on spacious open greenery or a newly created platform. A powerful memorial can take the form of a simple slogan hung outside a local school. When such banners are hung across every high school in the country so that school children, parents, community members, and passersby read their message, then the collective impact of these banners can be more powerful and wide-reaching than even traditional memorials.
This is the hope of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), which on June 17 received approval from the Ministry of Education to hang anti-genocide slogans across all 1,700 high schools in Cambodia. These banners contain two slogans that both memorialize the tragedy of Democratic Kampuchea and promote post-genocide reconciliation. They read: (1) “Talking about experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime is to promote reconciliation and to educate children about forgiveness and tolerance;” and (2) “Learning about the history of Democratic Kampuchea is to prevent genocide.” The estimated cost of one banner is approximately $40. One banner containing both slogans will be hung in each school, with the location to be determined by the respective school. Possible locations for the banner include the front wall of the school building, near the school’s flag pole, or in front of the school yard or garden.
DC-Cam hopes that the two slogans will serve as a “genocide educational memorial” to Cambodia’s tragedy that claimed nearly two million lives from 1975-1979. These slogans complement DC-Cam and the Ministry’s current multi-stage nationwide Genocide Education Project that began in 2005. Thus far, the project has published the first-ever textbook on Democratic Kampuchea (A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) by Dy Khamboly), a Teacher’s Guidebook, and a Student Workbook; conducted a national teacher training workshop led by well-known international and Cambodian scholars and experts; and implemented provincial and local teacher training workshops throughout the country. Nearly all of Cambodia’s 24 cities and provinces have conducted these local trainings with Battambang, Kampong Cham, Kampong Speu, Kandal, and Phnom Penh midway in their trainings. This summer, DC-Cam began the next phase of the project- evaluating local high teachers as they teach the history of Democratic Kampuchea to students in their classrooms.
These two slogans, though seemingly inconsequential when compared to the first-ever textbook on Democratic Kampuchea or a historic national teacher training involving dozens of renowned genocide experts, are in fact just as profoundly important and meaningful to post-genocide reconstruction and prevention as any other initiative. Their significance is layered and deep.
Schools-and education in general, were banned under Democratic Kampuchea while Khmer Rouge slogans included: “there are no diplomas, only diplomas one can visualize” and “the spade is your pen, the rice field is your paper.” During this time, education in Cambodia was paralyzed and replaced with Khmer Rouge propaganda that consisted of blended ideas from Marxism, Chinese communism, and the regime leaders’ own beliefs about race and nation. This educational paralysis continues in modern-day Cambodia and is most severe when it comes to education about the Democratic Kampuchea period. These two slogans, their message short but significant, represent the reversal of the educational paralysis created by the Khmer Rouge regime.
The slogans are also significant for their content. Their messages are exactly opposite of those communicated by the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge’s viral slogans of hate, fear, terror, and violence were broadcasted on loudspeakers during the day and chanted at village meetings during the night. In addition, despite the relatively short period in which the regime had planted these messages of hate and violence, their meanings still linger today in the psyche of many Cambodians, perpetrators and victims alike. DC-Cam hopes that the anti-genocide slogans will work to plant instead messages that foster tolerance, forgiveness, education, and reconciliation.
Lastly, these slogans remind us of the critical relationship between education, memory and history in genocide prevention. The memory of Cambodia’s tragedy must be kept alive not just by survivors but also by future generations. Thus Cambodia’s younger generation need to be formally and properly taught about Democratic Kampuchea in their schools. While both survivors and textbooks provide details of Democratic Kampuchea history and help to keep the memory of what happened alive, the two slogans to be hung across all high schools can help to serve as a constant memory of the tragedy. These slogans, located in an ordinary but populated public space- a high school, where both Cambodia’s younger generation and survivor generation can view them, provide a clear visible reminder that the history of Democratic Kampuchea must be taught for the sake of memory and reconciliation. Moreover and perhaps more fundamentally, these slogans represent the important change in Cambodia from ignorance to education about Democratic Kampuchea history.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Monday, June 28, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Third Commune Teacher Training: Pursat, Siem Reap, and Svay Rieng Provinces
June 24-30, 2010
Since the fall of the Democratic Kampuchea regime in January 1979, efforts to teach Khmer Rouge history to Cambodians, especially the younger generation, have been limited either to official political propaganda or to stories privately shared between parents and children.
Twenty-eight years later, the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) published a textbook, A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979), written by Khamboly Dy, a Cambodian researcher. It was reviewed by the Government Reviewing Committee and finally approved as a supplementary material for the teaching of Khmer Rouge history in secondary schools throughout Cambodia starting with the 2010-2011 academic year. For the second year in a row, the national high school examination has included five questions on Khmer Rouge history, making the teacher trainings all the more timely and necessary.
DC-Cam has distributed 300,000 copies of the textbook free of charge to students across the country and plans to distribute 700,000 by the end of the year in order to reach all 1,000,000 students grades 9-12. It has also developed a teacher’s guidebook and student workbook to accompany the textbook. With these materials, the Center is currently working with the Ministry of Education to train a total of 3,200 teachers nationwide in methodologies for teaching Khmer Rouge history to students objectively and with pedagogical effectiveness. Over 1,600 history teachers will have been trained before the end of 2010, and an additional 1,600 literature and morality teachers will be trained in 2011.
National and provincial teacher trainings were held in 2009. The two commune teacher trainings have been held in 2010 and the third will be conducted June 24-30with participants from Pursat, Pailin, Siem Reap, Banteay Meanchey, and Svay Rieng.
In advance of the June training, the Ministry of Education has approved a DC-Cam proposal to hang two large banners in all 1700 secondary schools beginning in 2011. These Genocide Education Memorials are intended to reinforce students’ appreciation of the new curriculum’s broader significance for Cambodia and the world and will read: "Learning about the history of Democratic Kampuchea is to prevent genocide," and "Talking about experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime is to promote reconciliation and to educate children about forgiveness and tolerance."
For more information, please contact:
Chy Terith 012 79 53 53; Dacil Keo 023 211 875
A History of Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-1979
Part 1:
http://dccam.org/Publication/Monographs/Part1-1.pdf
Part 2:
http://dccam.org/Projects/Genocide/Part2-1.pdf
The Teacher's Guidebook
http://dccam.org/Projects/Genocide/pdf/DC-Cam_Teacher_Guidebook_Eng_Nov_23.pdf
Some photos from the book distribution
http://dccam.org/Projects/Genocide/Photo_Gallery.htm
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Since the fall of the Democratic Kampuchea regime in January 1979, efforts to teach Khmer Rouge history to Cambodians, especially the younger generation, have been limited either to official political propaganda or to stories privately shared between parents and children.
Twenty-eight years later, the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) published a textbook, A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979), written by Khamboly Dy, a Cambodian researcher. It was reviewed by the Government Reviewing Committee and finally approved as a supplementary material for the teaching of Khmer Rouge history in secondary schools throughout Cambodia starting with the 2010-2011 academic year. For the second year in a row, the national high school examination has included five questions on Khmer Rouge history, making the teacher trainings all the more timely and necessary.
DC-Cam has distributed 300,000 copies of the textbook free of charge to students across the country and plans to distribute 700,000 by the end of the year in order to reach all 1,000,000 students grades 9-12. It has also developed a teacher’s guidebook and student workbook to accompany the textbook. With these materials, the Center is currently working with the Ministry of Education to train a total of 3,200 teachers nationwide in methodologies for teaching Khmer Rouge history to students objectively and with pedagogical effectiveness. Over 1,600 history teachers will have been trained before the end of 2010, and an additional 1,600 literature and morality teachers will be trained in 2011.
National and provincial teacher trainings were held in 2009. The two commune teacher trainings have been held in 2010 and the third will be conducted June 24-30with participants from Pursat, Pailin, Siem Reap, Banteay Meanchey, and Svay Rieng.
In advance of the June training, the Ministry of Education has approved a DC-Cam proposal to hang two large banners in all 1700 secondary schools beginning in 2011. These Genocide Education Memorials are intended to reinforce students’ appreciation of the new curriculum’s broader significance for Cambodia and the world and will read: "Learning about the history of Democratic Kampuchea is to prevent genocide," and "Talking about experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime is to promote reconciliation and to educate children about forgiveness and tolerance."
For more information, please contact:
Chy Terith 012 79 53 53; Dacil Keo 023 211 875
A History of Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-1979
Part 1:
http://dccam.org/Publication/Monographs/Part1-1.pdf
Part 2:
http://dccam.org/Projects/Genocide/Part2-1.pdf
The Teacher's Guidebook
http://dccam.org/Projects/Genocide/pdf/DC-Cam_Teacher_Guidebook_Eng_Nov_23.pdf
Some photos from the book distribution
http://dccam.org/Projects/Genocide/Photo_Gallery.htm
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Former Khmer Rouge stronghold gets first textbook about atrocities committed in the 1970s
By: The Associated Press
21/06/2010 6:14 AM
ANLONG VENG, Cambodia - Cambodian students in a former Khmer Rouge stronghold were issued a textbook Monday that for the first time teaches the atrocities of the past, a little more than a decade after government forces captured the movement's last bastion.
Some 1,000 copies of, "A History of Democratic Kampuchea," were handed out Monday at the Anlong Veng high school, located in the last jungle holdout of the regime that became a killing machine in the late 1970s.
The textbook by a Cambodian genocide researcher was first published in 2007 and entered circulation in 2009. Since then, about 300,000 copies have been distributed to high schools elsewhere in the country.
Most books about the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge era, when some 1.7 million perished through hunger, disease and executions, have been written by foreigners or overseas Cambodians. Very few have been translated into the Cambodian language, and none are cheaply available.
The book's arrival in the northern province of Anlong Veng has special poignancy. The area was home to many of the former regime's senior leaders and almost everyone — from teachers to district officials — was once Khmer Rouge. But students here have remained virtually clueless about the subject.
"I'm so happy to get this book," said 18-year-old student Pen Mom, whose parents were Khmer Rouge cadres. "I have heard from my parents about the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, but now I will see how bad the regime really was."
The Khmer Rouge regime was toppled in 1979 but continued as a guerrilla force that plagued Cambodia with civil war. Anlong Veng was one of the rebels' last jungle strongholds, finally falling to government forces in 1998 after key rebel leaders surrendered.
The Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group that collects evidence of the Khmer Rouge and published the book, says it plans to print 700,000 more copies to distribute to high schools by the end of the year.
"All of us can draw lessons from our history," said Youk Chhang, the centre's director. "By taking responsibility for teaching our children through texts such as this one, Cambodia can move forward and mould future generations to ensure that the seeds of genocide never again take root in our country."
Earlier of this year, the government said it will preserve 14 sites in Anlong Veng as tourist attractions including homes belonging to Khmer Rouge leaders, an ammunition warehouse and the grave of Pol Pot, who died in 1998.
"I will keep this book forever," said Chhun Soklin, a 29-year-old teacher at the high school. "After I read it I will pass it to my children because this book reflects the suffering endured by all Cambodians who experienced life under the Khmer Rouge."
The country is gearing up for the first and long-awaited verdict from the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal. The tribunal will hand down its verdict July 26 in the case of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the Khmer Rouge prison chief accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture.
Four other aging Khmer Rouge leaders are facing trials expected to begin late this year or early next year.
__
Associated Press Writer Sopheng Cheang contributed reporting from Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
© 2010 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
21/06/2010 6:14 AM
ANLONG VENG, Cambodia - Cambodian students in a former Khmer Rouge stronghold were issued a textbook Monday that for the first time teaches the atrocities of the past, a little more than a decade after government forces captured the movement's last bastion.
Some 1,000 copies of, "A History of Democratic Kampuchea," were handed out Monday at the Anlong Veng high school, located in the last jungle holdout of the regime that became a killing machine in the late 1970s.
The textbook by a Cambodian genocide researcher was first published in 2007 and entered circulation in 2009. Since then, about 300,000 copies have been distributed to high schools elsewhere in the country.
Most books about the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge era, when some 1.7 million perished through hunger, disease and executions, have been written by foreigners or overseas Cambodians. Very few have been translated into the Cambodian language, and none are cheaply available.
The book's arrival in the northern province of Anlong Veng has special poignancy. The area was home to many of the former regime's senior leaders and almost everyone — from teachers to district officials — was once Khmer Rouge. But students here have remained virtually clueless about the subject.
"I'm so happy to get this book," said 18-year-old student Pen Mom, whose parents were Khmer Rouge cadres. "I have heard from my parents about the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, but now I will see how bad the regime really was."
The Khmer Rouge regime was toppled in 1979 but continued as a guerrilla force that plagued Cambodia with civil war. Anlong Veng was one of the rebels' last jungle strongholds, finally falling to government forces in 1998 after key rebel leaders surrendered.
The Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group that collects evidence of the Khmer Rouge and published the book, says it plans to print 700,000 more copies to distribute to high schools by the end of the year.
"All of us can draw lessons from our history," said Youk Chhang, the centre's director. "By taking responsibility for teaching our children through texts such as this one, Cambodia can move forward and mould future generations to ensure that the seeds of genocide never again take root in our country."
Earlier of this year, the government said it will preserve 14 sites in Anlong Veng as tourist attractions including homes belonging to Khmer Rouge leaders, an ammunition warehouse and the grave of Pol Pot, who died in 1998.
"I will keep this book forever," said Chhun Soklin, a 29-year-old teacher at the high school. "After I read it I will pass it to my children because this book reflects the suffering endured by all Cambodians who experienced life under the Khmer Rouge."
The country is gearing up for the first and long-awaited verdict from the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal. The tribunal will hand down its verdict July 26 in the case of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the Khmer Rouge prison chief accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture.
Four other aging Khmer Rouge leaders are facing trials expected to begin late this year or early next year.
__
Associated Press Writer Sopheng Cheang contributed reporting from Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
© 2010 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Cambodian schools to hang anti-genocide banners
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Giant anti-genocide banners will be displayed at
Cambodian schools starting next year as part of an ongoing quest to educate
the young about the country's
painful history.
The Education Ministry approved a request to hang two banners at all 1,700
high schools nationwide, according to the country's leading independent
Khmer Rouge research group, which proposed the idea and made the ministry's
approval letter public on Tuesday.
The banners are part of an ongoing effort to fill a knowledge gap among the
young about the Khmer Rouge's brutal 1975-79 rule that left 1.7 million dead
through hunger, disease and executions, said Youk Chhang, director of The
Documentation Center of Cambodia.
One of the slogans will say: "Learning about the history of Democratic
Kampuchea is to prevent genocide," he said.
The other slogan reads, "Talking about experiences during the Khmer Rouge
regime is to promote reconciliation and to educate children about
forgiveness and tolerance."
The Documentation Center of Cambodia published the country's first Khmer
Rouge textbook, which is still being distributed to high schools, and
provided a multitude of documents about the regime's 1975-79 reign of terror
to the ongoing U.N.-backed tribunal.
"Having these slogans at school will help remind students about the
important history of their country and also to help them remember and
commemorate those who died," Youk Chhang said. He said the larger banner
would be roughly 6 feet by 13 feet (2 meters by 4 meters) and the other
would be about half that size.
The first and long-awaited verdict from the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal
is expected next month. The tribunal will hand down its verdict July 26
against Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the Khmer Rouge prison chief
accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture.
Trials of four other aging Khmer Rouge leaders are expected to begin late
this year or early next year.
Photo
A Cambodian student reads a newly-delivered copy of "A History of Democratic
Kampuchea" in Anlong Veng, in Uddor Mean Chey province, about 300 kilometers
(185 miles) north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, June 21, 2010. Cambodian
students in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold were issued the textbook
Monday that for the first time teaches the atrocities of the past, a little
more than a decade after government forces captured the movement's last
bastion. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Cambodian schools starting next year as part of an ongoing quest to educate
the young about the country's
painful history.
The Education Ministry approved a request to hang two banners at all 1,700
high schools nationwide, according to the country's leading independent
Khmer Rouge research group, which proposed the idea and made the ministry's
approval letter public on Tuesday.
The banners are part of an ongoing effort to fill a knowledge gap among the
young about the Khmer Rouge's brutal 1975-79 rule that left 1.7 million dead
through hunger, disease and executions, said Youk Chhang, director of The
Documentation Center of Cambodia.
One of the slogans will say: "Learning about the history of Democratic
Kampuchea is to prevent genocide," he said.
The other slogan reads, "Talking about experiences during the Khmer Rouge
regime is to promote reconciliation and to educate children about
forgiveness and tolerance."
The Documentation Center of Cambodia published the country's first Khmer
Rouge textbook, which is still being distributed to high schools, and
provided a multitude of documents about the regime's 1975-79 reign of terror
to the ongoing U.N.-backed tribunal.
"Having these slogans at school will help remind students about the
important history of their country and also to help them remember and
commemorate those who died," Youk Chhang said. He said the larger banner
would be roughly 6 feet by 13 feet (2 meters by 4 meters) and the other
would be about half that size.
The first and long-awaited verdict from the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal
is expected next month. The tribunal will hand down its verdict July 26
against Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the Khmer Rouge prison chief
accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture.
Trials of four other aging Khmer Rouge leaders are expected to begin late
this year or early next year.
Photo
A Cambodian student reads a newly-delivered copy of "A History of Democratic
Kampuchea" in Anlong Veng, in Uddor Mean Chey province, about 300 kilometers
(185 miles) north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, June 21, 2010. Cambodian
students in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold were issued the textbook
Monday that for the first time teaches the atrocities of the past, a little
more than a decade after government forces captured the movement's last
bastion. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Can a Holocaust survivor ever forgive the Germans?
Anita Epstein, who was born in the Krakow ghetto in 1942, reflects on the
collective guilt experienced by post-war Germans and on her own inability to
see past the death she was spared.
Tags: Jewish world Israel news
It was more than 15 years ago, but I still remember the day clearly. My
husband and I hosted a dinner at our home for emerging young German leaders.
They were participating in an exchange program with the American Jewish
Committee that included a week in Washington, D.C. I viewed the evening as a
test of how I would deal with Germans - indeed, of whether I could deal with
them at all.
The Germans, after all, had murdered almost all of my family in the
Holocaust, to say nothing of their wanton slaughter of millions of other
Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others. I escaped that gruesome fate myself
only because shortly after my birth in the Krakow ghetto, in November 1942,
my parents gave me away to be hidden by a Polish Catholic family. More than
a million Jewish children, however, were not so fortunate: They were
strangled or starved, shot or gassed, bashed against walls or tossed out
windows, burned in ovens or buried in mass graves.
I tried to behave myself that evening. I really did. But I could not help
myself: I asked a wispy young German woman with whom I was speaking whether
she thought she was capable of throwing a baby off a balcony.
She was stunned. "What do you mean?" I told her that Germans routinely had
thrown Jewish children off balconies during the Holocaust. Did she think she
could do something like that? She protested. She said that she was not even
alive during the Holocaust. How could I think such a thing?
Wouldn't I ever be able to forgive the Germans? She began to cry.
I told her that it was not hard for me to think such a thing. I think about
such things often. I think about how easily I could have been one of the
murdered babies. I think of how the Germans killed all pregnant Jewish women
they discovered in the ghetto along with so many others. I think of how my
mother avoided their clutches to bring me into this world and, after she
suffered terribly in four Nazi camps and returned from the brink of death,
found me again after the war. And I think of the father, grandparents,
uncles, aunts, cousins and others I will never know, of the postwar
anti-Semitism in Germany and Poland, and of the resentment heaped on me by
some Holocaust survivors whose own sons and daughters had perished. (When I
was older I realized that I was a constant reminder to them of their
inability to save their children. I evidently was being punished for
living.)
Despite all of this and more, I have managed to have a full life, if a
deeply scarred one. After several years spent chiefly in a displaced persons
camp in Germany, I came to America on a crammed troop ship, the U.S.S.
Taylor, and in New York survived a different kind of ghetto - Brooklyn's
Bedford-Stuyvesant. I married and raised two wonderful daughters who have
given me five marvelous grandchildren. I have done fulfilling work in
publishing, in teaching and, for 30 years, as a Washington lobbyist.
None of this, however, has been thanks to the Germans, who are responsible
only for the darkest corners of my life, including, among other things, my
regular nightmares, my survivor guilt (why was I spared?), and my persistent
fear of intruders and attackers. No, I cannot forgive the Germans. That's
God's job.
Of course, many people would disapprove of this view, and they can draw on
an extensive literature about the importance of forgiving, including texts
from the world's religions, pronunciations of literary lions and volumes
from modern psychology and psychiatry. For me, though, most of their
arguments miss the point. Consider perhaps the most well-worn dictum in
favor of letting bygones be bygones: Alexander Pope's "To err is human, to
forgive, divine." In my case I find it easily dismissible. This is not only
because it would be disgraceful to apply a remark about literary criticism -
the line is from Pope's 1711 "An Essay on Criticism," which is actually a
poem - to Germany's systematic extermination of more than 6 million innocent
people. Even more, it would be outrageous to characterize so immense an
abomination as "erring."
I am also unpersuaded by those who favor forgiveness because the act often
makes the person doing the forgiving feel better. That's a favorite of
psychiatrists and psychologists, who are of course dedicated to making their
patients feel better about themselves. Thus one can find works about how
bestowing forgiveness can lift a weight from your shoulders, set you free,
bring you peace and improve your physical health in the process. The problem
is that I have long felt tolerably well about myself. Indeed, for me, the
idea of forgiving those who perpetrated the Holocaust would have the
opposite effect: It would make it hard for me to live with myself, to get
out of bed and look in the mirror. I could not dishonor the memory of my
family members and the millions of other Holocaust victims by giving a free
pass to their murderers. That would only signal to other bestial beings that
they, too, would be forgiven if they were to commit genocide.
Granted, a good number of people have followed the
healing-through-forgiveness advice and benefited. They range from
passed-over employees with deep grievances and divorcées seeking revenge to
victims of childhood sex abuse and mothers in Northern Ireland who have had
to bury their sons. In the Jewish community, one of the most striking
examples is Eva Kor, a victim of Dr. Josef Mengele's vile genetic
"experiments" at Auschwitz on Jewish and Gypsy twins, dwarfs and others. The
subject of a documentary film called "Forgiving Dr. Mengele," Kor stood at
Auschwitz in the winter of 1995, 50 years after its liberation, and declared
that she was granting "amnesty to all Nazis who participated directly or
indirectly in the murder of my family and millions of others," including
Mengele.
So dramatic a declaration took the Jewish community aback and infuriated
other twins who had been Mengele victims. After all, the "Angel of Death,"
as the racial researcher was known, had brutalized and killed thousands. He
selected twins for "experiments" on heredity, relationships between racial
types and disease, on eye coloration and other questions raised by his
mentor, Otmar von Verschuer, a pathologist who was a leading proponent of
Nazi racial policies. Mengele put children through excruciating pain,
ordering surgeries, spinal taps and other procedures without anesthesia. He
had some twins infected with deadly diseases, others castrated, still others
injected in their eyes with chemicals and at least one set sewn together.
Many twins were killed with injections of phenol or chloroform into their
hearts, after which their bodies were dissected and their eyes and other
organs sent to Verschuer in Berlin. That is the man Kor wanted to forgive.
Whether she knew it or not, however, Kor had her own Jewish problem: Judaism
does not give her the ability to forgive Mengele or others. Judaic paths to
forgiveness are, of course, unlike those of other religions. In Judaism, a
person cannot obtain forgiveness from God for wrongs done to other people,
only for sins committed against God. For sins against others, Jewish law and
tradition require offenders to express remorse, genuinely repent, provide
recompense to victims if appropriate - and directly ask the victim, three
times, for forgiveness. Obviously, Josef Mengele did not repent, and he did
not beg Kor or other victims for forgiveness. Kor was thus mistaken when she
thought, and said, that she had the power to forgive Mengele. She did not,
at least so far as Judaism is concerned, and she certainly could not speak
for her family or other victims or forgive all other Nazis, only those who
specifically sinned against her.
Like anybody else, Kor naturally could come to terms personally with the
atrocities committed by Mengele and other Nazis. While that would not
absolve Mengele or anybody else, it could - and evidently did - help Kor. "I
felt a burden of pain was lifted from me," she has said. "I was no longer in
the grip of pain and hate; I was finally free. The day I forgave the Nazis,
privately I forgave my parents whom I hated all my life for not having saved
me from Auschwitz. Children expect their parents to protect them, mine
couldn't. And then I forgave myself for hating my parents. Forgiveness is
really nothing more than an act of self-healing and self-empowerment."
I'm afraid not. Forgiveness is, by definition, much more than a
self-centered act. What Kor is describing is closer to catharsis, a purging
of pain, a very different process - and one that not all Holocaust survivors
wish to experience. Elie Wiesel, for example, has remarked, "I want to keep
that pain; that zone of pain must stay inside me." While I did not suffer
from the ineffable horror of the concentration camps as Wiesel, my mother,
my murdered family members and so many others did, I know what he means. I,
too, want to hold onto my pain. It helps ensure that the past is always
present in me. It is an important part of what keeps me close to those I
lost and to the world that died with them.
It also helps me deal with questions that keep rattling around in my head.
For example, while the overwhelming majority of today's Germans obviously
were born after the Holocaust, do they nonetheless share guilt for the
actions (or inactions) of their parents and grandparents? I have family
members and friends who think not, who firmly believe that one can never
hold children guilty for the sins of their parents. I have even been called
some unpleasant names for holding an opposing view. I have noticed, however,
that such opinions usually come from people who did not suffer from the
Holocaust, who are a generation or two removed, and whose beliefs are rooted
in theory, not experience. I think that such people, good-hearted though
they may be, may find that the answer is not as simple as they think.
They are often among the first, after all, to insist on collective guilt for
atrocious episodes in our own nation's past - the horrors of slavery, the
slaughter of Native Americans, the World War II internment of Japanese
Americans and other acts committed in our name. Such American guilt has been
passed from generation to generation (though our forbears were in many cases
not even on these shores when the events occurred), and it has triggered
such public responses as affirmative action; Japanese-American reparations
payments; compensatory education, jobs and housing policies; and
repatriation of tribal graves and cultural property.
Like a number of other nations, today's Germany also struggles with
collective guilt for the sins of parents and grandparents. Germany's burden
is especially heavy, because it stems from what former German chancellor
Gerhard Schröder termed "the greatest crime in the history of mankind," the
ultimate sin. Nations cannot easily shed that kind of guilt, and certainly
not in a generation or two.
That's why Germany tries so hard, to this day, to make amends with the
Jewish community, a seemingly impossible job. It not only has made
restitution payments to a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors for more
than 60 years. It also stands behind Israel in the Middle East. It is Israel's
second-largest trading partner. It has encouraged the renewal of a sizable
Jewish community in Germany. It has built Holocaust memorials, created
Holocaust school curricula, maintained former concentration camps as
museums.
This is as it should be. If the pain of the past is always present in me, as
it is in many other survivors and their children, it does not trouble me
that contemporary Germans live with the hurt from that past as well. After
all, just as children inherit wealth and otherwise benefit from what their
parents achieve, so do they sometimes inherit their parents' debts,
including this one.
As for forgiveness, the truth is that I could not forgive today's Germans
even if I wanted to. While I never explained this to the young German woman
at my home that day, under Judaic law both the perpetrators and the
survivors must be alive to have even the possibility of forgiveness. It is
because of this, in fact, that some Jewish and Christian scholars have been
groping with the question of whether, when all of Hitler's henchmen and
their victims are gone, the Jewish community will have any ability to grant
forgiveness for the Holocaust. The answer seems to be that it will not. For
me, though, this is not a terribly difficult question to begin with: I
believe that the Holocaust is among what Moses Maimonides, in his Mishneh
Torah, the 12th-century compilation of Jewish religious law, suggested were
sins so hideous as to be beyond the realm of human forgiveness.
Nevertheless, many in the American Jewish community at least want to pursue
reconciliation, if not forgiveness, with others. They are understandably
eager to respond to Germany's gestures toward the Jewish community and
Israel, as well as to public statements of remorse by Protestant and
Catholic leaders for the mistreatment of Jews. I certainly endorse
reconciliation with Christian communities in general. I also understand the
importance of Jewish and Israeli links to Germany today, just as I
understand how U.S. national interests dictated that our main World War II
enemies, Germany and Japan, become our postwar allies or that today we have
shifting alliances with former foes like Russia and China. Such is the world
of realpolitik.
On a personal level, however, I feel quite differently. I have never sought
any restitution payments from Germany, and while I am mindful of how many
Jews in Germany today are from the former Soviet Union, I still find it hard
to comprehend why any Jew would want to live in that country. As for myself,
I will never again set foot on German soil. I flinch just hearing someone
talking German, the language I spoke myself when I first arrived in the
United States at age 7.
In short, then, there are obvious strategic and practical reasons for
reconciling and dealing with Germany. None, however, would move me to
forgive all Germans today even if I had the ability to do so. In the end
Germans will have to ask the Almighty for such absolution (though I sure
would like to be there to have my say during those conversations).
Anita Epstein, who is among the world's youngest Holocaust survivors, is
preparing her memoirs with the help of her journalist husband.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
collective guilt experienced by post-war Germans and on her own inability to
see past the death she was spared.
Tags: Jewish world Israel news
It was more than 15 years ago, but I still remember the day clearly. My
husband and I hosted a dinner at our home for emerging young German leaders.
They were participating in an exchange program with the American Jewish
Committee that included a week in Washington, D.C. I viewed the evening as a
test of how I would deal with Germans - indeed, of whether I could deal with
them at all.
The Germans, after all, had murdered almost all of my family in the
Holocaust, to say nothing of their wanton slaughter of millions of other
Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others. I escaped that gruesome fate myself
only because shortly after my birth in the Krakow ghetto, in November 1942,
my parents gave me away to be hidden by a Polish Catholic family. More than
a million Jewish children, however, were not so fortunate: They were
strangled or starved, shot or gassed, bashed against walls or tossed out
windows, burned in ovens or buried in mass graves.
I tried to behave myself that evening. I really did. But I could not help
myself: I asked a wispy young German woman with whom I was speaking whether
she thought she was capable of throwing a baby off a balcony.
She was stunned. "What do you mean?" I told her that Germans routinely had
thrown Jewish children off balconies during the Holocaust. Did she think she
could do something like that? She protested. She said that she was not even
alive during the Holocaust. How could I think such a thing?
Wouldn't I ever be able to forgive the Germans? She began to cry.
I told her that it was not hard for me to think such a thing. I think about
such things often. I think about how easily I could have been one of the
murdered babies. I think of how the Germans killed all pregnant Jewish women
they discovered in the ghetto along with so many others. I think of how my
mother avoided their clutches to bring me into this world and, after she
suffered terribly in four Nazi camps and returned from the brink of death,
found me again after the war. And I think of the father, grandparents,
uncles, aunts, cousins and others I will never know, of the postwar
anti-Semitism in Germany and Poland, and of the resentment heaped on me by
some Holocaust survivors whose own sons and daughters had perished. (When I
was older I realized that I was a constant reminder to them of their
inability to save their children. I evidently was being punished for
living.)
Despite all of this and more, I have managed to have a full life, if a
deeply scarred one. After several years spent chiefly in a displaced persons
camp in Germany, I came to America on a crammed troop ship, the U.S.S.
Taylor, and in New York survived a different kind of ghetto - Brooklyn's
Bedford-Stuyvesant. I married and raised two wonderful daughters who have
given me five marvelous grandchildren. I have done fulfilling work in
publishing, in teaching and, for 30 years, as a Washington lobbyist.
None of this, however, has been thanks to the Germans, who are responsible
only for the darkest corners of my life, including, among other things, my
regular nightmares, my survivor guilt (why was I spared?), and my persistent
fear of intruders and attackers. No, I cannot forgive the Germans. That's
God's job.
Of course, many people would disapprove of this view, and they can draw on
an extensive literature about the importance of forgiving, including texts
from the world's religions, pronunciations of literary lions and volumes
from modern psychology and psychiatry. For me, though, most of their
arguments miss the point. Consider perhaps the most well-worn dictum in
favor of letting bygones be bygones: Alexander Pope's "To err is human, to
forgive, divine." In my case I find it easily dismissible. This is not only
because it would be disgraceful to apply a remark about literary criticism -
the line is from Pope's 1711 "An Essay on Criticism," which is actually a
poem - to Germany's systematic extermination of more than 6 million innocent
people. Even more, it would be outrageous to characterize so immense an
abomination as "erring."
I am also unpersuaded by those who favor forgiveness because the act often
makes the person doing the forgiving feel better. That's a favorite of
psychiatrists and psychologists, who are of course dedicated to making their
patients feel better about themselves. Thus one can find works about how
bestowing forgiveness can lift a weight from your shoulders, set you free,
bring you peace and improve your physical health in the process. The problem
is that I have long felt tolerably well about myself. Indeed, for me, the
idea of forgiving those who perpetrated the Holocaust would have the
opposite effect: It would make it hard for me to live with myself, to get
out of bed and look in the mirror. I could not dishonor the memory of my
family members and the millions of other Holocaust victims by giving a free
pass to their murderers. That would only signal to other bestial beings that
they, too, would be forgiven if they were to commit genocide.
Granted, a good number of people have followed the
healing-through-forgiveness advice and benefited. They range from
passed-over employees with deep grievances and divorcées seeking revenge to
victims of childhood sex abuse and mothers in Northern Ireland who have had
to bury their sons. In the Jewish community, one of the most striking
examples is Eva Kor, a victim of Dr. Josef Mengele's vile genetic
"experiments" at Auschwitz on Jewish and Gypsy twins, dwarfs and others. The
subject of a documentary film called "Forgiving Dr. Mengele," Kor stood at
Auschwitz in the winter of 1995, 50 years after its liberation, and declared
that she was granting "amnesty to all Nazis who participated directly or
indirectly in the murder of my family and millions of others," including
Mengele.
So dramatic a declaration took the Jewish community aback and infuriated
other twins who had been Mengele victims. After all, the "Angel of Death,"
as the racial researcher was known, had brutalized and killed thousands. He
selected twins for "experiments" on heredity, relationships between racial
types and disease, on eye coloration and other questions raised by his
mentor, Otmar von Verschuer, a pathologist who was a leading proponent of
Nazi racial policies. Mengele put children through excruciating pain,
ordering surgeries, spinal taps and other procedures without anesthesia. He
had some twins infected with deadly diseases, others castrated, still others
injected in their eyes with chemicals and at least one set sewn together.
Many twins were killed with injections of phenol or chloroform into their
hearts, after which their bodies were dissected and their eyes and other
organs sent to Verschuer in Berlin. That is the man Kor wanted to forgive.
Whether she knew it or not, however, Kor had her own Jewish problem: Judaism
does not give her the ability to forgive Mengele or others. Judaic paths to
forgiveness are, of course, unlike those of other religions. In Judaism, a
person cannot obtain forgiveness from God for wrongs done to other people,
only for sins committed against God. For sins against others, Jewish law and
tradition require offenders to express remorse, genuinely repent, provide
recompense to victims if appropriate - and directly ask the victim, three
times, for forgiveness. Obviously, Josef Mengele did not repent, and he did
not beg Kor or other victims for forgiveness. Kor was thus mistaken when she
thought, and said, that she had the power to forgive Mengele. She did not,
at least so far as Judaism is concerned, and she certainly could not speak
for her family or other victims or forgive all other Nazis, only those who
specifically sinned against her.
Like anybody else, Kor naturally could come to terms personally with the
atrocities committed by Mengele and other Nazis. While that would not
absolve Mengele or anybody else, it could - and evidently did - help Kor. "I
felt a burden of pain was lifted from me," she has said. "I was no longer in
the grip of pain and hate; I was finally free. The day I forgave the Nazis,
privately I forgave my parents whom I hated all my life for not having saved
me from Auschwitz. Children expect their parents to protect them, mine
couldn't. And then I forgave myself for hating my parents. Forgiveness is
really nothing more than an act of self-healing and self-empowerment."
I'm afraid not. Forgiveness is, by definition, much more than a
self-centered act. What Kor is describing is closer to catharsis, a purging
of pain, a very different process - and one that not all Holocaust survivors
wish to experience. Elie Wiesel, for example, has remarked, "I want to keep
that pain; that zone of pain must stay inside me." While I did not suffer
from the ineffable horror of the concentration camps as Wiesel, my mother,
my murdered family members and so many others did, I know what he means. I,
too, want to hold onto my pain. It helps ensure that the past is always
present in me. It is an important part of what keeps me close to those I
lost and to the world that died with them.
It also helps me deal with questions that keep rattling around in my head.
For example, while the overwhelming majority of today's Germans obviously
were born after the Holocaust, do they nonetheless share guilt for the
actions (or inactions) of their parents and grandparents? I have family
members and friends who think not, who firmly believe that one can never
hold children guilty for the sins of their parents. I have even been called
some unpleasant names for holding an opposing view. I have noticed, however,
that such opinions usually come from people who did not suffer from the
Holocaust, who are a generation or two removed, and whose beliefs are rooted
in theory, not experience. I think that such people, good-hearted though
they may be, may find that the answer is not as simple as they think.
They are often among the first, after all, to insist on collective guilt for
atrocious episodes in our own nation's past - the horrors of slavery, the
slaughter of Native Americans, the World War II internment of Japanese
Americans and other acts committed in our name. Such American guilt has been
passed from generation to generation (though our forbears were in many cases
not even on these shores when the events occurred), and it has triggered
such public responses as affirmative action; Japanese-American reparations
payments; compensatory education, jobs and housing policies; and
repatriation of tribal graves and cultural property.
Like a number of other nations, today's Germany also struggles with
collective guilt for the sins of parents and grandparents. Germany's burden
is especially heavy, because it stems from what former German chancellor
Gerhard Schröder termed "the greatest crime in the history of mankind," the
ultimate sin. Nations cannot easily shed that kind of guilt, and certainly
not in a generation or two.
That's why Germany tries so hard, to this day, to make amends with the
Jewish community, a seemingly impossible job. It not only has made
restitution payments to a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors for more
than 60 years. It also stands behind Israel in the Middle East. It is Israel's
second-largest trading partner. It has encouraged the renewal of a sizable
Jewish community in Germany. It has built Holocaust memorials, created
Holocaust school curricula, maintained former concentration camps as
museums.
This is as it should be. If the pain of the past is always present in me, as
it is in many other survivors and their children, it does not trouble me
that contemporary Germans live with the hurt from that past as well. After
all, just as children inherit wealth and otherwise benefit from what their
parents achieve, so do they sometimes inherit their parents' debts,
including this one.
As for forgiveness, the truth is that I could not forgive today's Germans
even if I wanted to. While I never explained this to the young German woman
at my home that day, under Judaic law both the perpetrators and the
survivors must be alive to have even the possibility of forgiveness. It is
because of this, in fact, that some Jewish and Christian scholars have been
groping with the question of whether, when all of Hitler's henchmen and
their victims are gone, the Jewish community will have any ability to grant
forgiveness for the Holocaust. The answer seems to be that it will not. For
me, though, this is not a terribly difficult question to begin with: I
believe that the Holocaust is among what Moses Maimonides, in his Mishneh
Torah, the 12th-century compilation of Jewish religious law, suggested were
sins so hideous as to be beyond the realm of human forgiveness.
Nevertheless, many in the American Jewish community at least want to pursue
reconciliation, if not forgiveness, with others. They are understandably
eager to respond to Germany's gestures toward the Jewish community and
Israel, as well as to public statements of remorse by Protestant and
Catholic leaders for the mistreatment of Jews. I certainly endorse
reconciliation with Christian communities in general. I also understand the
importance of Jewish and Israeli links to Germany today, just as I
understand how U.S. national interests dictated that our main World War II
enemies, Germany and Japan, become our postwar allies or that today we have
shifting alliances with former foes like Russia and China. Such is the world
of realpolitik.
On a personal level, however, I feel quite differently. I have never sought
any restitution payments from Germany, and while I am mindful of how many
Jews in Germany today are from the former Soviet Union, I still find it hard
to comprehend why any Jew would want to live in that country. As for myself,
I will never again set foot on German soil. I flinch just hearing someone
talking German, the language I spoke myself when I first arrived in the
United States at age 7.
In short, then, there are obvious strategic and practical reasons for
reconciling and dealing with Germany. None, however, would move me to
forgive all Germans today even if I had the ability to do so. In the end
Germans will have to ask the Almighty for such absolution (though I sure
would like to be there to have my say during those conversations).
Anita Epstein, who is among the world's youngest Holocaust survivors, is
preparing her memoirs with the help of her journalist husband.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Testing of KR history expanded in schools
Thursday, 17 June 2010 15:03 Mom Kunthear and Brooke Lewis
Photo by: Courtesy of the documentation center of Cambodia
High school students in Pursat province receive copies of A History of
Democratic Kampuchea last year. This year's national history test drew from
the textbook.
THE question, appearing on a history exam administered nationwide to Grade
12 students on Wednesday morning, was simple: Who were the leaders of the
Khmer Rouge regime?
But for those who have been pressing for a fuller, franker presentation of
the Democratic Kampuchea period in Cambodian classrooms, its inclusion
marked a significant step forward.
Prior to this year, high school history tests drew from a
government-approved textbook that gave short shrift to the regime and its
history, omitting some of the most basic facts about it.
"The government never included the names of the leaders in their textbook,"
said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia.
Terith Chy, team leader of DC-Cam's Victim Participation Project, said the
old material likely reflected the fear that identifying high-ranking regime
officials - many of whom were unknown to the general public - would
compromise national reconciliation efforts.
"At least the reason they gave was national reconciliation," he said. "They
didn't want people to hold a grudge."
In 2007, however, DC-Cam launched A History of Democratic Kampuchea, a
textbook that Youk Chhang described on Wednesday as "the core material to
supplement the government's textbook". This year, its contents are reflected
on national exams for the first time.
Five of the 14 questions on this year's history test deal with the Khmer
Rouge period. In addition to identifying regime leaders, students are asked
to explain "why it is said that S-21 is a tragedy for the Cambodian people;
who was behind S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng; how the administrative zones
of Democratic Kampuchea were organised; and when the regime was in power".
An Education Ministry official who wrote this year's test, and who asked not
to be named for "security" reasons, said he had tried to keep the questions
simple because it is difficult even for teachers - let alone students - to
come to terms with the regime.
"This subject of the Khmer Rouge regime is very difficult to teach and also
to learn, because not only is it difficult for the students to understand,
but also for the teachers themselves to understand," he said.
"Some teachers don't believe that the regime did not have markets, did not
use money, killed the same nationality as themselves, that people had no
food to eat, and that parents were not allowed to stay with their children."
This is at least partially true for Ratha Sopharith, an 18-year-old student
at Intratevy High School in Phnom Penh, who said Wednesday that he did not
believe the Khmer Rouge were responsible for all of the atrocities
attributed to them.
He was quick to add, though, that he was not a Khmer Rouge supporter,
either.
"Even though I don't believe it, I don't follow the leaders during that time
because they led the country to poverty and killed people of the same
nationality," he said.
He went on to express enthusiasm for the Khmer Rouge history unit, at one
point referring to it as his favourite. Chhay Ly, a 19-year-old student at
Sok An May 1 High School in Takeo province, said he, too, enjoyed the
material, and that he did not find Wednesday's exam questions difficult.
"They were very easy questions for me because I am interested in Khmer
history, and I always read the Khmer history books," he said. "I am happy
and proud of myself that I have a chance to learn about the Khmer Rouge -
most people all over the world are interested in this history."
Youk Chhang said DC-Cam staffers running workshops on the teaching of the
material have come away with the impression that both students and teachers
are interested in it.
"The teachers feel like they know this, they can teach this, and it belongs
to them," he said. "And for Cambodian students, they love stories ... part
of our tradition is oral history."
But this does not mean the process is easy, particularly for teachers who
are direct or indirect victims of the regime.
"They are still very upset because the pain they suffer is just so deep, and
now we are telling them to teach this so that genocide can be prevented, so
that we can work towards reconciliation," he said. "And some teachers hold a
grudge against the children of the Khmer Rouge."
He added, though, that it is necessary for the teachers to work through
this.
"The whole purpose of this teaching is to contribute to genocide prevention,
to contribute to national healing and peace building," he said. "We need to
make all efforts so that the children can also contribute to this."
Copyright © 2010 The Phnom Penh Post. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Photo by: Courtesy of the documentation center of Cambodia
High school students in Pursat province receive copies of A History of
Democratic Kampuchea last year. This year's national history test drew from
the textbook.
THE question, appearing on a history exam administered nationwide to Grade
12 students on Wednesday morning, was simple: Who were the leaders of the
Khmer Rouge regime?
But for those who have been pressing for a fuller, franker presentation of
the Democratic Kampuchea period in Cambodian classrooms, its inclusion
marked a significant step forward.
Prior to this year, high school history tests drew from a
government-approved textbook that gave short shrift to the regime and its
history, omitting some of the most basic facts about it.
"The government never included the names of the leaders in their textbook,"
said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia.
Terith Chy, team leader of DC-Cam's Victim Participation Project, said the
old material likely reflected the fear that identifying high-ranking regime
officials - many of whom were unknown to the general public - would
compromise national reconciliation efforts.
"At least the reason they gave was national reconciliation," he said. "They
didn't want people to hold a grudge."
In 2007, however, DC-Cam launched A History of Democratic Kampuchea, a
textbook that Youk Chhang described on Wednesday as "the core material to
supplement the government's textbook". This year, its contents are reflected
on national exams for the first time.
Five of the 14 questions on this year's history test deal with the Khmer
Rouge period. In addition to identifying regime leaders, students are asked
to explain "why it is said that S-21 is a tragedy for the Cambodian people;
who was behind S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng; how the administrative zones
of Democratic Kampuchea were organised; and when the regime was in power".
An Education Ministry official who wrote this year's test, and who asked not
to be named for "security" reasons, said he had tried to keep the questions
simple because it is difficult even for teachers - let alone students - to
come to terms with the regime.
"This subject of the Khmer Rouge regime is very difficult to teach and also
to learn, because not only is it difficult for the students to understand,
but also for the teachers themselves to understand," he said.
"Some teachers don't believe that the regime did not have markets, did not
use money, killed the same nationality as themselves, that people had no
food to eat, and that parents were not allowed to stay with their children."
This is at least partially true for Ratha Sopharith, an 18-year-old student
at Intratevy High School in Phnom Penh, who said Wednesday that he did not
believe the Khmer Rouge were responsible for all of the atrocities
attributed to them.
He was quick to add, though, that he was not a Khmer Rouge supporter,
either.
"Even though I don't believe it, I don't follow the leaders during that time
because they led the country to poverty and killed people of the same
nationality," he said.
He went on to express enthusiasm for the Khmer Rouge history unit, at one
point referring to it as his favourite. Chhay Ly, a 19-year-old student at
Sok An May 1 High School in Takeo province, said he, too, enjoyed the
material, and that he did not find Wednesday's exam questions difficult.
"They were very easy questions for me because I am interested in Khmer
history, and I always read the Khmer history books," he said. "I am happy
and proud of myself that I have a chance to learn about the Khmer Rouge -
most people all over the world are interested in this history."
Youk Chhang said DC-Cam staffers running workshops on the teaching of the
material have come away with the impression that both students and teachers
are interested in it.
"The teachers feel like they know this, they can teach this, and it belongs
to them," he said. "And for Cambodian students, they love stories ... part
of our tradition is oral history."
But this does not mean the process is easy, particularly for teachers who
are direct or indirect victims of the regime.
"They are still very upset because the pain they suffer is just so deep, and
now we are telling them to teach this so that genocide can be prevented, so
that we can work towards reconciliation," he said. "And some teachers hold a
grudge against the children of the Khmer Rouge."
He added, though, that it is necessary for the teachers to work through
this.
"The whole purpose of this teaching is to contribute to genocide prevention,
to contribute to national healing and peace building," he said. "We need to
make all efforts so that the children can also contribute to this."
Copyright © 2010 The Phnom Penh Post. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Seven Senior Bosnian Serb Officials Convicted of Srebrenica Crimes
Press Release: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
June 10, 2010
Seven former high-ranking Bosnian Serb military and police officials were
today convicted by Trial Chamber II of a range of crimes committed in 1995
in relation to the fall of the enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa, eastern
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Vujadin Popovic, the Chief of Security of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian
Serb Army (VRS) and Ljubisa Beara, Chief of Security in the VRS Main staff
were found guilty of genocide, extermination, murder and persecution and
sentenced to life imprisonment. Drago Nikolic, the Chief of Security in the
Zvornik Brigade, was found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide,
extermination, murder and persecution and sentenced to 35 years'
imprisonment. Ljubomir Borovcanin, Deputy Commander of the Special Police
Brigade of the police forces was convicted of aiding and abetting
extermination, murder, persecution and forcible transfer (Judge Kwon
dissenting) under Article 7(1) of the Statute and, as a superior, of murder
as a crime against humanity and as a violation of the laws of customs of war
under Article (3). He was sentenced to 17 years' imprisonment. Radivoje
Miletic, the Chief of the Administration for Operations and Training at the
VRS Main Staff was found guilty of murder by majority, persecution and
inhumane acts (forcible transfer). He was sentenced to 19 years'
imprisonment. Milan Gvero, the Assistant Commander for Moral, Legal and
Religious Affairs of the VRS Main Staff, was found guilty of persecution and
inhumane acts and acquitted of the two counts of murder and that of
deportation. He was sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment. Vinko Pandurevic,
Commander of the Zvornik Brigade, was found guilty of aiding and abetting
murder (Judge Kwon dissenting), persecution and inhumane acts. He was
acquitted of charges of genocide, extermination and deportation. He was
sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment.
Today's judgement concerns the largest trial to date held before the
Tribunal and deals with a wide range of crimes committed by the Bosnian Serb
forces against Bosnian Muslims during and following the fall of the former
UN protected zones of Srebrenica and Zepa in July 1995.
The Trial Chamber found that a widespread and systematic attack against a
civilian population commenced with the issuance of a Supreme Command
Directive in March 1995 by former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic in
which he set out the criminal plan for an attack against protected UN safe
areas aimed at forcing the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica and Zepa to leave
the enclaves. It tasked the Drina Corps of the VRS to create "an unbearable
situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for
the inhabitants of Srebrenica and Zepa".
The following crimes were proven to have been committed by the VRS following
the fall of the two enclaves in July 1995: genocide; conspiracy to commit
genocide; extermination, a crime against humanity; murder, a crime against
humanity and a violation of the laws or customs of war; murder, cruel and
inhumane treatment, terrorising civilians, and forcible transfer, as acts of
persecution, a crime against humanity; and forcible transfer as an inhumane
act, a crime against humanity. The Trial Chamber found that the elements of
the crime of deportation have not been established.
The Chamber found that two Joint Criminal Enterprises (JCE) existed in
Eastern Bosnia in July 1995: the JCE to murder the able-bodied Bosnian
Muslim men from Srebrenica and the JCE to forcibly remove the Bosnian Muslim
population from Srebrenica and Zepa.
Furthermore, in relation to the crimes committed in Srebrenica, the Chamber
found that at least 5,336 identified individuals were killed in the
executions following the fall of the enclave. However, the Chamber considers
that the number of individuals killed in the executions following the fall
of Srebrenica could well be as high as 7,826 given the fact that evidence
before it was not encompassing.
"The scale and nature of the murder operation, with the staggering number of
killings, the systematic and organised manner in which it was carried out,
the targeting and relentless pursuit of the victims, and the plain
intention-apparent from the evidence-to eliminate every Bosnian Muslim male
who was captured or surrendered proves beyond reasonable doubt that this was
genocide," the Trial Chamber found.
"In the context of the war in the former Yugoslavia, and in the context of
human history, these events are arrestive in their scale and brutality."
Outlining their findings in relation to each of the accused, the Chamber
first turned to Vujadin Popovic who was found to be one of the major
participants in the JCE to murder. He was found to have been present at a
number of sites where captured Bosnian Muslims were detained or executed
between July 13 and 23.
"Popovic was not a marginal participant in the JCE to murder," the Chamber
found. "Popovic knew that the intent was not just to kill those who had
fallen into the hands of the Bosnian Serb Forces, but to kill as many as
possible with the aim of destroying the group. Popovic's ensuing robust
participation in all aspects of the plan demonstrates that he not only knew
of this intent to destroy, he also shared it."
Ljubisa Beara was the "driving force behind the murder enterprise". The
Trial Chamber found that he "had the clearest overall picture of the massive
scale and scope of the killing operation. From his presence in Bratunac on
the night of 13 July, to his personal visits to the various detention and
execution sites and the significant logistical challenges he faced
throughout, Beara had a very personal view of the staggering number of
victims destined for execution."
Furthermore, his vigorous efforts to organise locations and sites, recruit
personnel, secure equipment and oversee executions all evidence his grim
determination to kill as many as possible as quickly as possible, the
Chamber found.
The Chamber found that Nikolic's knowledge of the murder operation was of a
different nature from that of Beara and Popovic. Nikolic was first informed
of the murder plan on the evening of 13 July when the operation was well
underway and the information he was given was sparse. Thus, Nikolic was
aware of the plan to murder on a large scale but not of some of the key
features of the operation which would evidence genocidal intent.
However, the Chamber found that, while he had no genocidal intent, he
"participated in the JCE to Murder with persecutory intent, that he had with
knowledge of the genocidal intent of others and that he made a substantial
contribution to genocide."
With regards to Borovcanin, the Trial Chamber found that the evidence failed
to demonstrate that he was aware of the plans to murder and to forcibly
remove the civilian population from the area. The evidence was also
insufficient to demonstrate that he shared the intent to contribute to the
common purpose of the two joint criminal enterprises.
However, in relation to forcible removal, the Trial Chamber found, by
majority, Judge Kwon dissenting, that with his presence in Potocari on 12
July and what he witnessed there, he knew that there was a forcible transfer
of the civilian population of Srebrenica taking place. "With his knowledge
of the intent of others as found by the majority, including discriminatory
intent, Borovcanin's acts in ordering his men to participate constituted a
substantial contribution to the crime of forcible transfer," the Trial
Chamber found.
On 13 July 1995, Borovcanin was present at the Kravica warehouse were over
1,000 Bosnian Muslim men were detained. He saw about a busload of dead
bodies in front of the warehouse and had sufficient information that his
subordinates had committed the crime of murder. Borovcanin however failed to
take the necessary and reasonable measures required to punish his
subordinates.
After seeing the evidence of executions Borovcanin removed himself and his
men from the Kravica warehouse as quickly as he could. The Chamber found
that Borovcanin had the means to protect the remaining prisoners and knew
that it was probable that the prisoners would be killed. His failure to
protect them substantially contributed to the full-scale execution which
later took place at Kravica Warehouse.
Having been involved in the drafting of the Supreme Command Directive,
Radivoje Miletic had full knowledge from the early stages of "the common
criminal plan to force the Bosnian Muslim populations from the Srebrenica
and Zepa enclaves and he was instrumental in the plan being captured in
writing for dissemination."
Considering the scale and scope of the military attack on and the operations
to forcibly remove the Bosnian Muslims from the enclaves, coordination from
the Main Staff level was essential and Miletic was at the centre of this
coordination.
The Chamber found, Judge Kwon dissenting, that based on Miletic's level of
involvement and his in-depth knowledge and broad overview of the massive
operation in Srebrenica "it was foreseeable to him that murder would be
committed in Potocari and that these murders would be committed with the
specific intent to discriminate on political, racial or religious grounds."
As one of the most senior officers of the VRS Main Staff, Milan Gvero played
an important role in Srebrenica and Zepa operations. Like Miletic, Gvero was
involved in the drafting of the Directive and thus knew of the plan to
forcibly remove the populations from the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves from
its very inception.
During the Srebrenica and Zepa operations, Gvero carried out key functions
relating to external propaganda and interaction with international
organisations, with the aim to support the plan to forcibly transfer the
populations from the enclaves by delaying any action by international forces
that could frustrate the VRS' plans.
He made a significant contribution to the JCE to forcibly remove the Muslim
population from Srebrenica and shared the common intent.
While Pandurevic was not a member of the JCE to forcibly remove, as
Commander of the Tactical Group 1, Pandurevic contributed to the plan to
forcibly transfer the Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica by taking part in the
attack on 6 July, entering the city on 11 July. While Pandurevic received
information about the detentions, executions and burials in Pilica,
Petkovci, Rocevic, Orahovac and Branjevo Military Farm, there was no
evidence to show that he participated, ordered, authorised or otherwise
approved the participation of his subordinates in the murder operation.
However in relation to execution sites in Zvornik area, on 15 July
Pandurevic had reason to know that his subordinates were providing practical
assistance to the execution of the Muslim detainees held there. The evidence
before the Trial Chamber shows that Pandurevic did not genuinely attempt to
take any measures within his powers in order to prevent any further or
continued participation of his subordinates in the murder operation.
The Trial Chamber also found that on 16 July Pandurevic opened a corridor to
allow passage of a column of Bosnian Muslims through Zvornik Brigade
territory to the territory held by the 2nd Corps of the Army of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, contrary to the orders he had received from his superiors.
Thousands of men passed through this corridor. After the corridor was closed
elements of the Zvornik Brigade searching the terrain for the soldiers of
the ABiH located 10 wounded Bosnian Muslim men who were transferred from the
Zvornik hospital to the clinic of the brigade.
Pandurevic requested instructions from the Drina Corps regarding the wounded
Bosnian Muslim prisoners in his custody and was informed that Popovic would
come to take them. On 23 July the wounded men were placed in Popovic's
custody and the Trial Chamber found him responsible for their death. While
Trial Chamber did not find that Pandurevic possessed the intent to murder
the ten men, the majority held - Judge Kwon dissenting - that Pandurevic
knew it was probable they would be murdered once they were transferred into
Popovic's custody.
"By failing to intervene, Pandurevic failed to discharge his legal duty to
protect the wounded prisoners and therefore substantially contributed to the
murder of these ten men," the Chamber found.
This trial has been the largest conducted to date at the ICTY. Trial
proceedings in this case commenced on 21 August 2006 and concluded on 15
September 2009. The trial took a total of 425 days during which the Trial
Chamber heard or otherwise admitted evidence from 315 witnesses: 182 by the
Prosecution; 132 by all the Defence teams and one by the Trial Chamber.
There are 5,383 exhibits before the Trial Chamber, amounting to 87,392 page
numbers.
The Tribunal has indicted a total of 21 individuals for crimes committed in
Srebrenica. Among these are Radislav Krstic who was the first individual to
be convicted of aiding and abetting genocide in Srebrenica on 2 August 2001.
The Appeals Chamber sentenced him to 35 years' imprisonment on 19 April
2004. The trials of Radovan Karadzic, Zdravko Tolimir as well as Jovica
Stanisic and Franko Simatovic are ongoing. To date, Ratko Mladic, the
war-time leader of the Bosnian Serb Army also charged with genocide in
Srebrenica, remains a fugitive.
Since its establishment, the Tribunal has indicted 161 persons for serious
violations of humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former
Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001. Proceedings against 123 have been
concluded. Proceedings are currently open for 40 Accused with 25 at trial
stage and 11 before the Appeals Chamber.
---
War Crimes Prosecution Watch is a bi-weekly e-newsletter that compiles
official documents and articles from major news sources detailing and
analyzing salient issues pertaining to the investigation and prosecution of
war crimes throughout the world. If you do not want to receive future
issues of War Crimes Prosecution Watch, please email
warcrimeswatch@pilpg.org and type "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
June 10, 2010
Seven former high-ranking Bosnian Serb military and police officials were
today convicted by Trial Chamber II of a range of crimes committed in 1995
in relation to the fall of the enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa, eastern
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Vujadin Popovic, the Chief of Security of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian
Serb Army (VRS) and Ljubisa Beara, Chief of Security in the VRS Main staff
were found guilty of genocide, extermination, murder and persecution and
sentenced to life imprisonment. Drago Nikolic, the Chief of Security in the
Zvornik Brigade, was found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide,
extermination, murder and persecution and sentenced to 35 years'
imprisonment. Ljubomir Borovcanin, Deputy Commander of the Special Police
Brigade of the police forces was convicted of aiding and abetting
extermination, murder, persecution and forcible transfer (Judge Kwon
dissenting) under Article 7(1) of the Statute and, as a superior, of murder
as a crime against humanity and as a violation of the laws of customs of war
under Article (3). He was sentenced to 17 years' imprisonment. Radivoje
Miletic, the Chief of the Administration for Operations and Training at the
VRS Main Staff was found guilty of murder by majority, persecution and
inhumane acts (forcible transfer). He was sentenced to 19 years'
imprisonment. Milan Gvero, the Assistant Commander for Moral, Legal and
Religious Affairs of the VRS Main Staff, was found guilty of persecution and
inhumane acts and acquitted of the two counts of murder and that of
deportation. He was sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment. Vinko Pandurevic,
Commander of the Zvornik Brigade, was found guilty of aiding and abetting
murder (Judge Kwon dissenting), persecution and inhumane acts. He was
acquitted of charges of genocide, extermination and deportation. He was
sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment.
Today's judgement concerns the largest trial to date held before the
Tribunal and deals with a wide range of crimes committed by the Bosnian Serb
forces against Bosnian Muslims during and following the fall of the former
UN protected zones of Srebrenica and Zepa in July 1995.
The Trial Chamber found that a widespread and systematic attack against a
civilian population commenced with the issuance of a Supreme Command
Directive in March 1995 by former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic in
which he set out the criminal plan for an attack against protected UN safe
areas aimed at forcing the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica and Zepa to leave
the enclaves. It tasked the Drina Corps of the VRS to create "an unbearable
situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for
the inhabitants of Srebrenica and Zepa".
The following crimes were proven to have been committed by the VRS following
the fall of the two enclaves in July 1995: genocide; conspiracy to commit
genocide; extermination, a crime against humanity; murder, a crime against
humanity and a violation of the laws or customs of war; murder, cruel and
inhumane treatment, terrorising civilians, and forcible transfer, as acts of
persecution, a crime against humanity; and forcible transfer as an inhumane
act, a crime against humanity. The Trial Chamber found that the elements of
the crime of deportation have not been established.
The Chamber found that two Joint Criminal Enterprises (JCE) existed in
Eastern Bosnia in July 1995: the JCE to murder the able-bodied Bosnian
Muslim men from Srebrenica and the JCE to forcibly remove the Bosnian Muslim
population from Srebrenica and Zepa.
Furthermore, in relation to the crimes committed in Srebrenica, the Chamber
found that at least 5,336 identified individuals were killed in the
executions following the fall of the enclave. However, the Chamber considers
that the number of individuals killed in the executions following the fall
of Srebrenica could well be as high as 7,826 given the fact that evidence
before it was not encompassing.
"The scale and nature of the murder operation, with the staggering number of
killings, the systematic and organised manner in which it was carried out,
the targeting and relentless pursuit of the victims, and the plain
intention-apparent from the evidence-to eliminate every Bosnian Muslim male
who was captured or surrendered proves beyond reasonable doubt that this was
genocide," the Trial Chamber found.
"In the context of the war in the former Yugoslavia, and in the context of
human history, these events are arrestive in their scale and brutality."
Outlining their findings in relation to each of the accused, the Chamber
first turned to Vujadin Popovic who was found to be one of the major
participants in the JCE to murder. He was found to have been present at a
number of sites where captured Bosnian Muslims were detained or executed
between July 13 and 23.
"Popovic was not a marginal participant in the JCE to murder," the Chamber
found. "Popovic knew that the intent was not just to kill those who had
fallen into the hands of the Bosnian Serb Forces, but to kill as many as
possible with the aim of destroying the group. Popovic's ensuing robust
participation in all aspects of the plan demonstrates that he not only knew
of this intent to destroy, he also shared it."
Ljubisa Beara was the "driving force behind the murder enterprise". The
Trial Chamber found that he "had the clearest overall picture of the massive
scale and scope of the killing operation. From his presence in Bratunac on
the night of 13 July, to his personal visits to the various detention and
execution sites and the significant logistical challenges he faced
throughout, Beara had a very personal view of the staggering number of
victims destined for execution."
Furthermore, his vigorous efforts to organise locations and sites, recruit
personnel, secure equipment and oversee executions all evidence his grim
determination to kill as many as possible as quickly as possible, the
Chamber found.
The Chamber found that Nikolic's knowledge of the murder operation was of a
different nature from that of Beara and Popovic. Nikolic was first informed
of the murder plan on the evening of 13 July when the operation was well
underway and the information he was given was sparse. Thus, Nikolic was
aware of the plan to murder on a large scale but not of some of the key
features of the operation which would evidence genocidal intent.
However, the Chamber found that, while he had no genocidal intent, he
"participated in the JCE to Murder with persecutory intent, that he had with
knowledge of the genocidal intent of others and that he made a substantial
contribution to genocide."
With regards to Borovcanin, the Trial Chamber found that the evidence failed
to demonstrate that he was aware of the plans to murder and to forcibly
remove the civilian population from the area. The evidence was also
insufficient to demonstrate that he shared the intent to contribute to the
common purpose of the two joint criminal enterprises.
However, in relation to forcible removal, the Trial Chamber found, by
majority, Judge Kwon dissenting, that with his presence in Potocari on 12
July and what he witnessed there, he knew that there was a forcible transfer
of the civilian population of Srebrenica taking place. "With his knowledge
of the intent of others as found by the majority, including discriminatory
intent, Borovcanin's acts in ordering his men to participate constituted a
substantial contribution to the crime of forcible transfer," the Trial
Chamber found.
On 13 July 1995, Borovcanin was present at the Kravica warehouse were over
1,000 Bosnian Muslim men were detained. He saw about a busload of dead
bodies in front of the warehouse and had sufficient information that his
subordinates had committed the crime of murder. Borovcanin however failed to
take the necessary and reasonable measures required to punish his
subordinates.
After seeing the evidence of executions Borovcanin removed himself and his
men from the Kravica warehouse as quickly as he could. The Chamber found
that Borovcanin had the means to protect the remaining prisoners and knew
that it was probable that the prisoners would be killed. His failure to
protect them substantially contributed to the full-scale execution which
later took place at Kravica Warehouse.
Having been involved in the drafting of the Supreme Command Directive,
Radivoje Miletic had full knowledge from the early stages of "the common
criminal plan to force the Bosnian Muslim populations from the Srebrenica
and Zepa enclaves and he was instrumental in the plan being captured in
writing for dissemination."
Considering the scale and scope of the military attack on and the operations
to forcibly remove the Bosnian Muslims from the enclaves, coordination from
the Main Staff level was essential and Miletic was at the centre of this
coordination.
The Chamber found, Judge Kwon dissenting, that based on Miletic's level of
involvement and his in-depth knowledge and broad overview of the massive
operation in Srebrenica "it was foreseeable to him that murder would be
committed in Potocari and that these murders would be committed with the
specific intent to discriminate on political, racial or religious grounds."
As one of the most senior officers of the VRS Main Staff, Milan Gvero played
an important role in Srebrenica and Zepa operations. Like Miletic, Gvero was
involved in the drafting of the Directive and thus knew of the plan to
forcibly remove the populations from the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves from
its very inception.
During the Srebrenica and Zepa operations, Gvero carried out key functions
relating to external propaganda and interaction with international
organisations, with the aim to support the plan to forcibly transfer the
populations from the enclaves by delaying any action by international forces
that could frustrate the VRS' plans.
He made a significant contribution to the JCE to forcibly remove the Muslim
population from Srebrenica and shared the common intent.
While Pandurevic was not a member of the JCE to forcibly remove, as
Commander of the Tactical Group 1, Pandurevic contributed to the plan to
forcibly transfer the Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica by taking part in the
attack on 6 July, entering the city on 11 July. While Pandurevic received
information about the detentions, executions and burials in Pilica,
Petkovci, Rocevic, Orahovac and Branjevo Military Farm, there was no
evidence to show that he participated, ordered, authorised or otherwise
approved the participation of his subordinates in the murder operation.
However in relation to execution sites in Zvornik area, on 15 July
Pandurevic had reason to know that his subordinates were providing practical
assistance to the execution of the Muslim detainees held there. The evidence
before the Trial Chamber shows that Pandurevic did not genuinely attempt to
take any measures within his powers in order to prevent any further or
continued participation of his subordinates in the murder operation.
The Trial Chamber also found that on 16 July Pandurevic opened a corridor to
allow passage of a column of Bosnian Muslims through Zvornik Brigade
territory to the territory held by the 2nd Corps of the Army of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, contrary to the orders he had received from his superiors.
Thousands of men passed through this corridor. After the corridor was closed
elements of the Zvornik Brigade searching the terrain for the soldiers of
the ABiH located 10 wounded Bosnian Muslim men who were transferred from the
Zvornik hospital to the clinic of the brigade.
Pandurevic requested instructions from the Drina Corps regarding the wounded
Bosnian Muslim prisoners in his custody and was informed that Popovic would
come to take them. On 23 July the wounded men were placed in Popovic's
custody and the Trial Chamber found him responsible for their death. While
Trial Chamber did not find that Pandurevic possessed the intent to murder
the ten men, the majority held - Judge Kwon dissenting - that Pandurevic
knew it was probable they would be murdered once they were transferred into
Popovic's custody.
"By failing to intervene, Pandurevic failed to discharge his legal duty to
protect the wounded prisoners and therefore substantially contributed to the
murder of these ten men," the Chamber found.
This trial has been the largest conducted to date at the ICTY. Trial
proceedings in this case commenced on 21 August 2006 and concluded on 15
September 2009. The trial took a total of 425 days during which the Trial
Chamber heard or otherwise admitted evidence from 315 witnesses: 182 by the
Prosecution; 132 by all the Defence teams and one by the Trial Chamber.
There are 5,383 exhibits before the Trial Chamber, amounting to 87,392 page
numbers.
The Tribunal has indicted a total of 21 individuals for crimes committed in
Srebrenica. Among these are Radislav Krstic who was the first individual to
be convicted of aiding and abetting genocide in Srebrenica on 2 August 2001.
The Appeals Chamber sentenced him to 35 years' imprisonment on 19 April
2004. The trials of Radovan Karadzic, Zdravko Tolimir as well as Jovica
Stanisic and Franko Simatovic are ongoing. To date, Ratko Mladic, the
war-time leader of the Bosnian Serb Army also charged with genocide in
Srebrenica, remains a fugitive.
Since its establishment, the Tribunal has indicted 161 persons for serious
violations of humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former
Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001. Proceedings against 123 have been
concluded. Proceedings are currently open for 40 Accused with 25 at trial
stage and 11 before the Appeals Chamber.
---
War Crimes Prosecution Watch is a bi-weekly e-newsletter that compiles
official documents and articles from major news sources detailing and
analyzing salient issues pertaining to the investigation and prosecution of
war crimes throughout the world. If you do not want to receive future
issues of War Crimes Prosecution Watch, please email
warcrimeswatch@pilpg.org and type "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Reassuring the Khmer Krom
Monday, 14 June 2010 15:02 James O'toole and May Titthara
KRT prosecutor holds meeting with group worried about being overlooked.
KHMER Rouge tribunal co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley addressed a group of Khmer
Krom residents of Pursat province on Sunday, intent on assuring them that
the suffering inflicted upon their community under Democratic Kampuchea will
not be overlooked by the court.
In speaking to a group of around 200 in Pursat's Romlech commune, Bakan
district, Cayley made the uncommon move of reaching out and explaining the
status of the court's investigation to survivors who have voiced concern
that attacks and alleged genocide against them have yet to be acknowledged.
"I know there is a feeling amongst some of your community that you haven't
been properly considered by the court," Cayley told the audience, speaking
in the dusty courtyard of the Wat Romlech pagoda.
"But I want to say to you today, sincerely, why I'm here is because I do
recognise what happened to you as a people."
"Khmer Krom" is a term for ethnic Khmer with roots in the Mekong Delta
region of Vietnam.
In January, the court's co-investigating judges ruled that genocide charges
and other offences would not be brought against the Khmer Rouge
leaders currently in detention based on the regime's treatment of the Khmer
Krom.
This decision, court officials emphasised at the time, was based not on a
historical judgment that the Khmer Krom were not victims of genocide and
other crimes, but on procedural factors: Such offences had not been properly
listed in evidentiary submissions by the prosecution.
As a result of this decision, a number of Khmer Krom civil party applicants
from Pursat who had been provisionally accepted in Case 002 were rejected,
as their claims were deemed to be outside the scope of the court's
investigation. An April ruling from the court's Pre-Trial Chamber reversed
the decision against several of these applicants, though only on the basis
that their claims could be connected to crimes in other provinces that had
already been established as part of the court's investigation.
"The rules are ridiculously complicated on the acceptance of civil parties,"
Cayley told one woman who approached him after the event to ask about the
process.
Assistant prosecutor Dale Lysak explained that although the deadline has
passed to add crimes against the Khmer Krom in Pursat to the list of alleged
offences being investigated in Case 002, evidence related to the group will
nonetheless be utilised in supporting the case for existing crimes under
investigation; namely, forced relocations from Eastern Cambodia and genocide
of the Vietnamese in Prey Veng, Svay Rieng and across the border in Vietnam.
"This area is very important to both of those, because we have to prove that
there was a policy of the Khmer Rouge with respect to the Vietnamese," Lysak
said.
Cayley said that the complexity and the volume of evidence in Case 002 would
stretch the trial for "at least two years". Were the court to properly
account for all crimes committed under Democratic Kampuchea, the trial
"would go on for 20 years", Cayley said, though he promised those assembled
that the Khmer Krom will not be forgotten during the proceedings.
"We will seek to have evidence from witnesses heard in that trial in respect
to crimes committed against the Khmer Krom, so that the judges and the world
can hear what happened to you as a people," he said.
Meas Chanthorn, a Khmer Krom man who was chief of Romlech commune at the
time the Khmer Rouge took power, called Cayley's visit "a historic day" for
his community.
"The co-prosecutor came to talk to villagers in this area to show that the
court is paying attention to the Khmer Krom case," Meas Chanthorn said. He
called Romlech a "genocide area", and urged the court to reconsider
investigating the charge in the context of the Khmer Krom.
In December, the court announced that the four Khmer Rouge leaders awaiting
a first round of indictments were facing genocide charges in connection with
the regime's treatment of Cham Muslims and Vietnamese.
Historians such as David Chandler have argued, however, that Khmer Rouge
killings do not fit within the legal definition of genocide: criminal acts
committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group".
A number of Khmer Krom who gathered in Romlech said they were singled out
for persecution under the Khmer Rouge because of their perceived connection
to the regime's enemies in Vietnam.
At a meeting organised in the commune last week by the Documentation Centre
of Cambodia (DC-Cam), 42-year-old Peou Sophy recalled an incident in which
cadres gathered local residents together and separated them into two groups:
"pure" Khmer and Khmer Krom, who were taken away from the village and
killed.
"They said they had to kill everyone with Khmer bodies and Vietnamese
heads," said Kim So, another Romlech resident.
John Ciorciari, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and a
senior legal adviser with DC-Cam, said in an email last week that it was
unfortunate that the popular and legal uses of the term genocide "have
diverged so widely".
"Many people have come to use 'genocide' as a generic label for the most
serious mass crimes, which tends to suggest that other similarly heinous
crimes are lesser offenses," he said. Analysis of targeted attacks on the
Khmer Krom, however, could help explain the animus that drove Khmer Rouge
atrocities, Ciorciari added.
"One important fact for the court to shed light on is the motives for the
alleged Khmer Rouge genocide," he said. "Were victims targeted due to their
ethnicity, their perceived nationality, politics, or all three?"
It is this sort of explanation that 51-year-old Pao Sinoun, another Romlech
resident, said she hoped to get from the tribunal.
"We want to know the reason why Pol Pot killed the Khmer Krom - they did
this for what?" she said.
Copyright © 2010 The Phnom Penh Post. All Rights Reserved.
Photo by: James O'toole
Members of the Khmer Krom community review materials distributed by the
Documentation Centre of Cambodia concerning the Khmer Rouge tribunal's
second case.
Photo by: Courtesy of Rothany Srun/Access to Justice Asia
Khmer Krom residents of Pursat's Bakan district listen to a presentation
about the Khmer Rouge tribunal's second case on Sunday.
Pursat Province
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
KRT prosecutor holds meeting with group worried about being overlooked.
KHMER Rouge tribunal co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley addressed a group of Khmer
Krom residents of Pursat province on Sunday, intent on assuring them that
the suffering inflicted upon their community under Democratic Kampuchea will
not be overlooked by the court.
In speaking to a group of around 200 in Pursat's Romlech commune, Bakan
district, Cayley made the uncommon move of reaching out and explaining the
status of the court's investigation to survivors who have voiced concern
that attacks and alleged genocide against them have yet to be acknowledged.
"I know there is a feeling amongst some of your community that you haven't
been properly considered by the court," Cayley told the audience, speaking
in the dusty courtyard of the Wat Romlech pagoda.
"But I want to say to you today, sincerely, why I'm here is because I do
recognise what happened to you as a people."
"Khmer Krom" is a term for ethnic Khmer with roots in the Mekong Delta
region of Vietnam.
In January, the court's co-investigating judges ruled that genocide charges
and other offences would not be brought against the Khmer Rouge
leaders currently in detention based on the regime's treatment of the Khmer
Krom.
This decision, court officials emphasised at the time, was based not on a
historical judgment that the Khmer Krom were not victims of genocide and
other crimes, but on procedural factors: Such offences had not been properly
listed in evidentiary submissions by the prosecution.
As a result of this decision, a number of Khmer Krom civil party applicants
from Pursat who had been provisionally accepted in Case 002 were rejected,
as their claims were deemed to be outside the scope of the court's
investigation. An April ruling from the court's Pre-Trial Chamber reversed
the decision against several of these applicants, though only on the basis
that their claims could be connected to crimes in other provinces that had
already been established as part of the court's investigation.
"The rules are ridiculously complicated on the acceptance of civil parties,"
Cayley told one woman who approached him after the event to ask about the
process.
Assistant prosecutor Dale Lysak explained that although the deadline has
passed to add crimes against the Khmer Krom in Pursat to the list of alleged
offences being investigated in Case 002, evidence related to the group will
nonetheless be utilised in supporting the case for existing crimes under
investigation; namely, forced relocations from Eastern Cambodia and genocide
of the Vietnamese in Prey Veng, Svay Rieng and across the border in Vietnam.
"This area is very important to both of those, because we have to prove that
there was a policy of the Khmer Rouge with respect to the Vietnamese," Lysak
said.
Cayley said that the complexity and the volume of evidence in Case 002 would
stretch the trial for "at least two years". Were the court to properly
account for all crimes committed under Democratic Kampuchea, the trial
"would go on for 20 years", Cayley said, though he promised those assembled
that the Khmer Krom will not be forgotten during the proceedings.
"We will seek to have evidence from witnesses heard in that trial in respect
to crimes committed against the Khmer Krom, so that the judges and the world
can hear what happened to you as a people," he said.
Meas Chanthorn, a Khmer Krom man who was chief of Romlech commune at the
time the Khmer Rouge took power, called Cayley's visit "a historic day" for
his community.
"The co-prosecutor came to talk to villagers in this area to show that the
court is paying attention to the Khmer Krom case," Meas Chanthorn said. He
called Romlech a "genocide area", and urged the court to reconsider
investigating the charge in the context of the Khmer Krom.
In December, the court announced that the four Khmer Rouge leaders awaiting
a first round of indictments were facing genocide charges in connection with
the regime's treatment of Cham Muslims and Vietnamese.
Historians such as David Chandler have argued, however, that Khmer Rouge
killings do not fit within the legal definition of genocide: criminal acts
committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group".
A number of Khmer Krom who gathered in Romlech said they were singled out
for persecution under the Khmer Rouge because of their perceived connection
to the regime's enemies in Vietnam.
At a meeting organised in the commune last week by the Documentation Centre
of Cambodia (DC-Cam), 42-year-old Peou Sophy recalled an incident in which
cadres gathered local residents together and separated them into two groups:
"pure" Khmer and Khmer Krom, who were taken away from the village and
killed.
"They said they had to kill everyone with Khmer bodies and Vietnamese
heads," said Kim So, another Romlech resident.
John Ciorciari, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and a
senior legal adviser with DC-Cam, said in an email last week that it was
unfortunate that the popular and legal uses of the term genocide "have
diverged so widely".
"Many people have come to use 'genocide' as a generic label for the most
serious mass crimes, which tends to suggest that other similarly heinous
crimes are lesser offenses," he said. Analysis of targeted attacks on the
Khmer Krom, however, could help explain the animus that drove Khmer Rouge
atrocities, Ciorciari added.
"One important fact for the court to shed light on is the motives for the
alleged Khmer Rouge genocide," he said. "Were victims targeted due to their
ethnicity, their perceived nationality, politics, or all three?"
It is this sort of explanation that 51-year-old Pao Sinoun, another Romlech
resident, said she hoped to get from the tribunal.
"We want to know the reason why Pol Pot killed the Khmer Krom - they did
this for what?" she said.
Copyright © 2010 The Phnom Penh Post. All Rights Reserved.
Photo by: James O'toole
Members of the Khmer Krom community review materials distributed by the
Documentation Centre of Cambodia concerning the Khmer Rouge tribunal's
second case.
Photo by: Courtesy of Rothany Srun/Access to Justice Asia
Khmer Krom residents of Pursat's Bakan district listen to a presentation
about the Khmer Rouge tribunal's second case on Sunday.
Pursat Province
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Farina So: Breaking the silence on the Cambodian genocide
Jun 11, 2010
Monica Chapman
Despite her slight frame and unassuming demeanor, there is strength about
Farina So. Some might say it is a strength born of oppression, brought about
during the Democratic Kampuchea regime - an era that witnessed the death of
an estimated 21 percent of Cambodia's total population.
So, a graduate student from Cambodia, enrolled in Ohio University's
Southeast Asian Studies program in 2008, following five years of research
with the Documentation Center of Cambodia. Among her responsibilities at the
center, So led an oral history project, collecting survival stories from
fellow Cham Muslims, an ethnic minority in Cambodia that was widely
persecuted under the Khmer Rouge between 1975-1979.
Though separated from her home in Phnom Penh by nearly 9,000 miles, So has
dedicated her two years at Ohio University toward research and public
education on the genocide. Her dedication has earned her widespread respect
across OHIO's international community as well a Margaret McNamara Memorial
Fund scholarship, an educational grant benefitting women from developing
countries whose graduate studies and future plans aim to benefit women and
children in their respective regions.
According to Joan Kraynanski, an administrative associate in the Center for
International Studies, So is well deserving of the master's degree she will
earn in Friday's graduate commencement ceremonies.
"Farina embodies the image of the model graduate student, meticulous in her
academic work," Kraynanski said. "Her appreciation for the opportunity to
study at Ohio University was obvious by this dedication to her academic
course work, which in turn gave her the opportunity to further research the
development issues facing the Cham community in Cambodia - her research
passion."
Referred to by Yale scholars as "one of the worst human tragedies of the
last century," the Khmer Rouge era was marked by extremism, ethnic hostility
and widespread murder. But the Cham Muslim population, to which So belongs,
was hit particularly hard.
During this period, Muslims were prohibited from worshipping, more than 130
mosques were eradicated, and the vast majority of prominent Cham clergy in
Cambodia were killed. Many Cham people, including So's mother, were
evacuated from their homes and forced into hard labor. So's mother was among
the survivors, but an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians perished during the
period.
After the Vietnamese overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, So's parents
returned to the Kandal province only to find their home in ruins. Like many
Cambodians at that time, they were forced to create their new life from the
ground up - clearing the forests and building a new home by hand.
So was born the following year. And though the Khmer Rouge era technically
predates her, So said the regime's legacy has touched the lives of all
Cambodians indelibly.
"Even though I was not a direct victim, I was affected by the legacy of the
Khmer Rouge," she said.
Tragedy struck again in 1989, when So lost her father and sibling to
disease. So's mother was left to raise and support her four surviving
children, of whom So was the oldest.
Times were hard, and money was tight, but So's mother made education a
family priority.
"She was determined that we go to school even though we are daughters, so
that we could make a life and a future there," So recalled.
After earning an undergraduate degree in accounting, So's interests began to
shift. Her work at the documentation center opened her eyes to genocide,
gender issues, and issues faced by ethnic minorities. Eventually, these
concepts developed to form the focus of her research at Ohio University.
"I had heard a lot about the school and specifically its Southeast Asian
Studies program," said So. "In my country, I'm very involved in
application - doing projects, meeting people, community service. But, I
wanted to learn about theory and research to balance my knowledge and
practice."
Despite the distance, Cambodia has been a guiding influence throughout So's
OHIO education.
For the past two years, she has worked to develop her thesis, "An Oral
History of Cham Muslim Women Under the Khmer Rouge." Her work is based on
more than 300 interviews (including more than 100 interviews with Cham
women), mostly conducted by So. So hopes to publish the work in a monograph,
which will also be translated into Khmer, the official language of Cambodia.
This past April, So organized an exhibit in Baker Theater in an effort to
educate the campus community on the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Following the temporary exhibit at Baker Theatre, the entire collection was
entrusted to the university's Center for International Collections for a
permanent exhibit, located in Alden Library's first floor.
"The Exhibit of the Resistance to the Khmer Rouge: Arms and Emotion"
features photographic and archival materials to inform the public about
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) Case 002, which is
slated to try the four most senior surviving leaders from the Democratic
Kampuchea regime next year.
Case 002 is part of ongoing tribunals by the United Nations to bring
surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders to justice. Among the tribunal's
findings, trials have turned up evidence of "crimes against humanity,
genocide. torture and religious persecution."
So said it is likely that her interviews will also be used as evidentiary
information in Case 002, in the absence of ample written evidence or
photographs (which were confiscated from the Cham people during the Khmer
Rouge reign). She also hopes to utilize these interviews, along with her
newly acquired knowledge and skills, to establish a Center for Oral History
and Gender Studies through the Documentation Center of Cambodia.
"It is very important for both Cambodian people and people around the world
to know what has happened. especially how people deal with the past atrocity
and how to prevent such similar tragedy from recurrence," said So. "Genocide
conflict is a global issue.The work that we are doing here is just only a
small step to raise people's awareness, remember and prevent genocide. But
much work remains to be done to help the survivors move on."
published: June 11, 2010 8:22 AM
ADA Compliance | © 2010 Ohio University. All rights reserved.
Ohio University
OTHER RELATED STORIES:
http://intlawgrrls.blogspot.com/2010/06/hybrid-mess-in-cambodia.html
http://motodupdispatch.tumblr.com/
http://cghr.newark.rutgers.edu/cgchrblogs.html
http://www.youtube.com/RutgersCGCHR
http://www.ohio.edu/compass/stories/09-10/6/fraina_so_816.cfm
http://deanbrand.blogspot.com/2010/06/usf-law-students-learn-by-doing-in.html
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Monica Chapman
Despite her slight frame and unassuming demeanor, there is strength about
Farina So. Some might say it is a strength born of oppression, brought about
during the Democratic Kampuchea regime - an era that witnessed the death of
an estimated 21 percent of Cambodia's total population.
So, a graduate student from Cambodia, enrolled in Ohio University's
Southeast Asian Studies program in 2008, following five years of research
with the Documentation Center of Cambodia. Among her responsibilities at the
center, So led an oral history project, collecting survival stories from
fellow Cham Muslims, an ethnic minority in Cambodia that was widely
persecuted under the Khmer Rouge between 1975-1979.
Though separated from her home in Phnom Penh by nearly 9,000 miles, So has
dedicated her two years at Ohio University toward research and public
education on the genocide. Her dedication has earned her widespread respect
across OHIO's international community as well a Margaret McNamara Memorial
Fund scholarship, an educational grant benefitting women from developing
countries whose graduate studies and future plans aim to benefit women and
children in their respective regions.
According to Joan Kraynanski, an administrative associate in the Center for
International Studies, So is well deserving of the master's degree she will
earn in Friday's graduate commencement ceremonies.
"Farina embodies the image of the model graduate student, meticulous in her
academic work," Kraynanski said. "Her appreciation for the opportunity to
study at Ohio University was obvious by this dedication to her academic
course work, which in turn gave her the opportunity to further research the
development issues facing the Cham community in Cambodia - her research
passion."
Referred to by Yale scholars as "one of the worst human tragedies of the
last century," the Khmer Rouge era was marked by extremism, ethnic hostility
and widespread murder. But the Cham Muslim population, to which So belongs,
was hit particularly hard.
During this period, Muslims were prohibited from worshipping, more than 130
mosques were eradicated, and the vast majority of prominent Cham clergy in
Cambodia were killed. Many Cham people, including So's mother, were
evacuated from their homes and forced into hard labor. So's mother was among
the survivors, but an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians perished during the
period.
After the Vietnamese overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, So's parents
returned to the Kandal province only to find their home in ruins. Like many
Cambodians at that time, they were forced to create their new life from the
ground up - clearing the forests and building a new home by hand.
So was born the following year. And though the Khmer Rouge era technically
predates her, So said the regime's legacy has touched the lives of all
Cambodians indelibly.
"Even though I was not a direct victim, I was affected by the legacy of the
Khmer Rouge," she said.
Tragedy struck again in 1989, when So lost her father and sibling to
disease. So's mother was left to raise and support her four surviving
children, of whom So was the oldest.
Times were hard, and money was tight, but So's mother made education a
family priority.
"She was determined that we go to school even though we are daughters, so
that we could make a life and a future there," So recalled.
After earning an undergraduate degree in accounting, So's interests began to
shift. Her work at the documentation center opened her eyes to genocide,
gender issues, and issues faced by ethnic minorities. Eventually, these
concepts developed to form the focus of her research at Ohio University.
"I had heard a lot about the school and specifically its Southeast Asian
Studies program," said So. "In my country, I'm very involved in
application - doing projects, meeting people, community service. But, I
wanted to learn about theory and research to balance my knowledge and
practice."
Despite the distance, Cambodia has been a guiding influence throughout So's
OHIO education.
For the past two years, she has worked to develop her thesis, "An Oral
History of Cham Muslim Women Under the Khmer Rouge." Her work is based on
more than 300 interviews (including more than 100 interviews with Cham
women), mostly conducted by So. So hopes to publish the work in a monograph,
which will also be translated into Khmer, the official language of Cambodia.
This past April, So organized an exhibit in Baker Theater in an effort to
educate the campus community on the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Following the temporary exhibit at Baker Theatre, the entire collection was
entrusted to the university's Center for International Collections for a
permanent exhibit, located in Alden Library's first floor.
"The Exhibit of the Resistance to the Khmer Rouge: Arms and Emotion"
features photographic and archival materials to inform the public about
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) Case 002, which is
slated to try the four most senior surviving leaders from the Democratic
Kampuchea regime next year.
Case 002 is part of ongoing tribunals by the United Nations to bring
surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders to justice. Among the tribunal's
findings, trials have turned up evidence of "crimes against humanity,
genocide. torture and religious persecution."
So said it is likely that her interviews will also be used as evidentiary
information in Case 002, in the absence of ample written evidence or
photographs (which were confiscated from the Cham people during the Khmer
Rouge reign). She also hopes to utilize these interviews, along with her
newly acquired knowledge and skills, to establish a Center for Oral History
and Gender Studies through the Documentation Center of Cambodia.
"It is very important for both Cambodian people and people around the world
to know what has happened. especially how people deal with the past atrocity
and how to prevent such similar tragedy from recurrence," said So. "Genocide
conflict is a global issue.The work that we are doing here is just only a
small step to raise people's awareness, remember and prevent genocide. But
much work remains to be done to help the survivors move on."
published: June 11, 2010 8:22 AM
ADA Compliance | © 2010 Ohio University. All rights reserved.
Ohio University
OTHER RELATED STORIES:
http://intlawgrrls.blogspot.com/2010/06/hybrid-mess-in-cambodia.html
http://motodupdispatch.tumblr.com/
http://cghr.newark.rutgers.edu/cgchrblogs.html
http://www.youtube.com/RutgersCGCHR
http://www.ohio.edu/compass/stories/09-10/6/fraina_so_816.cfm
http://deanbrand.blogspot.com/2010/06/usf-law-students-learn-by-doing-in.html
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
The International Criminal Court (ICC) Stocktaking of international criminal justice: Peace and Justice
ICC-ASP-20100603-PR536
In the context of the stocktaking exercise on international criminal
justice, a “Peace and Justice” session was held during the Review Conference
in Kampala. The debates offered an opportunity for States to affirm that
peace and justice are complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.
The first speaker of the panel, Mr David Tolbert, President of the
International Center for Transitional Justice, stated that the long-term
benefits of pursuing justice far outweigh any short-term benefits of
amnesties. He also pointed out that the role of the Prosecutor needs to be
understood: he has to know the situation on the ground and be conscious of
the importance of the timing of issuing arrest warrants.
Mr James LeMoyne, former Special Adviser for Colombia to the United Nations
Secretary-General, addressed the panel by stressing that peace processes
that take justice into account are more sustainable and lasting. If
mediators would be allowed to have some flexibility on how to approach
justice issues in particular regarding timing, that would help their work
considerably. Nevertheless, this flexibility should not be extended to the
most serious crimes under the Rome Statute.
Mr Barney Afako, Legal Adviser to the Chief Mediator on the Ugandan peace
process negotiations, stated that the dilemma of contradicting strategies to
render justice and establish peace would exist as long as there are ongoing
conflicts.
In spite of the fact that it took 30 years to start prosecuting some of the
perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide, not a single day did the victims
forget that they wanted justice, explained Mr Chhang Youk, Director of the
Documentation Center of Cambodia.
In his closing remarks the moderator of the panel, Mr Kenneth Roth,
Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, highlighted that the establishment
of the International Criminal Court (ICC) had indeed brought about a
paradigm shift: whereas before the discussion was called “peace versus
justice”, you could now observe an understanding of peace and justice as
allies which sustain one another. Nevertheless, tensions between cessation
of violence and justice could arise which had to be addressed and managed
carefully. Furthermore, Mr Roth pointed to some new challenges resulting
from the ICC’s existence. Mediators had to find ways to convince parties to
come to the negotiating table against the backdrop of actual or possible
indictments. The potential deterrent effect of justice would be undermined
if it was viewed as an exceptional or negotiable measure.
The panelists generally agreed that alternative transitional justice
mechanisms should not be seen as an alternative, but rather supplementary to
criminal justice processes, with the ICC concentrating on the most serious
crimes.
As for victims, experience showed that their views shifted over time, with
the immediate goal for peace followed by a quest for justice.
Finally, Mr. Roth stated that the establishment of the ICC constituted a
development as momentous as the adoption of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. He called on States to demonstrate their commitment through
executing arrest warrants and standing up to those that defy the ICC.
Summary of Peace and Justice panel.
http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/RC2010/RC-ST-PJ-1-ENG.pdf
Further information about the Review Conference can be found on the website
of the International Criminal Court at:
http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ASP/ReviewConference/Review+Conference.htm.
For additional information please contact Ms. Bettina Ambach (+256
787-700-942, email: Bettina@bettinaambach.de) or Ms. Suzan Khan at (+256
787-105-832, email: suzan22@btinternet.com)
Source: Assembly of States Parties
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
In the context of the stocktaking exercise on international criminal
justice, a “Peace and Justice” session was held during the Review Conference
in Kampala. The debates offered an opportunity for States to affirm that
peace and justice are complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.
The first speaker of the panel, Mr David Tolbert, President of the
International Center for Transitional Justice, stated that the long-term
benefits of pursuing justice far outweigh any short-term benefits of
amnesties. He also pointed out that the role of the Prosecutor needs to be
understood: he has to know the situation on the ground and be conscious of
the importance of the timing of issuing arrest warrants.
Mr James LeMoyne, former Special Adviser for Colombia to the United Nations
Secretary-General, addressed the panel by stressing that peace processes
that take justice into account are more sustainable and lasting. If
mediators would be allowed to have some flexibility on how to approach
justice issues in particular regarding timing, that would help their work
considerably. Nevertheless, this flexibility should not be extended to the
most serious crimes under the Rome Statute.
Mr Barney Afako, Legal Adviser to the Chief Mediator on the Ugandan peace
process negotiations, stated that the dilemma of contradicting strategies to
render justice and establish peace would exist as long as there are ongoing
conflicts.
In spite of the fact that it took 30 years to start prosecuting some of the
perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide, not a single day did the victims
forget that they wanted justice, explained Mr Chhang Youk, Director of the
Documentation Center of Cambodia.
In his closing remarks the moderator of the panel, Mr Kenneth Roth,
Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, highlighted that the establishment
of the International Criminal Court (ICC) had indeed brought about a
paradigm shift: whereas before the discussion was called “peace versus
justice”, you could now observe an understanding of peace and justice as
allies which sustain one another. Nevertheless, tensions between cessation
of violence and justice could arise which had to be addressed and managed
carefully. Furthermore, Mr Roth pointed to some new challenges resulting
from the ICC’s existence. Mediators had to find ways to convince parties to
come to the negotiating table against the backdrop of actual or possible
indictments. The potential deterrent effect of justice would be undermined
if it was viewed as an exceptional or negotiable measure.
The panelists generally agreed that alternative transitional justice
mechanisms should not be seen as an alternative, but rather supplementary to
criminal justice processes, with the ICC concentrating on the most serious
crimes.
As for victims, experience showed that their views shifted over time, with
the immediate goal for peace followed by a quest for justice.
Finally, Mr. Roth stated that the establishment of the ICC constituted a
development as momentous as the adoption of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. He called on States to demonstrate their commitment through
executing arrest warrants and standing up to those that defy the ICC.
Summary of Peace and Justice panel.
http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/RC2010/RC-ST-PJ-1-ENG.pdf
Further information about the Review Conference can be found on the website
of the International Criminal Court at:
http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ASP/ReviewConference/Review+Conference.htm.
For additional information please contact Ms. Bettina Ambach (+256
787-700-942, email: Bettina@bettinaambach.de) or Ms. Suzan Khan at (+256
787-105-832, email: suzan22@btinternet.com)
Source: Assembly of States Parties
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Investigators' spat reveals more divisions at Khmer Rouge tribunal
Jun 9, 2010, 11:36 GMT
Phnom Penh - Further divisions in Cambodia's war crimes tribunal came to
light Wednesday after its two senior investigators openly disagreed on when
to proceed with cases against five new suspects.
The hybrid UN-Cambodian court, which is tasked with trying those responsible
for Khmer Rouge-era crimes, has a dual structure in which local and foreign
staff fill equal positions in each of the court's operational areas.
Documents released Wednesday showed Cambodian investigating judge You
Bunleng reversed an earlier agreement with his international counterpart to
start investigations into the five suspects, none of whom has been named by
the court.
Court spokesman Lars Olsen said tribunal rules meant international
investigating judge Marcel Lemonde would proceed alone.
'The international investigating judge will go ahead by himself and start
the investigation,' Olsen said.
In his memorandum to Lemonde, You Bunleng said he had changed his mind after
taking into account several factors, including the state of Cambodia's
society.
That echoed comments made by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has argued that the
prosecutions could lead to civil war. His weighing-in on the tribunal led to
accusations of political interference.
You Bunleng told his international counterpart that they could discuss the
issue in September once formal notices to prosecute four ageing Khmer Rouge
leaders now in custody were issued.
Youk Chhang - who heads DC-Cam, an archive of material relating to the
1975-79 rule of the Khmer Rouge - said he was encouraged that You Bunleng
had not ruled out investigating the new cases.
'The good news is that he is not saying no,' Youk Chhang said in reference
to fears that political pressure could stop those cases.
Judgement in the tribunal's first case - that of the former head of the S-21
prison, Comrade Duch - was scheduled for July 26. Duch was prosecuted for
war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the deaths of more
than 12,000 people who entered S-21 in Phnom Penh.
The four surviving senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge are in detention for
their alleged involvement in the deaths of 1.7 million people. Their trials
were expected to begin early next year.
The four are: former Brother Number Two Nuon Chea, the movement's ideologue;
former head of state Khieu Samphan; former foreign minister Ieng Sary; and
his wife, the former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith.
Around 1.7 million people are thought to have died from execution, disease,
starvation and overwork during the Khmer Rouge's rule of Cambodia. Its
leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 on the Thai-Cambodian border.
© 2003 - 2010 by Monsters and Critics.com, WotR Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Phnom Penh - Further divisions in Cambodia's war crimes tribunal came to
light Wednesday after its two senior investigators openly disagreed on when
to proceed with cases against five new suspects.
The hybrid UN-Cambodian court, which is tasked with trying those responsible
for Khmer Rouge-era crimes, has a dual structure in which local and foreign
staff fill equal positions in each of the court's operational areas.
Documents released Wednesday showed Cambodian investigating judge You
Bunleng reversed an earlier agreement with his international counterpart to
start investigations into the five suspects, none of whom has been named by
the court.
Court spokesman Lars Olsen said tribunal rules meant international
investigating judge Marcel Lemonde would proceed alone.
'The international investigating judge will go ahead by himself and start
the investigation,' Olsen said.
In his memorandum to Lemonde, You Bunleng said he had changed his mind after
taking into account several factors, including the state of Cambodia's
society.
That echoed comments made by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has argued that the
prosecutions could lead to civil war. His weighing-in on the tribunal led to
accusations of political interference.
You Bunleng told his international counterpart that they could discuss the
issue in September once formal notices to prosecute four ageing Khmer Rouge
leaders now in custody were issued.
Youk Chhang - who heads DC-Cam, an archive of material relating to the
1975-79 rule of the Khmer Rouge - said he was encouraged that You Bunleng
had not ruled out investigating the new cases.
'The good news is that he is not saying no,' Youk Chhang said in reference
to fears that political pressure could stop those cases.
Judgement in the tribunal's first case - that of the former head of the S-21
prison, Comrade Duch - was scheduled for July 26. Duch was prosecuted for
war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the deaths of more
than 12,000 people who entered S-21 in Phnom Penh.
The four surviving senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge are in detention for
their alleged involvement in the deaths of 1.7 million people. Their trials
were expected to begin early next year.
The four are: former Brother Number Two Nuon Chea, the movement's ideologue;
former head of state Khieu Samphan; former foreign minister Ieng Sary; and
his wife, the former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith.
Around 1.7 million people are thought to have died from execution, disease,
starvation and overwork during the Khmer Rouge's rule of Cambodia. Its
leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 on the Thai-Cambodian border.
© 2003 - 2010 by Monsters and Critics.com, WotR Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Village Forum and Discussion on Khmer Kampuchea Krom with the ECCC International Prosecutor Rumlech commune, Pursat province
June 13, 2010
The Living Documents Project will conduct its second large scale village forum with Khmer Kampuchea Krom community in Pursat on June 13, 2010. With participation of the judicial official of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) as guest speaker, the village forum intends to provide the community members with significant discussion on issue surrounding Genocide Crime charged against the Khmer Krom which was denied by ECCC’s co-investigating judges. In addition, topic of this discussion would also be centered on the Khmer Kampuchea Krom’s sufferings and atrocities that the Khmer Rouge has committed on them.
Last year, the Living Documents project held its first community forum in Wat Rumlech pagoda to discuss the possibility in erecting a memorial for those victims, especially the Khmer Krom, who were executed under the Khmer Rouge regime. Previously, the last forum has invited the local authority, the DC-Cam staff members and scholars, and local community members to come together to discuss about local initiative in building such meaningful monument to remember to the victims. Now that the ECCC or commonly known as the Khmer Rouge tribunal decided to charge those suspects of the current investigating case 002 with genocide charges and crimes against humanity against Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese minorities, without inclusion of Khmer Krom in the decision, the forum is even more important to develop into well awareness so that the community eases suspect on ECCC’s scope of investigation.
The forum will be presided over by the district chief, who has been actively engaging in social activities regarding the process of delivering justice and been supportive to the idea of memorials construction. Beside, the ECCC’s international co-prosecutor, Andrew Cayley, will also be presented as a guest speaker to discuss about the current issues related to the criminal suspect on Case 002 and issues related to Khmer Kampuchea Krom. And finally, DC-Cam’s director, Youk Chhang and Living Documents’ team members will be on site to facilitate the discussion. Following the spectacular debate on this significant topic, the forum will lay out invaluable opportunity for local villagers to directly interact with the ECCC’s official through question and answer session. Finally, the Living Documents team will take the chance to conduct individual interview with participants for their personal experiences and comments on the forum and the concepts of forgiveness, especially among the community members.
For more information, please contact:
- Savina Sirik: 012 688 046
- Dara Vanthan: 012 846 526
The Living Documents Project at DC-Cam is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy of Human Rights and Labor with support from Cambodia ’s Ministry of Interiors.
___________
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2010052639276/National-news/justice-for-the-khmer-krom.html
Justice for the Khmer Krom
Wednesday, 26 May 2010 15:02 John D Ciorciari
As KR leaders face their fate at the ECCC, the court should not forget other victims.
After more than 30 years of impunity, some key architects of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror are finally being held accountable at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The upcoming joint trial of Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirth and Khieu Samphan holds promise for survivors who have waited too long for justice.
Unfortunately, one important set of crimes is in danger of exclusion. In January, the ECCC's co-investigating judges decided to charge the suspects with genocide and crimes against humanity against Cambodia's Cham Muslim and ethnic Vietnamese minorities, but not the Khmer Krom - ethnic Khmers with roots in southern Vietnam. The ECCC's pre-trial chamber recently upheld that decision.
The pre-trial chamber grounded its decision partly on a technicality. Months ago, the co-prosecutors sent a memo to the co-investigating judges about possible genocide against Khmer Krom in Pursat province. They titled the memo an "investigative request" rather than a "supplementary submission". The latter title would have triggered an investigation; the former may cost some Khmer Krom survivors their deserved day in court. But the pre-trial chamber's decision does leave some room for reconsideration. It does not bar the possibility that the co-prosecutors can simply white-out the old title, type on a new one and resubmit their memo as a "supplementary submission". The co-prosecutors ought to do so.
The ECCC cannot account for the myriad offenses of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), but there are good reasons to hear out the Khmer Krom, who have long argued that their community suffered genocide and targeted crimes against humanity. Indeed, documents and survivor accounts indicate that the DK regime sometimes targeted Khmer Krom for abuse. In at least one well-documented case, Khmer Krom were butchered en masse. In 1977, hundreds were rounded up and massacred in Pursat's Bakan district - a calculated mass murder with some chilling parallels to the Srebrenica Massacre of 1995. Such offenses demand investigation and justice.
The reasons for these atrocities remain subject to debate. The Khmer Krom spoke Vietnamese and brought syncretic cultural practices from the Mekong Delta. Cultural disdain may thus have contributed to their plight. Under the Pol Pot regime, persons with foreign cultural characteristics were suspect. Depending on the evidence, the ECCC could find that senior DK officials committed genocide by seeking to destroy Khmer Krom based on their perceived ethnic impurity.
The case for crimes against humanity is easier because it encompasses abuses based on political motives. Political targeting of the Khmer Krom was clearly at work. The communist DK regime bitterly resented the prominent roles Khmer Krom played in Lon Nol's Khmer Republic and the CIA's Mobile Strike Force Command during the Vietnam War. The Khmer Rouge also regarded ties to Vietnam as politically suspect after 1975, when the xenophobic DK regime turned its back on Hanoi. Documents show that Vietnamese-speaking Khmer Krom were often singled out as potential spies and purged for that reason.
The complex case of the Khmer Krom lies at the heart of unresolved questions about the DK regime. For three decades, survivors and scholars have tried to discern the motives for Khmer Rouge brutality. Was the killing driven primarily by excesses in radical communism? Or was the violence also rooted to a considerable extent in racism and nationalism?
The legal distinction between genocide and other grave crimes is sometimes unhelpful. In Cambodia, it risks suggesting that certain victims suffered more than others, when in reality all suffered horrific abuses. This
distinction is nevertheless useful in trying to properly understand the terror in Democratic Kampuchea. By examining crimes against the Khmer Krom, the ECCC can help shed light on the true animus of the DK regime.
The ECCC does not have infinite resources, and it is rightly under pressure to rein in its budget and speed up the trials. However, ECCC officials must be wise in deciding how and where to cut and prune. Adjudicating crimes against the Khmer Krom in Pursat would add little to the hefty sum of time and money already spent on the trials. In fact, the court's investigators and prosecutors have completed most of the necessary investigation evidencing these crimes. Bypassing the Khmer Krom case would deny this important and courageous community a sense of justice. The ECCC could also fail to reveal some of the most illuminating truths about the Pol Pot regime.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John D Ciorciari is an assistant professor of Public Policy at the
University of Michigan and a senior legal advisor with the Documentation
Centre of Cambodia.
Copyright © 2010 The Phnom Penh Post. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
The Living Documents Project will conduct its second large scale village forum with Khmer Kampuchea Krom community in Pursat on June 13, 2010. With participation of the judicial official of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) as guest speaker, the village forum intends to provide the community members with significant discussion on issue surrounding Genocide Crime charged against the Khmer Krom which was denied by ECCC’s co-investigating judges. In addition, topic of this discussion would also be centered on the Khmer Kampuchea Krom’s sufferings and atrocities that the Khmer Rouge has committed on them.
Last year, the Living Documents project held its first community forum in Wat Rumlech pagoda to discuss the possibility in erecting a memorial for those victims, especially the Khmer Krom, who were executed under the Khmer Rouge regime. Previously, the last forum has invited the local authority, the DC-Cam staff members and scholars, and local community members to come together to discuss about local initiative in building such meaningful monument to remember to the victims. Now that the ECCC or commonly known as the Khmer Rouge tribunal decided to charge those suspects of the current investigating case 002 with genocide charges and crimes against humanity against Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese minorities, without inclusion of Khmer Krom in the decision, the forum is even more important to develop into well awareness so that the community eases suspect on ECCC’s scope of investigation.
The forum will be presided over by the district chief, who has been actively engaging in social activities regarding the process of delivering justice and been supportive to the idea of memorials construction. Beside, the ECCC’s international co-prosecutor, Andrew Cayley, will also be presented as a guest speaker to discuss about the current issues related to the criminal suspect on Case 002 and issues related to Khmer Kampuchea Krom. And finally, DC-Cam’s director, Youk Chhang and Living Documents’ team members will be on site to facilitate the discussion. Following the spectacular debate on this significant topic, the forum will lay out invaluable opportunity for local villagers to directly interact with the ECCC’s official through question and answer session. Finally, the Living Documents team will take the chance to conduct individual interview with participants for their personal experiences and comments on the forum and the concepts of forgiveness, especially among the community members.
For more information, please contact:
- Savina Sirik: 012 688 046
- Dara Vanthan: 012 846 526
The Living Documents Project at DC-Cam is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy of Human Rights and Labor with support from Cambodia ’s Ministry of Interiors.
___________
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2010052639276/National-news/justice-for-the-khmer-krom.html
Justice for the Khmer Krom
Wednesday, 26 May 2010 15:02 John D Ciorciari
As KR leaders face their fate at the ECCC, the court should not forget other victims.
After more than 30 years of impunity, some key architects of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror are finally being held accountable at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The upcoming joint trial of Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirth and Khieu Samphan holds promise for survivors who have waited too long for justice.
Unfortunately, one important set of crimes is in danger of exclusion. In January, the ECCC's co-investigating judges decided to charge the suspects with genocide and crimes against humanity against Cambodia's Cham Muslim and ethnic Vietnamese minorities, but not the Khmer Krom - ethnic Khmers with roots in southern Vietnam. The ECCC's pre-trial chamber recently upheld that decision.
The pre-trial chamber grounded its decision partly on a technicality. Months ago, the co-prosecutors sent a memo to the co-investigating judges about possible genocide against Khmer Krom in Pursat province. They titled the memo an "investigative request" rather than a "supplementary submission". The latter title would have triggered an investigation; the former may cost some Khmer Krom survivors their deserved day in court. But the pre-trial chamber's decision does leave some room for reconsideration. It does not bar the possibility that the co-prosecutors can simply white-out the old title, type on a new one and resubmit their memo as a "supplementary submission". The co-prosecutors ought to do so.
The ECCC cannot account for the myriad offenses of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), but there are good reasons to hear out the Khmer Krom, who have long argued that their community suffered genocide and targeted crimes against humanity. Indeed, documents and survivor accounts indicate that the DK regime sometimes targeted Khmer Krom for abuse. In at least one well-documented case, Khmer Krom were butchered en masse. In 1977, hundreds were rounded up and massacred in Pursat's Bakan district - a calculated mass murder with some chilling parallels to the Srebrenica Massacre of 1995. Such offenses demand investigation and justice.
The reasons for these atrocities remain subject to debate. The Khmer Krom spoke Vietnamese and brought syncretic cultural practices from the Mekong Delta. Cultural disdain may thus have contributed to their plight. Under the Pol Pot regime, persons with foreign cultural characteristics were suspect. Depending on the evidence, the ECCC could find that senior DK officials committed genocide by seeking to destroy Khmer Krom based on their perceived ethnic impurity.
The case for crimes against humanity is easier because it encompasses abuses based on political motives. Political targeting of the Khmer Krom was clearly at work. The communist DK regime bitterly resented the prominent roles Khmer Krom played in Lon Nol's Khmer Republic and the CIA's Mobile Strike Force Command during the Vietnam War. The Khmer Rouge also regarded ties to Vietnam as politically suspect after 1975, when the xenophobic DK regime turned its back on Hanoi. Documents show that Vietnamese-speaking Khmer Krom were often singled out as potential spies and purged for that reason.
The complex case of the Khmer Krom lies at the heart of unresolved questions about the DK regime. For three decades, survivors and scholars have tried to discern the motives for Khmer Rouge brutality. Was the killing driven primarily by excesses in radical communism? Or was the violence also rooted to a considerable extent in racism and nationalism?
The legal distinction between genocide and other grave crimes is sometimes unhelpful. In Cambodia, it risks suggesting that certain victims suffered more than others, when in reality all suffered horrific abuses. This
distinction is nevertheless useful in trying to properly understand the terror in Democratic Kampuchea. By examining crimes against the Khmer Krom, the ECCC can help shed light on the true animus of the DK regime.
The ECCC does not have infinite resources, and it is rightly under pressure to rein in its budget and speed up the trials. However, ECCC officials must be wise in deciding how and where to cut and prune. Adjudicating crimes against the Khmer Krom in Pursat would add little to the hefty sum of time and money already spent on the trials. In fact, the court's investigators and prosecutors have completed most of the necessary investigation evidencing these crimes. Bypassing the Khmer Krom case would deny this important and courageous community a sense of justice. The ECCC could also fail to reveal some of the most illuminating truths about the Pol Pot regime.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John D Ciorciari is an assistant professor of Public Policy at the
University of Michigan and a senior legal advisor with the Documentation
Centre of Cambodia.
Copyright © 2010 The Phnom Penh Post. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Forgiveness Is Difficult for Vork Ty
Kok-Thay Eng
Vork Ty is a Cham woman living in Chankiek village, Ourussey commune, Kampong Tralach district, Kampong Chhnang province. She is 45 years old, and when the Khmer Rouge took control of Kampong Tralach in 1975 she was 15 years old. Vork Ty is careful to say that she does not remember many events that happened before the Lon Nol regime and she can only describe what happened to her village when the Khmer Rouge intensified its grip on Cambodia . Vork Ty does not remember when US B-52 bombers sprayed the Cambodian countryside with bombs, images that are still vivid in the memories of many Cambodian survivors today. What Vork Ty remembers is only the blurry images and sounds of low flying aircraft just above the tree tops, strafing people running to take cover.
When asked her opinion about America , Vork Ty said she does not know the United States ’ policies today or what it did about the bombing of Cambodia . The only things she knows about the United States are the American people who come to visit her village and ask villagers about their living conditions. Some have supported her village with English language tutoring and smaller village projects. Currently the embassy of the United States provides funding for her Imam San sect community to conduct a small research project on the traditional Cham dialect. She said, “Many Americans I meet are very nice. So I like America .”
Under the Khmer Rouge regime, Vork Ty lost an elder sister who was executed after stealing food in Kampong Chhnang. She does not know where her sister was buried or the larger details surrounding her death. The news about her death came to her through fellow villagers who were kind enough to send her family the bad news. Vork Ty, however, remains grateful that only her sister perished under the Khmer Rouge, while the rest of her family survived the regime. Vork Ty never blamed Allah for her and her family’s ordeal or for the death of her sister, but she is grateful to Allah that her family did not suffer as much as other families in the village. Before 1975 there were 63 families in Chankiek village, but in 1979 only 33 families returned to the village. Vork Ty’s faith in Islam remains strong, even stronger than it was before the Khmer Rouge. Indeed many villagers in her village think the same. They see the suffering under the Khmer Rouge regime as a suffering that happened to everyone including Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Muslims. Thus God is not to blame.
Many villagers in Chankiek village were evacuated from their homes when the Khmer Rouge completely controlled Cambodia . They were sent many places: some to Khmer villages, a few others to Cham villages. Many of them were forced to eat pork, and women were not allowed to keep their hair long. They were not allowed to speak the Cham language. They were ordered to change their Cham names and given new Khmer names. Qurans were collected and burned. However, according to a woman in Chankiek village, one Khmer Rouge cadre also showed pragmatism in his practice of atheism. The cadre forced a woman to eat food with some pork hidden inside. When she ate the food she threw up in front of the cadre. The cadre thought that this showed that not eating pork was not only a belief, but also that some Cham people could not digest pork. The cadre therefore never asked her to eat pork again. Some village men reported that a Cham died after he was forced to eat pork due to sickness.
In early 1975, Vork Ty’s family moved from Chankiek village to a small town just 15 kilometers away, south of Udong. The first time she encountered the Khmer Rouge was when they marched into the town and ordered everyone to leave. She said her family and others left in haste. On a small dirt road leading away from the town, people marched with their belongings. Nobody dared stray from the road because the Khmer Rouge would shoot them if they did. Vork Ty’s family was sent to Kampong Cham. She was put to work in a children’s unit. She used to speak with some Khmer Rouge cadres and village guards in the field. She said she was very scared of the Khmer Rouge but she was never victimized by them in any brutal way. She saw a child who was tortured with plastic bag covering her head and beaten until she almost fainted. Later the child disappeared.
Although she did not suffer nearly as much as other victims of the Khmer Rouge, Vork Ty can not forgive Khmer Rouge leaders. She is also certain that other women she knows would not be able to forgive them because they lost too many loved ones. She said, “The loss to some families is too great to forgive anyone.” Vork Ty knows through newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, and television shows that there is a Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh . She also heard that what’s being done at the court is intended to help people feel relief that some degree of justice can be given to the victims, but won’t bring the complete justice that victims of murder should receive. She said, “It is only symbolic. It would be disappointing if any of the Khmer Rouge leaders currently on trial were released. I want them to stay in prison for the rest of their lives.”
END.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Vork Ty is a Cham woman living in Chankiek village, Ourussey commune, Kampong Tralach district, Kampong Chhnang province. She is 45 years old, and when the Khmer Rouge took control of Kampong Tralach in 1975 she was 15 years old. Vork Ty is careful to say that she does not remember many events that happened before the Lon Nol regime and she can only describe what happened to her village when the Khmer Rouge intensified its grip on Cambodia . Vork Ty does not remember when US B-52 bombers sprayed the Cambodian countryside with bombs, images that are still vivid in the memories of many Cambodian survivors today. What Vork Ty remembers is only the blurry images and sounds of low flying aircraft just above the tree tops, strafing people running to take cover.
When asked her opinion about America , Vork Ty said she does not know the United States ’ policies today or what it did about the bombing of Cambodia . The only things she knows about the United States are the American people who come to visit her village and ask villagers about their living conditions. Some have supported her village with English language tutoring and smaller village projects. Currently the embassy of the United States provides funding for her Imam San sect community to conduct a small research project on the traditional Cham dialect. She said, “Many Americans I meet are very nice. So I like America .”
Under the Khmer Rouge regime, Vork Ty lost an elder sister who was executed after stealing food in Kampong Chhnang. She does not know where her sister was buried or the larger details surrounding her death. The news about her death came to her through fellow villagers who were kind enough to send her family the bad news. Vork Ty, however, remains grateful that only her sister perished under the Khmer Rouge, while the rest of her family survived the regime. Vork Ty never blamed Allah for her and her family’s ordeal or for the death of her sister, but she is grateful to Allah that her family did not suffer as much as other families in the village. Before 1975 there were 63 families in Chankiek village, but in 1979 only 33 families returned to the village. Vork Ty’s faith in Islam remains strong, even stronger than it was before the Khmer Rouge. Indeed many villagers in her village think the same. They see the suffering under the Khmer Rouge regime as a suffering that happened to everyone including Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Muslims. Thus God is not to blame.
Many villagers in Chankiek village were evacuated from their homes when the Khmer Rouge completely controlled Cambodia . They were sent many places: some to Khmer villages, a few others to Cham villages. Many of them were forced to eat pork, and women were not allowed to keep their hair long. They were not allowed to speak the Cham language. They were ordered to change their Cham names and given new Khmer names. Qurans were collected and burned. However, according to a woman in Chankiek village, one Khmer Rouge cadre also showed pragmatism in his practice of atheism. The cadre forced a woman to eat food with some pork hidden inside. When she ate the food she threw up in front of the cadre. The cadre thought that this showed that not eating pork was not only a belief, but also that some Cham people could not digest pork. The cadre therefore never asked her to eat pork again. Some village men reported that a Cham died after he was forced to eat pork due to sickness.
In early 1975, Vork Ty’s family moved from Chankiek village to a small town just 15 kilometers away, south of Udong. The first time she encountered the Khmer Rouge was when they marched into the town and ordered everyone to leave. She said her family and others left in haste. On a small dirt road leading away from the town, people marched with their belongings. Nobody dared stray from the road because the Khmer Rouge would shoot them if they did. Vork Ty’s family was sent to Kampong Cham. She was put to work in a children’s unit. She used to speak with some Khmer Rouge cadres and village guards in the field. She said she was very scared of the Khmer Rouge but she was never victimized by them in any brutal way. She saw a child who was tortured with plastic bag covering her head and beaten until she almost fainted. Later the child disappeared.
Although she did not suffer nearly as much as other victims of the Khmer Rouge, Vork Ty can not forgive Khmer Rouge leaders. She is also certain that other women she knows would not be able to forgive them because they lost too many loved ones. She said, “The loss to some families is too great to forgive anyone.” Vork Ty knows through newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, and television shows that there is a Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh . She also heard that what’s being done at the court is intended to help people feel relief that some degree of justice can be given to the victims, but won’t bring the complete justice that victims of murder should receive. She said, “It is only symbolic. It would be disappointing if any of the Khmer Rouge leaders currently on trial were released. I want them to stay in prison for the rest of their lives.”
END.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
LOOKING FOR MONTAGNARD MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN… who expelled by the French Embassy in Cambodia on April 20, 1975
When the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh on April 17, 1979 and ordered a city-wide evacuation, hundreds of people fled to the French Embassy for refuge. Upon pressure from the Khmer Rouge however, the French Embassy expelled between 150-300 Montagnard (of Rhade and Jarai ethnicity) men, women, and children on April 20, 1975 reportedly under the direction of Comrade Nhem. Thirty years on, their family members are still patiently awaiting news and would be extremely grateful for any information. Below is a partial list of some of the people who were handed over to the Khmer Rouge that day. If you have any information regarding Comrade Nhem or the people listed below, please contact Documentation Center of Cambodia or Youk Chhang immediately by mail or phone.
Y Huer Buon Ya (male, ~50 years old now, once a student at Lycee Descartes,
son of Y Bhan Kpor)
H'Lan Buon Ya (female, ~ 45 years old
H'o Buon Ya (female, ~ 40 years old)
Y Van Buon Ya (male, ~37 years old)
H'dak Buon Ya (their mother, ~65 years old)
Y Dhik Buon Ya (their uncle, ~60 years old)
Y Nam Buon Ya (their uncle, ~60 years old)
Y Ju Buon Ya (male, ~50 years old now, son of Y Nham Eban)
H'Ngiem Buon Ya (female, ~47 years old)
Y Huan Buon Ya (male, ~45 years old)
H'Nut Buon Ya (their mother, ~60 years old)
"Bernard" Eban (male, ~~45 years old now, son of Y Dhon Adrong)
H'Dua Eban (his mother, ~60 years old)
Y Goc Buon Ya (male, ~ 43 years old now, son of Ksor Duot)
H'Nguom Buon Ya (his mother, ~60 years old)
Y Paul (male, ~ 43 years old now, son of Kpa Doh)
H'Diat (his mother, a nurse, ~ 65 years old)
H'Rec (daughter of Y Dhun Nie, ~55 years old now)
H'Ni (daughter of Y Bham Enuol, ~55 years old now)
Y Be and ___ and ___ (~43 year old son, and two younger children, of Y Ksuah Buon Krong, a teacher H'Ri Buon Ya (their mother, also a teacher, ~65 years old)
Y Phut (~45 years old, son of Y Wun Nie)
----------------
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Y Huer Buon Ya (male, ~50 years old now, once a student at Lycee Descartes,
son of Y Bhan Kpor)
H'Lan Buon Ya (female, ~ 45 years old
H'o Buon Ya (female, ~ 40 years old)
Y Van Buon Ya (male, ~37 years old)
H'dak Buon Ya (their mother, ~65 years old)
Y Dhik Buon Ya (their uncle, ~60 years old)
Y Nam Buon Ya (their uncle, ~60 years old)
Y Ju Buon Ya (male, ~50 years old now, son of Y Nham Eban)
H'Ngiem Buon Ya (female, ~47 years old)
Y Huan Buon Ya (male, ~45 years old)
H'Nut Buon Ya (their mother, ~60 years old)
"Bernard" Eban (male, ~~45 years old now, son of Y Dhon Adrong)
H'Dua Eban (his mother, ~60 years old)
Y Goc Buon Ya (male, ~ 43 years old now, son of Ksor Duot)
H'Nguom Buon Ya (his mother, ~60 years old)
Y Paul (male, ~ 43 years old now, son of Kpa Doh)
H'Diat (his mother, a nurse, ~ 65 years old)
H'Rec (daughter of Y Dhun Nie, ~55 years old now)
H'Ni (daughter of Y Bham Enuol, ~55 years old now)
Y Be and ___ and ___ (~43 year old son, and two younger children, of Y Ksuah Buon Krong, a teacher H'Ri Buon Ya (their mother, also a teacher, ~65 years old)
Y Phut (~45 years old, son of Y Wun Nie)
----------------
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Friday, June 4, 2010
ECCC: THE ROLE OF ASEAN
In his recent address on May 25, 2010, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised the efforts of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and reiterated its importance for Cambodia and the international community at large. It is without a doubt that the tribunal is vital for Cambodia’s long road to recovery from years of genocide and decades of civil war. Likewise, this tribunal also promises to end one of the worse cases of impunity which existed for more than a quarter century: atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime from April 1975-January 1979 that claimed two million lives and displaced nearly the entire population.
Cambodians have waited patiently for justice and they must not be denied it any longer. As ASEAN members are aware of, the tribunal currently lacks the funds needed to complete its trials. A sudden ending to the tribunal resulting from insufficient funds would be a disaster in the justice-seeking process and also an embarrassment for the international community’s commitment to protecting human rights.
Since officials and staff began work in 2006, the tribunal has wrapped up its first case involving former S-21 prison chief Duch in November 2009 (verdict expected in late July 2010) and is presently working on Case 002 involving the four highest level Khmer Rouge leaders still alive: Noun Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, and Ieng Thirith. During its three years of operation, the tribunal has overcome many serious challenges and has improved in its outreach to survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime allowing over 31,000 Cambodians to directly observe Duch’s trial hearing. It is expected that many more Cambodians will observe the trial hearings of Case 002 given the prominence of the four defendants. Additionally, the trials of former of Khmer Rouge leaders has helped to promote national discussions of the atrocities during that era, thereby breaking a long and deeply painful silence borne by millions of survivors. Lastly on a global scale, the tribunal can serve as an effective model for other internationalized criminal tribunals due to its relative low cost, speedy progress, and victim outreach, as noted by his Excellency Mr. Chan Tani, Secretary of the State of the Office of the Council of Ministers of Cambodia at the pledging conference on May 25, 2010. Thus, it is imperative that the tribunal has the necessary funds to continue this valuable work.
I therefore call upon ASEAN member states to answer Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s call for pledge contributions to the tribunal and suggest additionally other ways to provide support. As a fellow ASEAN member nation, Cambodia hopes that other member states will show their support for human rights in the region and in the world, by providing much needed assistance for the Khmer Rouge tribunal. As of present, no member nation has done so.
For the sake of justice for millions of Cambodians, national healing, strengthening relations among ASEAN members, and support of the international human rights regime, it is greatly hoped that ASEAN members will support its neighbor in their effort to rebuild a stronger and more just society.
Youk Chhang
Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
Cambodians have waited patiently for justice and they must not be denied it any longer. As ASEAN members are aware of, the tribunal currently lacks the funds needed to complete its trials. A sudden ending to the tribunal resulting from insufficient funds would be a disaster in the justice-seeking process and also an embarrassment for the international community’s commitment to protecting human rights.
Since officials and staff began work in 2006, the tribunal has wrapped up its first case involving former S-21 prison chief Duch in November 2009 (verdict expected in late July 2010) and is presently working on Case 002 involving the four highest level Khmer Rouge leaders still alive: Noun Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, and Ieng Thirith. During its three years of operation, the tribunal has overcome many serious challenges and has improved in its outreach to survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime allowing over 31,000 Cambodians to directly observe Duch’s trial hearing. It is expected that many more Cambodians will observe the trial hearings of Case 002 given the prominence of the four defendants. Additionally, the trials of former of Khmer Rouge leaders has helped to promote national discussions of the atrocities during that era, thereby breaking a long and deeply painful silence borne by millions of survivors. Lastly on a global scale, the tribunal can serve as an effective model for other internationalized criminal tribunals due to its relative low cost, speedy progress, and victim outreach, as noted by his Excellency Mr. Chan Tani, Secretary of the State of the Office of the Council of Ministers of Cambodia at the pledging conference on May 25, 2010. Thus, it is imperative that the tribunal has the necessary funds to continue this valuable work.
I therefore call upon ASEAN member states to answer Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s call for pledge contributions to the tribunal and suggest additionally other ways to provide support. As a fellow ASEAN member nation, Cambodia hopes that other member states will show their support for human rights in the region and in the world, by providing much needed assistance for the Khmer Rouge tribunal. As of present, no member nation has done so.
For the sake of justice for millions of Cambodians, national healing, strengthening relations among ASEAN members, and support of the international human rights regime, it is greatly hoped that ASEAN members will support its neighbor in their effort to rebuild a stronger and more just society.
Youk Chhang
Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
Justice for the Khmer Krom
Wednesday, 26 May 2010 15:02 John D Ciorciari
As KR leaders face their fate at the ECCC, the court should not forget other
victims.
After more than 30 years of impunity, some key architects of the Khmer Rouge
reign of terror are finally being held accountable at the Extraordinary
Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The upcoming joint trial of Nuon
Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirth and Khieu Samphan holds promise for survivors
who have waited too long for justice.
Unfortunately, one important set of crimes is in danger of exclusion. In
January, the ECCC's co-investigating judges decided to charge the suspects
with genocide and crimes against humanity against Cambodia's Cham Muslim and
ethnic Vietnamese minorities, but not the Khmer Krom - ethnic Khmers with
roots in southern Vietnam. The ECCC's pre-trial chamber recently upheld that
decision.
The pre-trial chamber grounded its decision partly on a technicality. Months
ago, the co-prosecutors sent a memo to the co-investigating judges about
possible genocide against Khmer Krom in Pursat province. They titled the
memo an "investigative request" rather than a "supplementary submission".
The latter title would have triggered an investigation; the former may cost
some Khmer Krom survivors their deserved day in court.
But the pre-trial chamber's decision does leave some room for
reconsideration. It does not bar the possibility that the co-prosecutors can
simply white-out the old title, type on a new one and resubmit their memo as
a "supplementary submission". The co-prosecutors ought to do so.
The ECCC cannot account for the myriad offenses of Democratic Kampuchea
(DK), but there are good reasons to hear out the Khmer Krom, who have long
argued that their community suffered genocide and targeted crimes against
humanity. Indeed, documents and survivor accounts indicate that the DK
regime sometimes targeted Khmer Krom for abuse. In at least one
well-documented case, Khmer Krom were butchered en masse. In 1977, hundreds
were rounded up and massacred in Pursat's Bakan district - a calculated mass
murder with some chilling parallels to the Srebrenica Massacre of 1995. Such
offenses demand investigation and justice.
The reasons for these atrocities remain subject to debate. The Khmer Krom
spoke Vietnamese and brought syncretic cultural practices from the Mekong
Delta. Cultural disdain may thus have contributed to their plight. Under the
Pol Pot regime, persons with foreign cultural characteristics were suspect.
Depending on the evidence, the ECCC could find that senior DK officials
committed genocide by seeking to destroy Khmer Krom based on their perceived
ethnic impurity.
The case for crimes against humanity is easier because it encompasses abuses
based on political motives. Political targeting of the Khmer Krom was
clearly at work. The communist DK regime bitterly resented the prominent
roles Khmer Krom played in Lon Nol's Khmer Republic and the CIA's Mobile
Strike Force Command during the Vietnam War. The Khmer Rouge also regarded
ties to Vietnam as politically suspect after 1975, when the xenophobic DK
regime turned its back on Hanoi. Documents show that Vietnamese-speaking
Khmer Krom were often singled out as potential spies and purged for that
reason.
The complex case of the Khmer Krom lies at the heart of unresolved questions
about the DK regime. For three decades, survivors and scholars have tried to
discern the motives for Khmer Rouge brutality. Was the killing driven
primarily by excesses in radical communism? Or was the violence also rooted
to a considerable extent in racism and nationalism?
The legal distinction between genocide and other grave crimes is sometimes
unhelpful. In Cambodia, it risks suggesting that certain victims suffered
more than others, when in reality all suffered horrific abuses. This
distinction is nevertheless useful in trying to properly understand the
terror in Democratic Kampuchea. By examining crimes against the Khmer Krom,
the ECCC can help shed light on the true animus of the DK regime.
The ECCC does not have infinite resources, and it is rightly under pressure
to rein in its budget and speed up the trials. However, ECCC officials must
be wise in deciding how and where to cut and prune. Adjudicating crimes
against the Khmer Krom in Pursat would add little to the hefty sum of time
and money already spent on the trials. In fact, the court's investigators
and prosecutors have completed most of the necessary investigation
evidencing these crimes. Bypassing the Khmer Krom case would deny this
important and courageous community a sense of justice. The ECCC could also
fail to reveal some of the most illuminating truths about the Pol Pot
regime.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John D Ciorciari is an assistant professor of Public Policy at the
University of Michigan and a senior legal advisor with the Documentation
Centre of Cambodia.
Copyright © 2010 The Phnom Penh Post. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
As KR leaders face their fate at the ECCC, the court should not forget other
victims.
After more than 30 years of impunity, some key architects of the Khmer Rouge
reign of terror are finally being held accountable at the Extraordinary
Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The upcoming joint trial of Nuon
Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirth and Khieu Samphan holds promise for survivors
who have waited too long for justice.
Unfortunately, one important set of crimes is in danger of exclusion. In
January, the ECCC's co-investigating judges decided to charge the suspects
with genocide and crimes against humanity against Cambodia's Cham Muslim and
ethnic Vietnamese minorities, but not the Khmer Krom - ethnic Khmers with
roots in southern Vietnam. The ECCC's pre-trial chamber recently upheld that
decision.
The pre-trial chamber grounded its decision partly on a technicality. Months
ago, the co-prosecutors sent a memo to the co-investigating judges about
possible genocide against Khmer Krom in Pursat province. They titled the
memo an "investigative request" rather than a "supplementary submission".
The latter title would have triggered an investigation; the former may cost
some Khmer Krom survivors their deserved day in court.
But the pre-trial chamber's decision does leave some room for
reconsideration. It does not bar the possibility that the co-prosecutors can
simply white-out the old title, type on a new one and resubmit their memo as
a "supplementary submission". The co-prosecutors ought to do so.
The ECCC cannot account for the myriad offenses of Democratic Kampuchea
(DK), but there are good reasons to hear out the Khmer Krom, who have long
argued that their community suffered genocide and targeted crimes against
humanity. Indeed, documents and survivor accounts indicate that the DK
regime sometimes targeted Khmer Krom for abuse. In at least one
well-documented case, Khmer Krom were butchered en masse. In 1977, hundreds
were rounded up and massacred in Pursat's Bakan district - a calculated mass
murder with some chilling parallels to the Srebrenica Massacre of 1995. Such
offenses demand investigation and justice.
The reasons for these atrocities remain subject to debate. The Khmer Krom
spoke Vietnamese and brought syncretic cultural practices from the Mekong
Delta. Cultural disdain may thus have contributed to their plight. Under the
Pol Pot regime, persons with foreign cultural characteristics were suspect.
Depending on the evidence, the ECCC could find that senior DK officials
committed genocide by seeking to destroy Khmer Krom based on their perceived
ethnic impurity.
The case for crimes against humanity is easier because it encompasses abuses
based on political motives. Political targeting of the Khmer Krom was
clearly at work. The communist DK regime bitterly resented the prominent
roles Khmer Krom played in Lon Nol's Khmer Republic and the CIA's Mobile
Strike Force Command during the Vietnam War. The Khmer Rouge also regarded
ties to Vietnam as politically suspect after 1975, when the xenophobic DK
regime turned its back on Hanoi. Documents show that Vietnamese-speaking
Khmer Krom were often singled out as potential spies and purged for that
reason.
The complex case of the Khmer Krom lies at the heart of unresolved questions
about the DK regime. For three decades, survivors and scholars have tried to
discern the motives for Khmer Rouge brutality. Was the killing driven
primarily by excesses in radical communism? Or was the violence also rooted
to a considerable extent in racism and nationalism?
The legal distinction between genocide and other grave crimes is sometimes
unhelpful. In Cambodia, it risks suggesting that certain victims suffered
more than others, when in reality all suffered horrific abuses. This
distinction is nevertheless useful in trying to properly understand the
terror in Democratic Kampuchea. By examining crimes against the Khmer Krom,
the ECCC can help shed light on the true animus of the DK regime.
The ECCC does not have infinite resources, and it is rightly under pressure
to rein in its budget and speed up the trials. However, ECCC officials must
be wise in deciding how and where to cut and prune. Adjudicating crimes
against the Khmer Krom in Pursat would add little to the hefty sum of time
and money already spent on the trials. In fact, the court's investigators
and prosecutors have completed most of the necessary investigation
evidencing these crimes. Bypassing the Khmer Krom case would deny this
important and courageous community a sense of justice. The ECCC could also
fail to reveal some of the most illuminating truths about the Pol Pot
regime.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John D Ciorciari is an assistant professor of Public Policy at the
University of Michigan and a senior legal advisor with the Documentation
Centre of Cambodia.
Copyright © 2010 The Phnom Penh Post. All Rights Reserved.
Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE
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About Me
- Duong Dara
- Dara Duong was born in 1971 in Battambang province, Cambodia. His life changed forever at age four, when the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975. During the regime that controlled Cambodia from 1975-1979, Dara’s father, grandparents, uncle and aunt were executed, along with almost 3 million other Cambodians. Dara’s mother managed to keep him and his brothers and sisters together and survive the years of the Khmer Rouge regime. However, when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia, she did not want to live under Communist rule. She fled with her family to a refugee camp on the Cambodian-Thai border, where they lived for more than ten years. Since arriving in the United States, Dara’s goal has been to educate people about the rich Cambodian culture that the Khmer Rouge tried to destroy and about the genocide, so that the world will not stand by and allow such atrocities to occur again. Toward that end, he has created the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, which began in his garage and is now in White Center, Washington. Dara’s story is one of survival against enormous odds, one of perseverance, one of courage and hope.