Longtime Scholar Sees Disappointment in Trials Ahead

Im Sothearith, VOA Khmer | Washington, DC Tuesday, 02 November 2010

Photo: AP
David Chandler, a researcher and author who writes a book about Khmer Rouge
history, seen in a screen at the court press center of the U.N.-backed
tribunal in Phnom Penh, in 2009.

[Editor's note: The Khmer Rouge tribunal is expected to benefit Cambodia by
bringing justice to senior-most leaders of the regime, creating
reconciliation for its victims and offering a model to the national courts.
But the measure of its success has been varied. VOA Khmer spoke with David
Chandler, a Cambodian scholar and author and former diplomat posted in Phnom
Penh.]

You have been following Cambodian politics and history closely for decades.
As a diplomat in the early 1960s, did you foresee the tragedy that would
befall the country? How did this happen?

When I was there in 1960, I certainly had no idea that this was going to
happen. We didn’t even know the Vietnam War was going to happen. That was
what catalyzed the Cambodian civil war, followed by the Khmer Rouge victory.
That had barely started when I was there. The fighting had barely begun. I
certainly couldn’t imagine Cambodia changing itself rapidly. But of course
the changes that happened in the late 1960s, when I wasn’t there, were quite
extensive in the society and in the growth of the communist resistance and
in the Vietnam War and in the gradual loss of confidence that people felt in
[then-prince Norodom] Sihanouk. When I was there Sihanouk was immensely
popular, except among a few members of the elite. But by the time he was
thrown out, I think he was quite unpopular, certainly in Phnom Penh. So that
was a big change that I wasn’t able to predict, but it did happen when I was
not there. I was not in the position to foresee anything when I was in
Cambodia in 1960-62. It seemed to me a quite wonderful country to be posted
to and to study.

You taught Southeast Asian history and wrote a considerable number of books,
including “A History of Cambodia,” “Brother Number One,” “Facing the
Cambodian Past,” and “The Tragedy of Cambodian History.” Given your
knowledge, what are your expectations for the Khmer Rouge tribunal? How will
the tribunal contribute to history?

I don’t think it contributes an awful lot to the world at large but it does
add momentum to the International Court of Justice. I think this is one of
its successes, by being able to bring at least Duch [the former head of Tuol
Sleng prison] to trial and bring him safely to a verdict. That was quite the
best that could be expected. In the '90s, I never expected the Khmer Rouge
leaders to come to a tribunal. I think the Cambodian government resisted
this possibility for a long time, and of course Americans in the 1980s were
not interested in doing this.

So there are a lot of people to blame for the delays. But once it got going,
I still wasn’t too optimistic until the Duch trial actually started, and
then it seemed to me that it was worth the wait. You had a trial that was
quite fair and it was quite detailed. The evidence is pretty clear that was
gathered about this man and his own testimony was very revealing. So, it was
leaning toward a verdict that seems to me—given that the International Court
very seldom gives people more than 35 years—that delivered a sort of maximum
verdict with some time off for the time he spent in jail already.

I think the verdict was OK. As for the whole tribunal, thus far it’s been a
limited success. Now, what’s going to happen next I can’t predict, but I’m
not as optimistic about the remaining trials as I was about the Duch trial
once it got going.

Duch was given a commuted sentence of 19 years, sparking a mixed reaction in
the public and among victims. Prime Minister Hun Sen welcomed the verdict.
What is your view of the trial and the verdict?

I think it was pretty fairly done. I think it took a long time to get
everything lined up. The procedures are very complicated. There’s a lot of
foot-dragging on the part of the government and some obstruction on the part
of the UN, which moves very slowly. There were charges of corruption
involved, but I don’t think they were very important. Once the trial got
going, I think Duch was treated really quite fairly. A lot of people,
including victims and survivors, got a chance to voice their views. I think
the prosecution was clear without being vindictive. I think and the defense
did as good a job—not the Cambodian lawyer but the French lawyer –as good a
job as he could, to get some of those verdicts that were gotten by taking
time off for his cooperation and so on, which you’re not going to get for
the next defendants. There’s not going to be any cooperation from the next
defendants. They have never said they want to cooperate at all.

You returned to Cambodia two years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. You've
said Cambodians “seemed stunned, remote, and haunted” and that you were
“unready as a scholar to confront the enormity of recent Cambodian history.”
Given that, how do you view the disappointment of victims in the Duch
verdict?

I think for one thing, the judges were operating inside the parameters of
the national court. They weren’t actually offering the kind of justice that
the victims wanted. And some of the victims of course wanted him to be
killed, and there’s no death penalty in Cambodia. I think letting him out at
the age of 87, which he may not ever reach, I think is fairly good,
considering he’s admitted his responsibilities. I think, well, certainly the
life imprisonment was not an option because the international courts have
never given anybody life imprisonment in any of the trials that they’ve had
over the years in these various places.

So they’re operating inside UN rules. Now this is something that had to be
explained to people. This was not a Cambodian court that could do more
extensive punishment. I can understand their feelings, that this is what
they felt, the victims felt more should have been done. The people who I
sympathize with most are the people in civil parties who had direct
connections to S-21.

I think people who suffered under the Khmer Rouge cannot blame Duch for
their sufferings, but the people who had relatives at S-21 certainly can.
But I think the next trial, the civil parties, are going to be perhaps
almost too extensive where people are going to be blaming Ieng Sary for
killing their grandfather and stuff and this is going to make it very, very
difficult for that trial to go forward. People want to have some sort of
person to blame.

I think there is a whole regime to blame, and the whole regime can’t go on
trial; only a few people can. I can see why these people say the sentence
seems to them short. But on the other hand, the ordinary people, the victims
of the Khmer Rouge, waited for years to say anything about this. They waited
until the whole opportunity arose from outside the country to make justice.
As long as the [Cambodian] government was opposed to anything, people didn’t
say anything.

Cambodians never gave any money to the tribunal. The government never wanted
this tribunal to take place. So the international people come in and have
one, and then people say, “Well, that’s not kind of thing we wanted.” But we
never knew what they wanted, in a way. I don’t want to be too harsh on them.
It’s a difficult situation. I see their point, but the verdict can’t be
fixed. And I’m quite uncertain that there’s going to be a verdict on these
next defendants. This may be all these people are going to get.

But I think there’s been a raising of consciousness, national consciousness,
which is very important. That’s very painful for the victims but it’s also
very important for the people who don’t know about the people, about just
how terrible they were, and what terrible things they did. I think it’s very
important for the next generation of Cambodians to become aware of that. In
that sense, the tribunal has been a success for them.

Given the value of the Duch case, what do you expect from the second case,
for leaders Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith?

I can’t really predict what Case 002 is going to be. But I think it’s
momentum among the people who want to have something to happen in 002. I’m
not sure they are going to satisfied. Now what they’re going to do when they
are dissatisfied, I’m not sure. They’re not going to demonstrate or take to
the streets or shoot anybody. I mean, Hun Sen says there’s going to be a
civil war, but you have to ask who’s going to have the guns. People don’t
have any guns.

There may be some discontent and some unhappiness about the way that trial
is going to proceed because I think these people are going to be very
evasive and very delaying and very tactical. And they’re actually more
guilty than Duch, in the sense that these aren’t people who received orders,
these are people who gave orders. Duch didn’t use the so-called Eichmann
defense that, “I was only just obeying orders.” He said “I was, but I wanted
to obey the orders;” he said that, and “I’m sorry I did.” But these other
people gave orders, although they deny that.

I think the tribunal is just a part of a whole consciousness-raising
exercise, including the DC-Cam textbooks, opening up TV daily broadcast and
bringing in 30,000 people in to watch the trial. Some of those were
journalists and Westerners, so let’s say 20,000 were Cambodians: they are
going to go back where they came from with stories with about what they saw.
Some of those stories will be helpful and interesting, and some of them
would be foolish, but that’s the way people are. But you’re going to get a
lot more consciousness about how this Khmer Rouge era is getting brought
back as an era in Cambodian history.

I don’t think it should be officially forgotten about. So I think it does
have value. I think one of the big challenges is of course going to be
funding. I’m not sure they’re going to have enough money to pay for this
much complicated case, having already spent a lot of money on the quite
comparatively simple one. That’s going be genuine challenge. I’m not sure
the money is going to be forthcoming. None is going to come from the
Cambodian government. That’s for sure.

It can come from foreign donors, but I think there might be a certain amount
of wariness in the global financial situation to forking out more money for
a trial that might not come to anything. So that’s a genuine challenge to my
mind. Another will be how to handle the civil parties. They've got 4,000
people already registered as civil parties. A third will be how to pin these
people down without documentary evidence of the sort that you have on Duch.

I know people are working very hard to surmount these challenges and to make
the trial come off, and I certainly wish them well. But I can’t really, so
far, be terribly optimistic on what might happen.

Blame for the Khmer Rouge has in part fallen on Chinese assistance and the
US bombardment of Cambodia. And criticism has been put on both for their
subsequent support of the Khmer Rouge in the UN. As a former diplomat, how
do you think the tribunal with affect Cambodia's relationships with these
two countries?

I think the American bombing of Cambodia was a disaster, but I think it did
postpone the Khmer Rouge victory, which is what the Americans had in mind.
The Khmer Rouge might easily have won and taken Phnom Penh in 1973 if it had
not been for the American bombing, which was a disaster and inexcusable.

The UN thing is even more, or just as, inexcusable, and I think this traces
back to a kind of animosity that the Americans felt toward the Vietnamese
after the Vietnam war and did not want to support the Vietnamese-supported
regime in Phnom Penh. So that was another bad period. I think this has
produced a lot of resentment on Hun Sen’s part because he was, among with
other people, working quite hard during the [People’s Republic of Kampuchea]
period to put Cambodia back on its feet without the aid that he could have
used from UN and from other countries.

But I mean China of course has denied all; they said they weren’t even
friendly with the Khmer Rouge, which is a complete lie because the evidence,
the documentary evidence, is very high on that, that they were pretty strong
supporters of it from the very beginning. The Chinese fooled Pol Pot and his
colleagues into thinking that their aid was going to go on forever and that
he could beat the Vietnamese.

There has been talk of putting the Americans on trial instead of the Khmer
Rouge leaders. But the Khmer Rouge leaders wanted to put that government of
theirs in place with or without American behavior. They won the war. The
Americans didn’t win it for them. They won their own war. I just don’t think
you can blame foreigners for the Khmer Rouge regime. You can blame them for
a lot, and I think we’re culpable of a lot, but not for the victory of the
Khmer Rouge.

China has maintained a close friendship with Cambodia no matter the regimes
or practices. Why is Cambodia important to China? And why would Cambodia
continue to see China as important?

I think by and large they think China is a friend of theirs now because they’re
giving them large sums of money with no strings attached. I think Cambodia’s
importance to China, I don’t think it is terribly important. It’s just part
of their policy, back thousands of years, to having friendly nations along
its borders and being able to exploit these nations economically. The dams
on the Mekong and so on in Laos are an example of that.

To have friendly relations with countries that will be able to provide them
certain raw materials and investment opportunities. I think that they were
connected with the Khmer Rouge, it’s just not remembered or paid attention
to by the Cambodian government. So I think China is a very welcome ally of
the Cambodian government because they’re coming in with no accusations; they
don’t ever accuse the Cambodian government of corruption; they say they
never were friendly with the Khmer Rouge. It’s quite obvious that they’ve
been opposed to the trial all along, but there’s no paper trail for that. So
it’s an ongoing relationship, I think, that will probably be for the
Cambodian government’s advantage.

[Concerning the Khmer Rouge] I think there were elements of the Chinese
foreign policy in those days that supported world revolution, and this is in
a very radical phase of Chinese history. Also China had a long term policy
of friendship with Cambodia, friendship with Sihanouk, friendship with the
Khmer Rouge, now friendship with Hun Sen. That has always been part of their
five principles.

Now, the point is, it seems to me, that if you give these large amounts of
aid, that is not interfering in domestic political affairs in Cambodia. But
I think it’s pretty obvious that they expect a certain amount of respect for
those gifts. They don’t want to have some of their policies exposed or
opposed and this would be policies such as their expansion into Southeast
Asia generally or their collaboration with the Khmer Rouge. They don’t want
that brought out into the open.

So in a way they are interfering with their policies, but they can say, “No,
no. We’re just giving gifts for the development of the country,” which of
course is what it looks like. So, there’re two sides to their policy. One is
the way they’ve always operated, in terms of not interfering as much as,
say, the Americans have interfered in the internal politics of lots of
countries. The other is that the generosity of gifts comes along with a kind
of unspoken expectation that the Cambodians will serve Chinese interests
when Chinese interests are threatened.

What role will Duch play in the next trial?

I think he is not that important. I mean if Son Sen were on trial—and of
course Son Sen was assassinated by Pol Pot—if he were on trial, he was No. 3
in the regime, right after Nuon Chea, [then] Duch would be a terrific
witness. I mean, they could nail Son Sen to real responsibility for the
whole operation of S-21. I don’t think the operation of S-21 was of interest
to other people, except when the top people were being interrogated, and
then they went up to Nuon Chea to look at some of the top communists being
tried. So Duch can only be somewhat helpful. I mean he was not in the
circle. He did not go to those cabinet meetings. I don’t know how much he’s
going to give; I don’t know exactly where he stands at the moment. But he’s
certainly going to be asked to give more testimony about these top leaders,
and I think people might think there are things he knows that he hasn’t
mentioned, but I doubt that is true. I think he is going to be some help,
but not a lot of help.

What we didn’t mention is Duch’s admission of guilt, which a lot people said
was insincere. Well, how can you tell? I mean, if he’s done this, he puts
himself on the line, right? If he’s lying, what difference does it make? See
what I mean? He said, “Sorry, I did what I did, and I am sorry.”

I mean, it seems to me, saying he was insincere doesn’t get you anywhere.
But that was quite a dangerous thing for him to do. I think that sped up the
trial considerably and it justified the verdict. And in that sense, to some
extent, he was a more courageous person than the other witnesses are going
to be. They are not going to stand on evidence and say that they did
anything. They are going to avoid evidence and say they didn’t do anything.
So, I think there’s a contrast there between what people had expected and
what they saw and what had really happened under the Khmer Rouge. This is
very ironic.

They saw a person who had been in charge of all these murders at that
prison, and he admitted it. Now people who are worse in my mind were the
people who gave him those orders or who approved of that prison, and they’re
not going to say they knew anything about it. So the Cambodian people are
not going to be satisfied with the next bunch of defendants because they are
not going to see the kind of admissions and evidence that they saw before.
These guys are going to even look innocent.

There’s still some people who think Khieu Samphan was innocent because of
his past when he was a decent representative in the National Assembly years
and years ago and because he was never corrupt. But, I mean, he was right in
there at all those situations. He was much closer to the top than Duch ever
was and stayed with Pol Pot until Pol Pot died. Duch at least left the
movement.

I think the next trial is going to be very disappointing compared to the
trial of Duch. I think people should brace themselves: they are not going to
be able to say, “Well, this isn’t fair,” because they’re not going to get
any evidence. They’re just going to get a bunch of smoke out of those
people.


Searching for the Truth.
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