Beneath the upcoming high profile visit of UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon to Cambodia, upon request from Prime Minister Hun Sen, lies three decades of questionable UN efforts at mediating peace in Cambodia. The UN, known for both excellent health programs and embarrassing peace keeping missions, has a mixed record when it comes to dealing with the Khmer Rouge and promoting democracy in Cambodia. This mixed record- entailing official support and prosecution of the Khmer Rouge- is fresh in the minds of survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime. Consequently, survivors are both welcoming and weary of the UN. Given this, the UN should carefully assess if its agenda in Cambodia- whether to fashion a convenient peace or promote legal justice- is truly in the interest of survivors.
The UN has been involved in the Khmer Rouge issue on three prominent occasions. The first was after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979 when the UN supported the defeated Khmer Rouge movement. As news of mass starvation, torture, and killings from Cambodian refugees reached international headlines, the UN decided to allow the Khmer Rouge to retain the Cambodian seat at the General Assembly. From 1979 to 1982, the Khmer Rouge under “Democratic Kampuchea” occupied Cambodia’s seat. From 1982 to 1993, the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea in which the Khmer Rouge was a tripartite member, held the seat. Thus for over a decade the UN recognized the Khmer Rouge faction as the legitimate government of Cambodia while rejecting the Vietnamese-backed People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). Survivors of the regime were appalled. Indeed Cold War politics at the time shifted the focus from genocide in Cambodia to Vietnam’s “invasion” of Cambodia, thus providing the UN justification for supporting the Khmer Rouge. However, as the bearer of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Genocide Convention, and the Convention on Torture, the UN should not have prioritized politics over millions of survivors on an issue of government recognition.
The wave of UN support for the Khmer Rouge changed however with the falling tide of communism in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. By this time, all Vietnamese troops- which numbered as many as 150,000 during its peak- had left Cambodia and the PRK government abandoned its Marxist ideology. The UN, and the international world, recast their eyes upon a newly non-communist Cambodia. It was an opportune time for the UN to make amends with the people of Cambodia after supporting the Khmer Rouge for ten years.
The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was created in 1992 to bring peace and order. It was a new experience for both Cambodians and the UN. For Cambodians, it was the first time a transitional authority governed their country. For the UN, it was the first time assuming control of a sovereign administration and running an election from scratch. The price tag of the operation was also a first- $2 billion. It was the most that the UN had spent on a single peacekeeping operation at that time. Unfortunately however, UNTAC failed to disarm the Khmer Rouge, allowing them the means to continue waging a low-intensity civil war.
To make matters worse, democratic principles were compromised during UNTAC. Although Prince Ranariddh’s FUNCINPEC won the election, Hun Sen of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) was permitted to govern equally alongside Ranariddh as Co-Prime Minister. An unstable solution, this coalition government was essentially run by the CPP which had become entrenched administratively after 10 years of de facto rule. In effect, the winners of the election had little power, and in 1997, had no power following a conflict which left Hun Sun sole prime minister. UNTAC’s failure to enforce the election results gravely tarnishes the otherwise noteworthy May 1993 election in which there was a 90% voter turnout. A convenient and temporary peace was achieved, but at the cost of potential long-term political reform. The election was the first time, and so far remains the only time, that the CPP faced a viable challenge to its omnipotent rule. Once again, it appears that the UN prioritized political expediency over the interests of ordinary Cambodians.
The UN’s latest involvement on the Khmer Rouge issue comes in the complicated form of a Cambodian-dominated hybrid tribunal called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). From its inception, the tribunal was entangled in a power struggle between the UN and the Royal Cambodian Government (RGC). In the end, the UN compromised and heeded greater control over the tribunal to the underdeveloped, weak, and heavily politicized Cambodian judiciary. Unsurprisingly, allegations of corruption and charges of political influence enveloped the tribunal within its first year of operating. In response, the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services investigated the charges and issued a report in 2008. The report however was labeled confidential and thus not released to the public. Similarly, a report compiling the results of a different investigation conducted by the Independent Counsellor of the ECCC was also classified as confidential. The Cambodia public, and in particular survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime, were left in the dark.
Another issue of concern is the number defendants to be prosecuted. During the negotiation phase of the ECCC, the UN wanted a greater number of former Khmer Rouge to be prosecuted than the RGC. It seemed that the RGC had prevailed on this dispute with the jurisdiction of prosecution in the ECCC law limited to “senior Khmer Rouge members and those most responsible.” Five former leaders were charged by the ECCC and the RGC was content. Later however, former International Co-Prosecutor Robert Petit expressed the possibility of prosecuting more individuals than the five. The RGC quickly issued a counter response. It warned that expanding the number of defendants would lead to instability and violence, thereby threatening the peace that Cambodia has enjoyed for two decades. Cambodian Co-Prosecutor Chea Leang supported the government’s stance. Afterward, Petit resigned. The UN has not let the issue rest however; it is still pushing for more indictments.
Throughout this disagreement, one wonders if the wishes of the survivors have been considered. According to a 2009 report by the Victim Participation Project (VPA) of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, it found that 41.4% of 1,110 people surveyed did not want the ECCC to prosecute any more individuals while 56.8% wanted more individuals tried. It should be noted however that approximately 30% of survey respondents were those born after the regime, aged 20-30 years. This is a group that, although limited in their knowledge of the Khmer Rouge period, is nevertheless receptive to Western ideals of legal justice. The VPA report found that 67.5% of them wanted more individuals tried. Taking this into account, then approximately 52% of survivors (those who directly experienced the Khmer Rouge regime) want more prosecutions. Given this figure, it is difficult for either the UN or the RGC to claim that their decision to expand or limit prosecutions is reflective of the majority of survivors. Rather, the UN should take this opportunity to seriously consider what is in the best interest of survivors. Advancing a political agenda on such a significant human rights issue will once again signal to survivors that politics is more important than their suffering and loss. The new UN administration still has the chance to change its mixed record on the Khmer Rouge issue by how proceeding carefully and conscientiously with the ECCC. After all, the tribunal was created for the survivors.
Dacil Keo is a doctoral candidate in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) here in Cambodia she is doing her field work. Last semester she taught "Southeast Asian Politics" and discussed with her students the challenges facing the ECCC and the UN's role.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment