Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch BlogPeacemakers Trust posts news, reports or announcements of interest to people studying or working in the field of dispute resolution, conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Inclusion of an item on the media watch blog does not imply endorsement or agreement of Peacemakers Trust with views expressed by authors of posted items.
If the situation continues down the current path, with a unilateral reconciliation process, no fixed date for elections, and little genuine effort to address the grievances of urban and rural poor, there is likely to be a deepened political divide and renewed violence, exacerbated by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s continuing role.
(...more)“A half a day per victim.” That’s how an outraged bystander parsed the prison sentence given to Kaing Guek Eav, aka Comrade Duch, by the hybrid Cambodia-United Nations Extraordinary Chambers in Cambodia. The sentence amounted to nineteen years for the murder of fourteen thousand people in the torture and interrogation facility Duch ran as an official of the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979. Duch was the first of four henchmen of Angka (the KR name for its purified communist Cambodia) to go on trial, and the only one likely to apologize. The fourteen thousand victims were a drop in an ocean of 1.4 million Cambodians who were starved, worked to death, and murdered by the KR between April 1975, when they overthrew the infirm and corrupt Lon Nol regime, and January 1979, when the Vietnamese invaded and took power…
In the trial, Duch took pains to point out that he didn’t do any of the dirty work himself. But what he did do, incontestably, was administer the place with savvy, purpose, and efficiency. Professional pride occasionally crept out into his testimony. Duch is a born-again Christian, who admits he did wrong—he apologized profusely. Taken to the killing field of Choung Ek outside Phnom Penh where prisoners were trucked to be executed, he even wept. A self-professed child of God, he maintained his innocence. It was the Nuremberg defense: they made me do it, I was a cog in a machine, if I hadn’t killed I would have been killed.
(...more)A total of 145 people are being detained in prisons across the country after their arrests in connection with land disputes since 2008, according to statistics released yesterday by a local rights group.
(...more)Scholars and practitioners have devoted increasing attention to the roles played by religious leaders and communities, both in instigating and prolonging violent conflict and in negotiating and building peace. In much of the world, formal religious leadership tends to be heavily dominated by men, and so investigations of religion and conflict have tended to focus on men’s perspectives and roles. Women’s engagement in religious peacemaking has received far less attention and their perspectives, needs, and unique leverage are often largely ignored in the design of traditional religious peacemaking initiatives. However, women often play critical roles in conflict situations…. Recent Interviews
Myanmar has announced it will hold elections on November 7, but the country’s leading opposition figure, Aung San Suu Kyi will not take part in the vote.
Her party, the National League for Democracy, has refused to register and disbanded, citing unjust election rules.
But some are questioning whether an election boycott is the right move.
Thailand needs open dialogue between all stakeholders to solve the country’s “phenomenal” political polarisation, conflict resolution facilitator Adam Kahane says.
(...more)On 3 August 2010 an elephant injured by a landmine while working in Myanmar/Burma arrived at the Friends of the Asian Elephant (FAE) hospital in northern Thailand.
(...more)The conviction, on July 26, of Kaing Guek Eav, or “Duch”, the former prison chief of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, drew international media attention to Cambodia, at least for one news cycle. The verdict of the United Nations-sponsored tribunal was important in that, for the first time, a key Khmer Rouge official was held accountable for the unspeakable crimes of the regime. The press highlighted the outcry that the “real” sentence, 19 years in jail, was too lenient.
International coverage of the Duch verdict eclipses two issues. First, the international community is ambivalent about the tribunal. Many consider it deeply flawed by interference by the Cambodian government. Others, especially in the West, insist that the tribunal must continue, as if this were the only road to justice and reconciliation in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. Nothing is farther from the truth.
(...more)Cambodia’s prime minister said Thursday he will ask United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to help mediate talks he is proposing to help settle a border dispute with neighboring Thailand…
Thailand opposes the idea as unnecessary because a 2000 agreement between the two countries provides the framework for a solution.
(...more)You can’t solve a national controversy by hosting a television show – not even one that lasts three hours. But Premier Abhisit Vejjajiva did make that attempt last Sunday. And the outcome: The show did get good ratings, and a rally on the subject dispersed a few hours later.
No, the issue hasn’t been settled. But the fact that Abhisit sat down with his critics on the Preah Vihear temple controversy for a live programme allowed him to once again claim that no other prime minister had done this before…
The four members who represented the “Thai Patriots’ Alliance” on the show should also be commended for their no-nonsense, well-argued presentations. There were no emotional outbursts, there was no exchange of vitriolic rhetoric.
(...more)The situation along Thai-Cambodian border became more tense Wednesday as villagers avoided farming at border areas, Thai News Agency (TNA) reported Wednesday.
(...more)This is an update about the first annual Muslim Jewish Conference in Vienna – a gathering of young professionals from 25 countries.
The Muslim Jewish Conference is a dream for interfaith dialogue that young students worked hard to realize. The size was right – sixty participants from Indonesia to Israel.
(...more)Thailand’s “yellow shirts” have agreed to shift their rally venue from the Government House to the Kilawes Stadium in central Bangkok on Saturday, the Thai News Agency (TNA) reported quoting Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva as saying Friday.
The decision to stage the rally at the Kilawes Stadium of the Thailand-Japan Youth Center in the Din Daeng area was made after an over two-hour meeting between Abhisit and representatives of the “yellow shirts” network.
The “yellow shirts” rally is aimed to demand the government to revoke the memorandum of understanding (MOU) on boundary demarcation signed with Cambodia in 2000.
(...more)Compensation for victims of the Khmer Rouge is in part a responsibility of the government, a tribunal monitor said Thursday.
“Because the state has an obligation to take responsibility for all kinds of people’s suffering,” said Lat Ky, a court monitor for the rights group Adhoc, as a guest on “Hello VOA.”
Many victims were disappointed with the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal’s sentencing of prison chief Duch last week.
(...more)On 06 August 2010, a high-ranking official for the National Assembly’s economy and finance committee [Cheam Yeap] asked the US to cancel the debt owed by the Lon Nol Khmer Republic regime as a repayment to Cambodia for the losses during the war between the US and Vietnam.
(...more)As far as schools go, there was nothing remarkable about Tuol Sleng. The building stood unobtrusively along an avenue in Phnom Penh. But it was in its ordinariness, in the way it became part of Cambodia’s urban landscape, by not drawing any attention, that the school gave meaning to Hannah Arendt’s chilling phrase, the banality of evil.
(...more)After taking office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama decided to use Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) as his Asian experiment in reversing Bush administration policy. As it did with Iran and Sudan, the Obama administration engaged with Myanmar’s junta, although it did not push to end sanctions Congress passed in the late 1990s in response to massive human rights abuses. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell has made two trips to Myanmar over the past year to try to spur dialogue about critical issues like the upcoming national elections, which will probably take place in late fall. They would be Myanmar’s first since the 1990 polls won by the party of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, though the military never allowed that party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), to take its seats.
Engagement has delivered some results. A willingness to talk with the regime in Myanmar has signaled to the other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that Washington is committed to upgrading relations with Southeast Asia.
(...more)The new international convention banning the use and production of cluster munitions takes effect on Sunday, with more than 30 countries having ratified the treaty. The Convention on Cluster Munitions is seen as a major step in disarmament, even as unexploded ordnance from the Vietnam War 40 years ago still extracts a deadly toll in southeast Asia, especially Laos.
(...more)BANGKOK — Thailand must immediately lift emergency rule imposed during the recent mass opposition protests and hold an election as soon as possible for national reconciliation, a leading think-tank said Monday.
The emergency decree was invoked across about a third of the country during the “Red Shirt” rallies in Bangkok that sparked clashes leaving 90 people dead, ending with an army crackdown on May 19 and a subsequent rampage by protesters.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) said the emergency law, which has handed sweeping powers to the police and military, had empowered authorities to stifle the anti-government movement and should be lifted at once.
“While the Red Shirts have no opportunity for open and peaceful expression because of draconian laws, their legitimate frustrations are being forced underground and possibly towards illegal and violent actions,” ICG said.
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