- News source:
- originally published 30 July 2010
- Dissent
- By Christine Stansell
“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)
- News source:
- 18 August 2010
- Phnom Penh Post
- By May Titthara and Will Baxter
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)
- News source:
- August 2010
- Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs
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
- News source:
- 13 August 2010
- Phnom Penh Post
- By Benny Widyono
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)
- News source:
- 12 August 2010
- Taiwan News | Associated Press
- By SOPHENG CHEANG
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)
- News source:
- 11 August 2010
- By Bernama
The situation along Thai-Cambodian border became more tense Wednesday as villagers avoided farming at border areas, Thai News Agency (TNA) reported Wednesday.
(...more)
- News source:
- 6 August 2010
- KI Media
- By Xinhua
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)
- News source:
- 6 August 2010
- KI Media
- By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
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)
- News source:
- 6 August 2010
- KI Media | Radio Free Asia
- By Yun Samien
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)
- News source:
- 5 August 2010
- KI Media
- A Painful Past
- By Salil Tripathi
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)
- News source:
- 3 August 2010
- Council on Foreign Relations
- By Joshua Kurlantzick, Fellow for Southeast Asia
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)
- News source:
- 1 June 2010
- Reuters
- By Prak Chan Thul
PHNOM PENH – Cambodian rights groups and farmers urged foreign donors on Tuesday to press the government to suspend land concessions to investors and use fair and lawful means to settle disputes.
(...more)
- News source:
- 30 April 2010
- Globe and Mail
- By Gerald Caplan
April is the cruelest month for genocide survivors. When Governor-General Michaëlle Jean was in Rwanda acknowledging Canada’s feeble efforts during the 1994 genocide, she found herself in the middle of the country’s annual period of commemorative mourning. I’ve been there several Aprils and it’s a grim, trying, often traumatic time for victims and perpetrators alike.
Why April? By some weird fluke, both the Armenian genocide and the Jewish Holocaust also have anniversaries in April. So the memorialization of the three indisputably classic genocides of the 20th century, those that fit every criterion of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, all occur within the same 30-day period.
(...more)
- News source:
- originally published 17 March 2010
- International Herald Tribune
- By SOPHAL EAR
When my mother — who saved me and four siblings from starvation under the Khmer Rouge in 1976 — passed away in October 2009 at the age of 73, I realized that for her justice delayed had become justice denied. (I’m embarrassed to admit it, but the words “justice delayed is justice denied” had never really sunk in until my mother’s passing.)
As an observant Buddhist, however, my mother probably had the last word. She always said that no matter what happened to the Khmer Rouge leadership in their current lifetime, Karmic justice would prevail in the next…
(...more)
- News source:
- 19 April 2010
- UN New Centre
The United Nations legal chief today called for donors to provide funds to support the UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia trying Khmer Rouge leaders accused of mass killings and other crimes during the country’s genocide in the late 1970s.
(...more)
- News source:
- 8 March 2010
- Nepalnews.com
The political standing of women has “improved” in Nepal in comparison to many countries in Asia and the Pacific where works are being done to enhance women’s participation in politics, according to a new Asia Pacific Human Development Report on Gender.
“The political voice of women has improved in Nepal with the recent secured 1/3 quota in the Constituent Assembly. In comparison, only about 1/3 of countries in Asia and the Pacific have quota systems to enhance women’s participation in politics,” says the report titled, “Power, Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific” launched on the occasion of International Women’s Day in the capital on Monday.
(...more)
- News source:
- 5 March 2010
- Ekklesia
Aid donors to Cambodia, including the US, EU, Japan, China and the World Bank, should send a strong message to the government that they will not countenance the bankrolling of Cambodia’s military by private businesses, Global Witness said today.
The call follows the announcement last week by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen of the formation of 42 official partnerships between private businesses and Cambodian military units.
(...more)
- News source:
- 1 March 2010
- ECCC Reparations
- By Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Some victims of the Khmer Rouge say they are worried the reconciliation process will be hurt by limited civil party participation and an already long trial process at the UN-backed tribunal.
Of 4,000 victim applications to participate as civil parties, only around 500 are likely to be accepted, according to tribunal officials.
The tribunal process includes civil parties, who participate in trials alongside the defense and prosecution, as a third body in the proceedings.
At a forum of 200 people in Kampot province on Saturday, Thun Saray, head of the rights group Adhoc, said such a low number among the civil parties would stir disappointment among Khmer Rouge victims.
(...more)
- News source:
- 21 January 2010
- Human Rights Watch
NEW YORK – Cambodia’s respect for basic rights dramatically deteriorated in 2009 as the government misused the judiciary to silence government critics, attacked human rights defenders, tightened restrictions on press freedom, and abandoned its international obligations to protect refugees, Human Rights Watch said today in its new World Report 2010.
The 612-page World Report 2010, the organization’s 20th annual review of human rights practices around the globe, summarizes major human rights trends in more than 90 nations and territories worldwide…
“Cambodians who speak out to defend their homes, their jobs, and their rights face threats, jail, and physical attacks,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The only way that the Cambodian government will end its assault on civil society is if influential governments and donors demand real change and put the pressure on.”
(...more)
- News source:
- 10 January 2010
- Guardian | The Observer
- By Andrew Anthony
Why did a radical British professor become a cheer-leader for Pol Pot? And why was he murdered on the very day he’d met the brutal dictator?…
The name of Malcolm Caldwell is remembered now by very few people: some friends, family, colleagues, and students of utopian folly. In the 1970s, though, Caldwell was a major figure in protest politics. He was chair of CND for two years, a leading voice in the anti-Vietnam war campaign, a regular contributor to Peace News …
The name of Kaing Guek Eav is, arguably, known by even fewer people, at least outside of Cambodia. Instead it is by his revolutionary pseudonym “Duch” that Kaing is usually referred to in the press. Duch is the only man ever to stand trial in a UN-sanctioned court for the mass murder perpetrated by the Cambodian communist party, or the Khmer Rouge, in the late 1970s…
In each circumstance, the question that reverberates down the years, growing louder rather than dimmer, is: why? Why were they in thrall to a system based on mass extermination?
(...more)
