11:10 a.m., July 26, 2010—
You can almost cut the tension and anticipation in this city. Or maybe that’s just the particular world I inhabit—maybe the only people who care about Duch’s verdict anymore are the internationals and elite Cambodians working at the court or the many tribunal-related NGOs.
But somewhere deep inside me, in some small, hidden place immune to the cynicism that has plagued me since I began this internship, I know it’s not true. As I watch and listen to the verdict in Case 001 stream live on a projector, I see Vann Nath, Bou Meng and Chum Mey, the three remaining survivors of Tuol Sleng prison, awaiting the fate of the director of that torture center from the public gallery. I took photographs at interviews with Bou Meng and Chum Mey, and though I couldn’t understand their answers, there is no doubt as to their investment in the trial. If you have toenails ripped out, electrical nodes attached to your body, and whips cut your back, the desire to see justice done does not fade over three decades. Images of the executions of over 12,000 other victims at your prison do not fade.
It’s not just the internationals, the NGO-ers, and the immediate survivors who care about the verdict. The survivors of other prisons, the victims of forced labor camps, the ranks of former conscripted Khmer Rouge soldiers—it matters to them, too. It matters to those who lost loved ones, as well as to the Cambodians who feel left behind by this trial, and disgusted at the cost and the inefficiency and the elitism. The people gathered around projector screens provided in the provinces despite scorching heat—they care too. This country has waited 30 years, through civil war and the death of a genocidal leader, for the international community to acknowledge what happened during 1975-1979.
My bosses did not secure enough seats in the court gallery for the interns, so I watched the judge read the verdict in a small room at the ECCC Victims Unit several miles away. There were about 15 of us there, the majority of whom work for organizations that, appropriately, represent victims. This background helps explain why there was a loud moan of disapproval when the Judge read that
a) the court only recognized 66 of over 93 Civil Party applicants as having “established their claim to be immediate victims of S-21 or S-24, or to have proved the existence of immediate victims of S-21 or S-24 and close kinship or particular bonds of affection or dependency in relation to them.”
And, as regards reparations for these recognized victims, that
b) the Chamber “rejected all Civil Party claims on the grounds of lack of specificity, for as being beyond the scope of available reparations before the ECCC. However, it ordered the compilation and publication of all statements of apology made by the Accused during the trial”…as well as a list of the Civil Parties’ names to be published on the ECCC website.
In summary, all the Court gave the victims in terms of reparation for their physical pain, for their lost spouses, parents, and children, for their psychological trauma, was a nameplace on the court website. This in a country with hardly any internet outside Phnom Penh.
No one expected fiscal reparations—the court will hardly have enough money to try Case 002, which goes after the highest ranking surviving Khmer Rouge members. But in terms of a moral reparation, this is insulting. As Chum Mey later said, villagers construct stupas everyday for almost no cost to honor memories and events. The least the court could have done was offer to construct a stupa at Toul Sleng. Or request the government to step in and build outhouses in villages. Or ask for public donations for roads through towns in the Northeast. Chum Mey offered this comparison: he lives in a hut with no stable food source and a small pan in which to defecate. Duch has lived and will continue to live in an air-conditioned cell with an unquestioned supply of food. A list of names will do nothing to repair this lack of justice.
As for the sentence: The Chamber gave Duch an initial sentence of 35 years. They avoided a life sentence and undercut the Prosecution’s request for 40 years, to honor Duch’s cooperation and “genuine remorse” and “rehabilitation.” These terms refer to Duch’s repeated confessions of guilt and regret for his crimes. To again cite Chum Mey, who challenged the truthfulness of these displays, referencing Duch's final, shocking plea for acquittal as well as his own reading of the hearings. "One tear from him does not equal one million tears of my country," he said.
From the 35 years, the court deducted five to recognize that the government violated Duch’s rights when they imprisoned him from 1996 until 2009 without a trial, exceeding the three years of pre-trial detention allowed by law. It counted those 11 years as time already served, putting the total sentence at 19 years.
At first I was fuming. 30 years for supervising over 13,000 murders? It’s not as if we can equate the two terms—mass murder and imprisonment—in the first place, but a life sentence certainly seems most appropriate of the options available. But in speaking with people far more knowledgeable than myself, including attending a panel discussion of lawyers, activists, and civil parties tonight, I came to recognize some good in the verdict. Duch’s rights WERE violated, and if we choose to ignore that because of the monstrous acts he committed and apply justice arbitrarily, we implicitly condone indefinite imprisonment without trial, the very crime so many international criminal courts like this one have and are themselves prosecuting. From a somewhat more uncomfortable, ends-justify-means perspective, rewarding cooperation might prove beneficial in Case 002, the defendants in which have all refused to admit any guilt. This court is mandated with a truth-finding mission as much as it is with a mission of distributing justice. Duch’s cooperation and acknowledgment of crimes committed at Tuol Sleng sped Case 001 to an end; if rewarding that cooperation incentives Nuon Chea, Kheu Samphan, Ieng Thireth, and Ieng Sary to do the same then perhaps that alone makes the reduced sentence acceptable. I’m not falling on either side of this one, but it is worth considering.
This incredibly long and, for most of you, somewhat boring post is now over and it’s time for bed. I promise more light hearted posts on Bangkok, Siem Reap, and egg sellers will come soon, with only a few heavy ones interspersed.
No comments:
Post a Comment