Got aid?

I just finished reading an article from the Washington Post that was posted by a friend relating to the latest hot topic in Cambodia surrounding international aid, donors and non-government organizations (NGOs).

Joel Brinkley, in his article, "Aid to Cambodia rarely reaches the people it's meant to help," is rather cynical of the donor meeting happening in Phnom Penh on Wednesday, 20 April, where more than 3,000 governments and donor organizations are gathering to decided on the fate of how much much will be given to Cambodia this coming year.

This year should be different. Over the past two decades, the Cambodian government has grown ever more repressive. Now it is actually planning to bite the hand that feeds it: The legislature is enacting a law that would require nongovernmental organizations to register with the government, giving venal bureaucrats the ability to shut them down unless they become toadies of the state.

Eight major international human rights organizations are calling on Cambodia to back down, saying the bill is “the most significant threat to the country’s civil society in many years.” Donors, they say, should hold back their pledges. But they say that every year, and each year the donors ignore them. Meanwhile, the status of the Cambodian people the aid is supposed to help improves little if at all. Nearly 80 percent of Cambodians live in the countryside with no electricity, clean water, toilets, telephone service or other evidence of the modern world.

(Click here to see what the Phnom Penh Post says about the law.) Brinkley continues with his "facts":

Most people don’t know that Cambodians are ruled by a government that sells off the nation’s rice harvest each year and pockets the money, leaving its people without enough to eat. That it evicts thousands of people from their homes, burns down the houses, then dumps the victims into empty fields and sells their property to developers.

That it amasses vast personal fortunes while the nation’s average annual per capita income stands at $650. Or that it allows school teachers to demand daily bribes from 6-year-olds and doctors to extort money from dirt-poor patients, letting them die if they do not pay.

This is a government that stands by and watches as 75 percent of its citizens contract dysentery each year, and 10,000 die — largely because only 16 percent of Cambodians have access to a toilet. As Beat Richner, who runs children’s hospitals there, puts it, “the passive genocide continues.”

This is the reality of modern-day Cambodia. Despite all of aid and donations, the majority of the population still lives in the shadow of the Khmer Rouge Regime, which took place just over 30 years ago, eking out a barely subsistence standard of living.

Do Cambodians need more food? Probably, but the lack of it has less to do with the lack of food in the country, and more to do with basic economic adequacy and physical infrastructure to deliver food from the main city centers.

Do Cambodians need land and homes? Certainly, but many are selling out of desperation, or are forcefully being evicted because of ignorance about how economic land concessions work.

Do teachers and doctors need higher salaries? Definitely! Yet, this disparity is not easily remedied since higher salaries mean more money needs to be paid out, and if there isn't an efficient tax system to bring money in (among other things), then there simply is no money to increase their salaries as public servants.

Interestingly enough, there was an article today in the Phnom Penh Post outing the massive number of "ghost employees" in the government civil sector. However, this does not include the "ghost soldiers or police officers" who are usually family members listed on the rolls who have never put on a uniform, but are still collecting a monthly income.

Do Cambodians need toilets? Most assuredly! And that's what I am in the middle of working on: a plan to bring cost effective compost toilets to the rural areas of Cambodia. The challenge is acceptance of such a new method of waste deposit, and the acceptance of something that seems less than modern. After all, water toilets seems so "rich."

While I may not wholeheartedly agree with all that Dr. Richner says, he is accurate in that a passive genocide is still taking place as international aid and support is locked up in bureaucratic red tape and inefficient means of delivery to the most needy and vulnerable. (Most aid workers for large-scale, internationally-funded projects will privately attest to this.)

The question remains: Should I still give?

Of course, opposition to folks like Brinkley would say YES! In his rebuttal to Brinkley's opinion piece, John McAuliff (one of those who disagree with Brinkley) writes:

Cambodia is troubled by corruption and by the gulf between rich and poor, as are most countries in the region. However, it is a very different and far more developed place than during the first fifteen years after the Khmer Rouge were forced from power, having destroyed all of its modern economy and killed most of its educated people.

It has transformed itself economically and socially with a free press, a robust public forum and contested elections. The dominance of Hun Sen and the Cambodian People’s Party reflects in part a far more serious approach to governance and grass roots organization than manifested by their at least as ethically challenged rivals.

I don't know if it is enough to concede that just because Cambodia is far better off than it was 15 years after the Khmer Rouge Regime that we can take a "se la vie" approach and call what has been happening since 1993 adequate. I am very curious to read Brinkley's book, Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land. The used copies at Amazon are less than $15.

Why set the bar so low?

Why don't we compare present day Cambodia to the Cambodia of pre-war days? Wouldn't that be a fairer comparison?

In the end, this debate will not go away. People and governments give donations primarily for the "tax breaks" and because it makes them feel better about themselves that they are "helping" those less fortunate.

After all, isn't it better to give than to receive?

Victims to play simpler role at KRT

And the struggle continues. . . Now civil cases are being considered for the Khmer Rouge Tribunals to allow victims to have a voice.

A photo supplied by DC-CAM shows Boeung Rai prison, a security centre in Svay Rieng province that was not specifically named among the sites investigated by the Khmer Rouge tribunal for its second case. (Photo by: DC-CAM)

Wednesday, 10 February 2010
James O'Toole
The Phnom Penh Post

AS its critical second case approaches, the Khmer Rouge tribunal is wrestling with the issue of how to expedite proceedings against the ageing leaders set to stand trial, while at the same time giving adequate voice to the regime’s many victims.

On Tuesday, the court formally adopted reforms to civil party participation, including the establishment of a team of lead co-lawyers who alone will represent all admitted civil parties in court. In the first case, that of Tuol Sleng prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, civil parties were represented by four distinct legal teams.

This change was paired with an expansion of responsibility for the Victims Unit, renamed the Victims Support Section, to include “a broader range of services, as well as a more inclusive cross-section of victims than those who are admitted as Civil Parties in cases before the [court]”, the UN-backed tribunal said in a statement Tuesday.

More than 4,000 civil parties have applied to participate in Case 002, and about 250 had been accepted by the end of December, compared with just 90 who participated for the duration of the first case. Under the old system, this many civil parties could not have been accommodated, court officials say, though observers warn that the newly diminished legal role for civil parties may sow discontent among many victims.

“The judges ... have to balance between the rights of the accused and also respect for the victims,” said Long Panhavuth, project officer at the Cambodia Justice Initiative. “The victims have to have a meaningful way of participating.”

A further concern, aired by the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee last week, is the potential disappointment of thousands of civil party applicants whose applications may be inadmissible.

Though the court’s mandate is to investigate crimes committed under Democratic Kampuchea (DK), charges in individual cases are confined to particular crime sites falling under the scope of the judges’ investigation. As such, prospective civil parties with applications pertaining to other sites will be unable to participate at trial.

Although the Case 002 investigation began in 2007, the sites being examined were not publicly revealed until last November.

Theary Seng, the former executive director of the Centre for Social Development and a civil party in the case, acknowledged the court’s need to keep the investigation confidential, but said the delayed disclosure did a disservice to victims.

“To use the blanket of confidentiality to keep the public from being adequately informed generally, and then to keep the victims who could become civil parties from knowing whether they fit into the scope or not is irresponsible,” she said.

After being imprisoned as a child at the Boeung Rai security centre under Democratic Kampuchea, Theary Seng was frustrated to learn that the site, where perhaps 30,000 people were killed, was not named specifically by the court (though it may be included in the investigation of purges in DK’s Eastern Zone). She said she plans to file an investigative request asking judges to examine the centre.

More broadly, Theary Seng said she resented what she views as the court’s diminished engagement with victims and civil parties.

“The fear is that they’re going to really emasculate and water down the concept [of civil parties] to make it completely not meaningful,” she said, calling victim participation essential “to give a larger meaning to this process”.

Defence teams, however, say the increased number of civil party applicants in Case 002 may undermine the rights of the accused.

Richard Rogers, chief of the court’s defence support section, said in a statement following the conclusion of Tuesday’s plenary that the newly established 10-day window for lawyers to appeal decisions about the admissibility of civil party applications is unacceptably small.

“According to international standards, an accused’s right to appeal must be practical and effective. In adopting these amendments, the plenary has left the accused with a right that is merely theoretical,” Rogers said.

Outside the courtroom

Helen Jarvis, head of the Victims Support Section, emphasised the importance of contrasting between “the issue of admissibility in a particular case … and recognition of somebody’s status as a victim”.

“It’s an important distinction. I think it’s a technical distinction, and I think that we have done and certainly will [continue to] bend over backwards to thank people for the information that they have provided,” she said.

Jarvis said her section was developing outreach efforts through “non-legal measures” to ensure that victims who are unable to officially participate nonetheless have their suffering addressed.

These measures notwithstanding, a more limited role for victims is inevitable in Case 002, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, who called on the court to be open about its reforms.

“If a person can no longer speak, you’re no longer a civil party,” he said, adding: “It’s a bumpy road by having to explain this, and perhaps the fear is of being resented by the victims.”

While he noted the importance of outreach efforts for Khmer Rouge survivors, Youk Chhang said the broader expectations of the Cambodian people are uncomplicated.

“None of the people here expect the court to go down to the villages and record their story on file,” he said. “They expect delivery of justice and a verdict.”

'Enemies of the People' Wins Sundance's World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Documentary

This documentary looks to be another interesting view into the dark Khmer Rouge period, particularly since it focuses on the issue of leadership turning on itself. I hope to get my hands on it sometime soon.


By Poch Reasey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Park City, Utah
30 January 2010

‘Enemies of the People’ is a new documentary film being shown for the first time in North America at the Sundance Film Festival 2010 in Salt Lake City, Utah (from January 21 to 31).

In the documentary ‘Enemies of the People’, former Khmer Rouge leader, Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two, for the first time gives details how he and Pol Pot decided to kill party members they considered to be ‘Enemies of the People’.

Thet Sambath, the journalist who produced the 93-minute film, says he met with Nuon Chea on the weekends for five years before Mr. Nuon agreed to give testimony.

“One day he told me the truth.” Said Sambath. “He said that he had observed me for many years and had realized that I am honest and not biased toward any side.So he said from now on he could tell me all the decisions he and Pol Pol had made.”

Sambath says he spent 10 years making the documentary to find out more about the deaths of nearly 2 million people in Cambodia, people that included his parents and siblings.

Rob Lemkin co-produced the documentary.He says viewers will decide if they Nuon Chea is telling the truth.

“Whether you believe him or not,” says Lemkin, “ it’s very important that he should be allowed to give his version of events so that future generations can make a decision about what they think about these events.”

Like millions of Khmer Rouge victims, Sambath says he has suffered emotional trauma for years.However he says he feels much better once he understand the Khmer Rouge’s policy.

“It’s precisely these sufferings that had pushed me to find the truth behind all the killings during the Khmer Rouge’s regime.” Says Sambath. “ Now that I know what had happened behind the scene, I feel liberated.I don’t have any remorse anymore.”

John Cooper is the Director of the yearly Sundance Film Festival for independent filmmakers, held this year in Park City, Utah. On the festival’s opening day, Mr. Cooper praised Sambath’s courage in making the documentary.

“This film is both frightening and mesmerizing at the same time.” Says Cooper. “ It’s such a fresh approach.It couldn’t have been told until now because nobody was willing to go there yet.And this film has waited out.I think every weekend he went and shot until finally these people broke down and started talking to him.It’s an incredible story and story changes lives.”

Robert Redford is the founder of the Sundance Film Festival.He told VOA Khmer he has not seen “Enemies of the People” but praises the filmmakers’ effort.

“What I like about it is that that goes further and deeper in by a journalist to explore what was behind the Killing Fields.” Says Redford. “We heard about the Killing Fields in that film.But to cover the untold story, that’s what always interest me.What’s beneath the story?You think you know? And I think this is another example of that that goes deeper into the situation and therefore break new ground, therefore there’s new information.”

During the decade he spent meeting with Nuon Chea, Sambath also found the people who actually carried out the executions.He had to spend years meeting and talking to them before he could convince them to speak.

Sam Ratha is a Cambodian-American living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He’s among the first Cambodians to see the documentary. He says he is glad to hear Nuon Chea speak.

“He told the truth so that the younger generation know what he has done in the past.” Says Ratha. “Those who are committing this crime should know that one day they will have remorse.While in power you can do anything you want, but don’t forget that in the future you will end up like Nuon Chea.”

Park City’s cold, winter weather did not stop a woman from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and a young man from Canada from coming to Sundance.

“I had seen the ‘Killing Fields’ but I didn’t know what the film was going to be about.It’s very interesting how he went in to interview the people and who the people were.I guess I understand now when the Cambodian people say they want to forgive and to make peace with the people who did the killings.”

“It’s extremely powerful. I was in Cambodia 2 years ago for 3 weeks. I saw the killling fields. That really struck me deep.”

“Enemies of the People” is among 12 documentaries selected from over seven hundred submissions from around the world at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

CNNs Cambodia Killing Fiels parts 1-3

Part 1
Added On May 1, 2009 CNN's Dan Rivers profiles members of the Khmer Rouge, as they face justice before a U.N.-backed trial.



Part 2

Added On April 30, 2009

CNN's Dan Rivers goes on the hunt for Ta Chan, chief interrogator of the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison camp.



Part 3

Added On April 30, 2009

CNN's Dan Rivers details corruption allegations at the Phnom Penh trial of Khmer Rouge leaders.

Healing a fractured nation: Cambodians seek justice

I selected this article mostly because of the political science background of the people mentioned in the article. It also gives me some ideas for what I can or should be doing with my background.

Thursday, January 21, 2010
By Kate Fechter
WashburnReview.org

Washburn University and the Topeka Center for Peace and Justice came together to hold the fifth forum in the series Resolving Conflict in a Fractured World Thursday, Jan. 14 at the Washburn School of Law.

Co-sponsored by Phi Alpha Theta, the presentation, “Seeking Justice After Genocide: International Courts and Cambodia,” featured Washburn alumna Samantha Gassie who shared her knowledge of the Cambodian hybrid judicial system. The system includes the Extraordinary Chambers and Courts of Cambodia, which is currently trying to provide justice for the people of Cambodia over the war crimes committed during the reign of the Khmer Rouge.

Gassie, who has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in liberal studies from Washburn, studied in Cambodia when writing her thesis. Bob Beatty, Gassie’s mentor, who told her about the opportunity in Cambodia also spoke at the event, along with Thomas Prasch.

During her time in Cambodia in the fall of 2008, Gassie conducted 17 interviews in fall of 2008. Her interviews ranged from people from the U.S. and Canada who were involved in the legalities, to Cambodian citizens who shared with her their personal accounts of surviving the Khmer Rouge. Everyone above a certain age is either a victim or a perpetrator.

The Khmer Rouge was in total power from 1975-1979. During that time period, an estimated 1.3 to 3.3 million were massacred in the killing fields, amounting to almost 50 percent of the country’s population.

People were brought into S-21 or Tuol Sleng, a school turned into an interrogation center, for questioning. They were tortured until they named five names of usually innocent friends or neighbors and then killed. The people named were then brought in for the same treatment, creating a deadly cycle of violence. Of the 17,000 people that went in, only 12 people total walked out. There are four survivors of S-21 alive today.

The ECCC was established in 2001 by negotiations between the United Nations and Cambodian officials. Gassie said it is a unique war crimes tribunal because it is inside Cambodia, meaning there is a lot of victim involvement. The ECCC and the Cambodian national government are working to set up education to strengthen and improve the credibility of the justice system in the country.

However, the tribunal does have its problems. The process has suffered from a lack of impartiality, because most judges and lawyers are from the victim community. Beyond that, the process itself has been slowed by issues reaching a consensus between the Cambodian judges and the U.N., and finding a balance for victim involvement in the process.

Translation has also been a problem for the tribunal because the court works in three languages: French, Khmer and English. There has been an issue with possible corruption in the translations because Cambodians translate.

Problems aside, there are five people from the Khmer Rouge leaders waiting to stand trial. Gassie spoke about one trial that was already conducted by the ECCC. Comrade Duch, the commander of S-21 was tried in 2009. During his trial, the defense wanted to have him released because they said the court was not credible.

The ECCC cannot hand down death sentences, only life in prison. Most defendants are 80 or older now meaning the trials are more of a healing process for the Cambodians than powerful punishments for the perpetrators. The hope is that the process will help Cambodians to move forward.

“The most hopeful thing is that Cambodians can build a sense of law and order,” Gassie said. “Cambodians can use the ECCC as a stepping stone to move forward and collectively face the atrocities as a nation.”

Gassie is currently working on her doctorate at Arizona State for political science with a major in comparative politics and a minor in international relations. Her capstone project featuring the interviews from her time in Cambodia can be found in the Mabee Library.

“I think ECCC is something everyone should be aware of,” said Dan Locey, a Washburn alumnus who went to Cambodia with Beatty in May 2008. “People my age and younger can’t remember the Khmer Rouge. Any attempt to bring ECCC to light is helpful.”

The Topeka Center for Peace and Justice will be working with Washburn to bring more forums on international justice to campus in the coming months.

Kate Fechter is a junior mass media major. Reach her at kate.fechter-stamper@washburn.edu

Pain of Khmer Rouge Era Lost on Cambodian Youth

I once took my Cambodian fiance and his buddies to the Tuol Sleng (S-21 Prison) Museum because I felt it was important that they see and experience their history, despite how disturbing it might be. They were all born after the Pol Pot regime existed in Phnom Penh, though they may have seen some of the activities of the Khmer Rouge soldiers, as they were still active up until the mid-1990's until Pol Pot died.


I have heard and read some of my former students' stories about their experiences from that time while they were growing up-listening to bomb blasts and ammunition fire.
I have tried to encourage my fiance to talk to his parents and grandparents about that time period, but he won't, insisting that if they wanted to talk about it then they would. I did get to experience a great ceremony one year that they grandfather organized as a thank you to the man who saved him from being taken by the Khmer Rouge. Grandfather still experienced the atrocities as he lost his arm in the attempt to save his wife from a grenade thrown by drunken soldiers.


Facing an ugly history is not easy, especially since young Cambodians don't seem to make the connection to their history and why they have so much available to them today.

Arantxa Cedillo for The New York Times

So Mei, 5, and So Sei, 12, at the Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh. A survey found that few Cambodians under 30 were aware of the current Khmer Rouge trials.

Article by SETH MYDANS

Published: April 7, 2009

TRAPAENG SVA, Cambodia — Sum Touch has stopped trying to tell her grandchildren about the killings, starvation and terror she lived through when a Communist Khmer Rouge regime ravaged Cambodia 30 years ago.

Seth Mydans/The International Herald Tribune

Visitors looked at skulls displayed in a memorial at Choeung Ek, one of Cambodia's killing fields during the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979, during which 1.7 million people were killed.

“It seems that even if I tell them they don’t believe what I say,” said Mrs. Sum Touch, 71, who lost many members of her family. “It hurts my heart that they don’t know what happened.”

There is a former killing field nearby and a shed filled with the skulls and bones of some of the victims. But many of the young people here, it seems, have no idea why or how they got there.

As it struggles to leave its past behind, Cambodia today suffers from a particularly painful generation gap: those who survived the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, and their children and grandchildren, who know very little about it.

“I don’t like it, but what can you do?” said Ty Leap, 52, who sells noodles and fruit drinks from a roadside stall. “It really is unbelievable that those things happened.”

For nearly four years, from 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge caused the deaths of 1.7 million people from starvation, overwork and disease as well as torture and execution as they tried to construct a harsh peasant utopia.

Almost everyone here of a certain age has stories to tell of terror, abuse, hunger and the loss of family members. But those stories often fall on the deaf ears of a new generation that either cannot conceive of such brutality or seems unwilling to learn about it.

“Some older people get so upset at their children for not believing that they say, ‘I wish the Khmer Rouge time would happen again; then you’d believe it,’ ” Mr. Ty Leap said.

As much as 70 percent of Cambodia’s population is under the age of 30, and four out of five members of this young generation know little or nothing about the Khmer Rouge years, according to a survey last fall by the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

That ignorance — among both young and older — seems also to embrace the trials of five major Khmer Rouge figures that began last month, a process that is meant, in part, to begin a process of healing and closure.

Read more here.