A 24 hour Fast & Six minute Silent Vigil for Justice

"To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” - Elie Wiesel, Night

Silent vigil at FIU main fountain

Reading the blog entry A Call to Take Actions for Wilman Villar Mendoza, Orlando Zapata & Brothers to the Rescue Martyrs published by the Free Cuba Foundation inspired me to propose an action on behalf of Wilman Villar Mendoza, Orlando Zapata, Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario De La Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr. that involves resolving to fast for 24 hours and engaging in a six-minute silent vigil for justice.

The fast will begin at 3:00pm on February 23, 2012 that marks the moment two years ago when Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on hunger strike. It will end 24 hours later on February 24 moments before the moments 3:21pm and 3:27pm when two Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down out of the sky in international airspace on orders of the Castro brothers extrajudicially killing Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario De La Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr.

Silent vigil at UM at the Rock

On February 24 between 3:21pm and 3:27pm wherever you are in the world take part in a silent vigil for justice. Either joining together with others at a public location or individually wherever you are in the world to remember this injustice and offer your prayers in solidarity and for justice for these victims of oppression.

If you wish to take part then just tweet, e-mail, and blog about your intention to do this and invite others to take part. Please use the tag #fast4justice or #ayunoporlajusticia in Spanish and if you plan on taking part in the vigil then help spread the word with the tag #silentvigil4justice or in Spanish #vigiliaporlajusticia.

If you are in Miami, Florida then you can join members of the FIU community in a silent vigil at the main campus on 107th Avenue and SW 8 Street at 3:15pm sharp. In the evening at 7:30pm at St. Brendan Catholic Church you can join with family members of the Carlos, Pablo, Mario, and Armando in a special Mass.

Silent vigil at FIU on February 24, 2011

Memory, truth and justice are necessary components for national reconciliation and liberation. Join in these acts of remembrance that demand justice and in doing so provide a small pebble in the edifice of a future free Cuba.

The late Czech President Vaclav Havel observed in 1968 that: "Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance." History proved him right three decades later. Do your part. Be the change that you want to see in the world.

Laura Pollán lives! Laura Pollán Toledo, Present!

In Havana, Cuba on Sunday over 100 activists marched through the streets and chanted Laura Pollán lives!

Berta Soler (left) Hector Maseda (center) marching on Sunday October 16

On the same weekend that the United States dedicated a national monument to the nonviolent resistance activist Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Cubans held a wake for Laura Pollán. King was a Baptist Minister and Laura a school teacher but they both shared the same methodology of struggle, nonviolent civic resistance. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 by an assassin's bullet at the young age of 39. Laura Pollán died on October 14, 2011 of an illness that some believe may have been administered by the state security apparatus. She was 63 years old. Both foresaw the possibility that they could be killed and both said they were not afraid. The night before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a gunmen he gave his "I've been to the mountaintop speech" and told the audience "Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will." Less than a month before she died Laura Pollán in a September 24, 2011 interview said “If what God wants is that we must give our own lives in pursuit of the freedom of our Cuba then so be it.”



In both cases they left behind a movement that would continue after them. In the case of Laura Pollán it was the Ladies in White. The likely new leader of the movement is Bertha Soler. Despite a nationwide operation to round up activists and Ladies in White that wanted to travel to Havana to say farewell to Laura Pollán (denounced by the Irish human rights organization Frontline Defenders), over 100 activists managed to circumvent the crackdown and attend Mass at Santa Rita Church then march through the streets of Cuba.

Led by Laura Pollán's husband, the Ladies in White and dissidents march

Leading the march was Hector Maseda, Laura Pollán's husband and a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, with a photo of his wife on poster board that read "Laura Pollán Toledo, Present!" that he held up for all to see. At the end of the march the demonstrators chanted: Laura Pollán lives!



The news of her passing and the impact she had in Cuba and around the world demonstrates the power and moral legitimacy that her nonviolent struggle generated. She touched so many who are now mourning her passing. A young woman in Argentina who treasures the gladiola that Laura gave her. President Obama paid tribute to Laura Pollán upon her passing as did Mitt Romney, one of the Republican candidates running against him. In Miami a prayer service was held on the same night she passed away and a Mass for the eternal repose of her soul the following night attended by former prisoners of conscience now free thanks to Laura and their wives who had been part of the Ladies in White.

What did Laura Pollán accomplish? She changed Cuba. Despite all the efforts of the totalitarian communist dictatorship that has a monopoly over force and the mass media in Cuba, Laura was able with a small group of courageous women to take to the streets and demonstrate. Not once or twice but on a weekly basis since her husband was unjustly imprisoned in March of 2003. The dictatorship did everything they could to stop them, including brute violence. Bruises and broken bones did not deter these ladies and they continued marching with casts and slings. Over a 100,000 people dressed in white took to the streets in Miami in the spring of 2010 to protest the violence against these women led by Gloria Estefan, who had organized the demonstration. In the summer of 2010 the dictatorship finally began the process of releasing the bulk of the remaining prisoners of conscience from the group of the 75 and the last of them were released in the spring of 2011. Unfortunately, there were new prisoners of conscience whose release the Ladies in White would continue to demand. Laura recognized that "[a]s long as this government is around there will be prisoners because while they've let some go, they've put others in jail. It is a never-ending story." Five days before she became deathly ill, as the violence and threats escalated, she let the dictatorship know that: "We are not going to stop. If they have imprisoned our sisters thinking that we would give up, they are mistaken. We are very united (...) all the women's movements are very close."

As in the case of Martin Luther King Jr., Laura Pollán's spirit lives on and is present in the hearts of all who love freedom and detest injustice. Despite their physical absence tyrants and despots fear the example set by these nonviolent activists in successfully confronting injustice and the absence of freedom.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo's example continues to empower Cuban resistance

The Associated Press reported today that the remains of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Cuban dissident and Amnesty International prisoner of conscience who died on February 23, 2010 following an 83-day hunger strike, were exhumed for cremation Tuesday as his mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger, prepared to travel with the ashes and 12 family members to exile in Florida. His death ignited protests throughout the island and increased international scrutiny on the dictatorship in Cuba and marked a before and an after in the Cuban civic resistance movement.

Today Orlando Zapata Tamayo's body was exhumed for cremation and tomorrow marks one month since Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia died just three days after being beaten up by Cuban state security. Guillermo Fariñas is now in the midst of another life threatening hunger strike demanding that those responsible for the death of Wilfredo Soto be brought to justice.



There are twelve Cuban prisoners of conscience of the Black Spring now free in Cuba thanks in large part to the sacrifice of Orlando Zapata Tamayo; a hunger strike carried out by Guillermo Fariñas' and the courageous and persistent Ladies in White brutalized and beaten by regime mobs as they silently marched demanding their loved ones freedom. These twelve Cuban patriots met and issued the Declaration of Roque, a petition demanding an independent investigation into the death last month of Cuban dissident and former political prisoner Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia. The document was signed on Saturday, June 4, 2011 and delivered to the Cuban regime on Monday, June 6, 2011. They are carrying on the spirit of Orlando Zapata Tamayo with their courageous example. The original text is on the page of the Ladies in White and a translation to English follows below:

El Roque, Perico, Matanzas, Saturday June 4, 2011

Petition to the Cuban government

Given the high centralization of power and decisions that exist in our country, we hold responsible the Cuban president and Army General Raul Castro Ruz, in fulfillment of the three following aspects that are reported below:

1 That an International Multidisciplinary Team be immediately allowed to exhume and examine the corpse of the peaceful activist Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia and impartially rule on the actual causes of death.

2 Of the imminent death of the peaceful activist and Andrei Sakharov prize laureate, Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, as a result of the hunger strike that he is carrying out.

3 With the cessation of repression, beatings, acts of repudiation and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment against peaceful pro-democratic activists and Cuban society.

Awaiting for a proper response according to the present circumstances, the undersigned endorse this DOCUMENT

Pedro Argüelles Morán

Oscar Biscet González

Eduardo Díaz Fleitas

José Daniel Ferrer García

Diosdado González Marrero

Iván Hernández Carrillo

Librado Linares García

Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez

Angel Moya Acosta

Félix Navarro Rodríguez

Arnaldo Ramos Lauzerique

Guido Sigler Amaya

"13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre: 16 years waiting for justice

The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defense. Through this we can build, we must build, a defense against repetition. - Simon Wiesenthal

In the early morning hours of July 13, 1994 37 men, women, and children were killed by government agents as they sought to travel to freedom on board of the “13 de Marzo” tugboat. Eleven of these Cubans were children ranging in age from Hellen Martínez Enríquez, just five months old to Mayulis Méndez Tacaronte age seventeen.

International human rights bodies and organizations investigated the incident. The United Nations Human Rights Commission's special rapporteur on Cuba made the following observation on October 24, 1995 in his report on the human rights situation in Cuba to the UN General Assembly:

Although the Government maintains that the authorities bore no responsibility for what was considered to have been an accident, the Special Rapporteur received testimony from some of the survivors indicating that Government launches from the port of Havana tried to stop the 13 de Marzo with pressurized water jets and then deliberately rammed it, causing it to sink. Non-governmental sources informed the Special Rapporteur that the number of persons who died was not 32, as the Government had stated, but at least 37 and that the families have for a year now been asking for an investigation to be initiated.

On October 16, 1996 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released Report Nº 47/96 Case 11.436 Victims of the Tugboat “13 de Marzo” vs. Cuba. Among the conclusions reached in the investigation was that:

The Cuban State is responsible for violating the right to life (Article 1 of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man) of the 41 people who were shipwrecked and perished as a result of the sinking of the tug "13 de Marzo", which events occurred seven miles off the Cuban coast on July 13, 1994. The persons who died that morning are: Leonardo Notario Góngora, Marta Tacoronte Vega, Caridad Leyva Tacoronte, Yausel Eugenio Pérez Tacoronte, Mayulis Méndez Tacoronte, Odalys Muñoz García, Pilar Almanza Romero, Yaser Perodín Almanza, Manuel Sánchez Callol, Juliana Enriquez Carrasana, Helen Martínez Enríquez, Reynaldo Marrero, Joel García Suárez, Juan Mario Gutiérrez García, Ernesto Alfonso Joureiro, Amado Gonzáles Raices, Lázaro Borges Priel, Liset Alvarez Guerra, Yisel Borges Alvarez , Guillermo Cruz Martínez, Fidelio Ramel Prieto-Hernández, Rosa María Alcalde Preig, Yaltamira Anaya Carrasco, José Carlos Nicole Anaya, María Carrasco Anaya, Julia Caridad Ruiz Blanco, Angel René Abreu Ruiz, Jorge Arquímides Lebrijio Flores, Eduardo Suárez Esquivel, Elicer Suárez Plascencia, Omar Rodríguez Suárez, Miralis Fernández Rodríguez, Cindy Rodríguez Fernández, José Gregorio Balmaceda Castillo, Rigoberto Feut Gonzáles, Midalis Sanabria Cabrera, and four other victims who could not be identified.

The IACHR made three recommendations: 1) that the Cuban State conduct an exhaustive investigation in order to identify, prosecute and punish those responsible for sinking the tug "13 de Marzo" 2) that the Cuban state recover the sunken boat and the remains of the victims and hand them over to their relatives and 3) that the Cuban State pay fair compensation to the surviving victims and to the families of the dead for physical and nonphysical damages, including emotional distress.

Amnesty International investigated and made a number of recommendations in a July 1997 report:

∙ That a full and impartial investigation into the sinking of the "13 de Marzo" tugboat be carried out immediately, and that the findings be made public.

∙ That such an investigation be carried out in accordance with international standards, including the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions.

∙ That anyone identified as being responsible for the loss of life be brought to justice in accordance with international standards for a fair trial.

∙ That the families and dependents of the victims be granted fair and adequate compensation within a reasonable period of time.

∙ That the relatives of the victims be fully informed of what efforts were made to locate the bodies of the victims and, if any were found, what happened to the remains.

∙ That survivors or relatives of the victims be permitted to speak out about what happened without fear of reprisals.

∙ That no further reprisals be taken against anyone who seeks to peacefully protest or commemorate the sinking of the “13 de Marzo”.

∙ That no one should be imprisoned for attempting to leave the country illegally if they have not committed any other recognizable criminal offense.

∙ That strict orders be issued to law enforcement officials and agents acting on their behalf to abide at all times by the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.

Sixteen years have passed and all these recommendations have been essentially ignored. Over the years the regime has carried out reprisals against Cubans who sought to peacefully protest or commemorate the sinking of the “13 de Marzo” tugboat, and Amnesty International would denounce this acts of repression. Some Cubans spent months or years in prison for taking part in acts of remembrance. For example, in 2006 Amnesty reported that on July 13, 2005 approximately 20 people were detained while commemorating the "13 de Marzo" tugboat disaster of 1994. More than eight months later, five of them remained in custody without charge. At least one of them, Manuel Perez Soria was not released until April 24, 2007 after spending one year and eight months in prison.

All of these facts should lead to an obvious question: What can I do?

The answer is not obvious because there is a lot you can do. Let others know of this crime. Investigate the sources linked above for yourself. Forward this blog entry to other friends. Write your own essay or blog entry. Write a letter to the editor or an opinion piece in your newspaper. Call into a radio show on the day before or the day of the anniversary of the massacre. Organize a vigil or a moment of silence for the victims. Write a letter to the Cuban government asking them about when the remains of the victims will finally be returned to their families, and when there will be an exhaustive investigation where those responsible for the attack are brought to justice?

Is it too late after 16 years? No it is not. In the case of Cambodia the world is now witness to a measure of justice 30 years after genocide and 38 years later in the case of Northern Ireland's January 30, 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre were the British have cleared the victims of wrong doing and the Prime Minister acknowledged the crime committed by British soldiers and it was broadcast by the BBC. It did not happen on its own. John Lennon sang about it and denounced it in June of 1972 and U2 did the same eleven years later in 1983 and 25 years after the massacre activists launched the Bloody Sunday Trust. Justice is never too late but can only be accomplished with the persistence of people of good will.

There is much that you can do, but there are two things that you should not do. Do not fall into the trap of hating those responsible for this atrocity. Hate the sin not the sinner. Secondly, do not fall into the other trap of indifference and despair that leads one to do nothing. While we wait for justice let us work together to see that justice is done for the 37 men, women, and children extra-judicially executed 16 years ago on July 13.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. - Elie Wiesel

Amnesty International: "Neda’s killer must be brought to justice"

Take action now and demand accountability for killing of Neda Agha Soltan


19 June 2010

Iran: Neda’s killer must be brought to justice

One year after the killing of Neda Agha Soltan, the failure of Iranian authorities to bring her killer to justice is a damning example of the culture of impunity that has widened since the 2009 election protests, says Amnesty International.

Neda Agha Soltan, then 27, was shot in central Tehran on 20 June 2009 as she left a peaceful demonstration. A video clip of her dying on the pavement as bystanders came to her aid, was circulated around the world, making her an icon of the protest movement.

"Neda's unlawful killing is emblematic of not only the numerous human rights violations committed against Iranians over the past year - which are still continuing today - but also of the government's steadfast refusal to bring to justice those responsible for torturing and killing its critics" said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Despite the wealth of video-taped evidence and witnesses, the Iranian authorities have not carried out any independent investigation into Neda's death, nor the apparent deaths of scores of others at the hands of government forces between June and December 2009. They have denied allegations that the paramilitary Basij caused Neda's death and blamed, instead, a range of people and organizations including the BBC, CNN, the CIA, and even the doctor who rushed to Neda's aid when she was shot.

"The government's response to Neda's killing has been a cynical face-saving exercise," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui. "It is all too typical of the wider failure of the Iranian authorities to observe the rule of law, and to ensure accountability for the crimes that continue to be committed in its name."

Amnesty International has renewed its call on the Iranian government to allow an independent inquiry into the deaths and abuses that took place during and after the demonstrations, including an investigation into Neda's killing.

It is also calling for UN human rights experts to be allowed into Iran. Despite a standing invitation issued by the government to the UN, no UN human rights visits have been allowed to Iran since 2005. At least five requests to visit made by UN human rights experts have remained unanswered.

"The authorities should know that their attempts to brush away the evidence pointing to their responsibility will not silence Iranians, who continue to demand truth and justice for the deaths of Neda and many others" said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui.

Background

Neda Agha Soltan's alleged shooter was briefly held at the scene of the shooting by protesters, but information on his identity has been ignored by judicial authorities. The man was allegedly carrying ID of the Basij, the armed paramilitary force heavily employed by the authorities to repress the demonstrations. Witnesses have reported that he shouted out 'I did not mean to kill her'.

The deaths of up to 80 people - and possibly many more - during and after the demonstrations, including as a result of torture in detention, have mostly not been investigated. Independent inquiries into excessive use of force, rape, and other forms of torture while in custody have not been carried out. Instead, the authorities have threatened those who have alleged violations, arrested some who have tried to uncover the truth and sought to discredit others who have tried to bring evidence forth.

Investigations into post-election abuses, where conducted, have been inadequate, not transparent and appear to make low-ranking officials scapegoats for the abuses that took place.

The campaign to demand accountability for the post-election abuses has been led by the Mourning Mothers group, which is made up of mothers whose children have been killed, disappeared or detained during violence following the election.

Amnesty International's June 2010 report Iran: From protest to prison: Iran one year after the election (AI Index Number: MDE 13/062/2010; 9 June 2010) documents a widening crackdown on dissent that has left journalists, students, political and rights activists as well as clerics languishing in prisons.

Let's continue to raise our voices for Neda.

Justice delayed in Cambodia is still justice

A country without a memory is a country of madmen. - George Santayana

The faces stare out silently from the photographs with numbers pinned to their shirts and in some cases to their flesh. Each one of them a victim of the Cambodian genocide. Its been over 30-years since the Cambodian genocide took place and now some of the key officials responsible are being brought to justice. According to Lars Olsen, spokesman for the U.N.-backed Cambodia genocide tribunal the court will hand down the verdict against Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, on July 26, 2010.
Duch, 67, commanded the notorious S-21 prison where as many as 16,000 people were tortured before being sent for execution in the late 1970s. He is the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to face trial, and the only one to acknowledge responsibility for his actions. He was tried last year.

As such a moment approaches it is important to place this in context, and to also look at the non-Cambodians who served as apologists for this horror as it was taking place. Professor Sophal Ear does just that in the video below:



Sophal Ear discusses in the video above how Cambodia - at one point an island of peace and a model of development as war raged in Vietnam - deteriorated into the home of one of the worst genocides of the 20th century. Ear explains his family's history as they were forced to move to the countryside once the Khmer Rouge took power and re-ordered society in pursuit of the agrarian utopia that they promised the Cambodian people. The result of this social experiment? The starvation of one out of every four Cambodians as they tried to live off of rationed porridge. 1.7 million died, including Ear's father.

PBS News Hour offers an overview of how Cambodian society is dealing with confronting its past.




In Cambodia, Verdict Nears in Khmer Rouge Genocide Trial


PBS News Hour

Thirty years after the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror, those accused of perpetrating genocide in Cambodia are facing justice for the first time. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on the forthcoming verdict from the war crimes tribunal.

Transcript

JUDY WOODRUFF: Next: a step toward justice in the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia.

We have a report from special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro. A version of this story aired on the PBS program “Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly.”

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For several months, as many as two million Cambodians tuned in to a weekly court drama on TV.

NEWS ANCHOR (through translator): Hello, and welcome to the 22nd program in our series “Duch on Trial.”

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: This is no fictional series. The genocide being described killed almost two million in the 1970s. However, most viewers know little about what is now distant history.

Two-thirds of today’s Cambodians weren’t even born when the Khmer Rouge were in power. And few Cambodians know much about the international tribunal that is trying a handful of prominent survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime for their role in the killings. The TV series is intended to change that.

NEWS ANCHOR (through translator): Now we’re going to see a selection of evidence given to the court about some of the crimes which with Duch has been charged.

NEWS ANCHOR (through translator): Viewers should be aware that some, but not all of the stories told here were denied by Duch.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The first to trial was Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Comrade Duch, now in his late 60s.

KAING GUEK EAV, former Khmer Rouge prison chief (through translator): We treated them as if they were already dead. I allowed four torture methods.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The trial itself is taking place just outside Phnom Penh. The capital is also the sight of the prison Duch commanded where at least 14,000 men, women and children were photographed and documented in a macabre administrative process, then tortured and killed.

Van Nath was one of only seven people who came out alive. Today, he paints and sells pictures of the painful memories. He talked about his imprisonment with Eric Stover, a human rights scholar and expert who is studying the impact of international courts on societies and individuals.

ERIC STOVER, Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley: How long were you held before you were asked to come and draw the portraits?

VAN NATH, former prisoner (through translator): One month and four days.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Van Nath’s life was spared so he could paint portraits of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader who went into hiding and died in 1998.

VAN NATH (through translator): In that six months, about 67 pictures of Pol Pot.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Testifying at the trial left him angry at being cross-examined and at seeing how well the defendant seemed to be treated.

VAN NATH (through translator): It was just like a shock when I go there to the court and see him. When I tell them the truth, they doubt me, ask me a lot of questions. I don’t feel the trust when I tell them, and that makes me feel bad. It seems like the accused person has more rights that the civil parties do, and I’m really not satisfied with that.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Many also aren’t satisfied with the slow pace of justice. It was delayed for years by Cold War politics and the reluctance of the Cambodian government, which still has former members of the Khmer Rouge in it.

Stover says the tricky negotiations limited the scope of the court, which was set up with two international and three Cambodian justices.

ERIC STOVER: The Cambodian government itself was not that in favor of this court. Even the negotiations to create it took a long period of time. We say that with evidence, over time, evidence loses its value. You’re 30 years later, people’s memories have been — people have forgotten. People have died. So they — going after those most responsible is really all you’re going to get at this point.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Justice delayed may be justice denied for many victims, but Chum Sirath, who started a group called the Victims Association says, despite the limited number of defendants, the court sends an important message.

CHUM SIRATH, Victims Association: If you can have a bigger number, more people, it would be better. But, if not, it’s better than nothing. When you commit a crime, there will be people who try to put you — to take you into account. This is one of the lessons that young generation can learn.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Eric Stover says the court itself has had to learn how to teach some of those lessons.

ERIC STOVER: I don’t think any court should be expected to be a social engineering institution. They’re just not designed to do that. But what we can expect from them is that they should have vigorous programs to try to go out into the population and describe what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and what their limitations are.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He says, after a slow start, the court did launch outreach programs. Twice a week, buses have brought in thousands of Cambodians on field trips.

I asked this group of visitors how many had ever heard of the court before coming here. The international community wanted the word spread even further. That’s why the British government and the U.S.-based East-West Center sponsored the television series.

MAN (through translator): Do you think the trial has gone well? The process has been pretty impressive. I have supported it because I was one of the victims. I was in prison under the regime.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Matthew Robinson was hired to produce the court series.

MATTHEW ROBINSON, television producer: We had to devise a language and to base our understanding of what was going on in the court that would be intelligible to people who — whose basic knowledge of — of legal proceedings, indeed, court proceedings, is minimal indeed.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The program has also urged viewers to engage in more dialogue about the trial and about the genocide.

NEWS ANCHOR (through translator): Thanks to everyone here for this discussion of Duch’s trial.

NEWS ANCHOR (through translator): We hope that this will encourage you at home to talk together about this topic so vital to Cambodia’s future well-being and progress.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Those conversations aren’t easy, says Robinson.

MATTHEW ROBINSON: I mean, anybody from 25 down are not so much skeptical about it, but they lack knowledge. And parents seem to be reluctant, maybe even embarrassed, to — to talk about what happened to them.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Youk Chhang, who survived the Khmer Rouge killing fields, wants to make sure young people get the knowledge they need, even if their parents won’t talk about it.

YOUK CHHANG, director, Documentation Center of Cambodia: This is the textbook for grade nine and 12.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He’s director of the Cambodia Documentation Center, which has published a textbook that is now in the hands of one million Cambodian students.

YOUK CHHANG: Start from the creation of the Khmer Rouge movement all the way to the fall of the Khmer Rouge in ‘79.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Most kids growing up in this country have never learned about it?

YOUK CHHANG: They never learned about this, but they heard about this. Right now, for the first time in 30 years, from grade 9 through 12, also the foundation year of every single university, allowed to study Khmer Rouge history.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The verdict and sentencing are expected in early June, six months after final arguments ended and two years after the trial began. Youk Chhang hopes it will help the country move on.

YOUK CHHANG: The court helped to put the past behind, and that gives us the direction we are going to be turning next for the future. And the court put the past into perspective, so that we can learn from it.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Survivors, like Van Nath, hope it brings justice.

VAN NATH (through translator): The verdict should be balancing what Duch has done, how many people he killed and how many he caused suffering. For me, I can’t forgive.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Eric Stover says the court, by example, can be an important building block for the future of this country, still recovering from years of war and genocide.

ERIC STOVER: People will have basic needs and need to be attended to, but, if you’re going to have real progress, you also put in the infrastructure for democracy, infrastructure for the rule of law, infrastructure that will support human rights, because, without that, you will always be in an uphill battle.

RAY SUAREZ: The tribunal’s next case will be a joint trial for four elderly defendants. It’s expected to start in 2012.

JIM LEHRER: Fred’s reporting is in partnership with the Undertold Stories project at Saint John’s University in Minnesota.




The video above may shock and disturb. It is a powerful documentary in which both victims and victimizers speak candidly about what took place. Attempting to initiate a process of reconciliation and justice between Cambodian torture survivors and the Khmer Rouge soldiers who brutalized them, the documentary S21: THE KHMER ROUGE KILLING MACHINE takes a close-up look at the the prison camps where this disturbing chapter of history took place in the mid-1970s. The film is set in the now-deserted S21 detention center.

Amnesty International : Report 2010 highlights global justice gap

The Amnesty International Report 2010 (see http://thereport.amnesty.org/) documents the state of human rights across 159 countries in 2009. It details a year in which although important gains were made accountability and effective justice seemed a remote ideal for many.

In 2009, peoples lives around the world continued to be torn apart by repression, violence, discrimination and political power plays, and a global justice gap prevailed.