"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
These disturbing trends have broken out into the real world with mobs demanding obedience by innocent bystanders trying to eat their dinner in Adams Morgan in Washington, DC. Where can Maoism lead in its most extreme form? It leads to the killing fields.
Where Maoists struggle sessions can end.
In the space of less than four years (1975 - 1979) in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot carried out a communist revolution, declared year zero, and within that time killed two million of their countrymen.
One of the executioners, who was finally brought to justice by an international court, has died. Before the revolution he had been a school teacher. Kaing Guek Eav, came to be known as Comrade Duch, who oversaw the killing of over 20,000 people at S-21, a former school officially turned into a prison camp, but that in reality was a death camp.
There is an important documentary of the same name that should be required viewing by Westerners that highlights how teenagers were used to carry out the slaughter following the former school teacher's orders.
Comrade Duch has died at age 77. He was serving a life sentence for his crimes against humanity. He finally answered for his crimes before an international tribunal in 2010.
If it can happen there then it can happen anywhere, especially if we fail to heed the lessons of history.
Kaing Guek Eav a.k.a. "Duch" tortured and murdered thousands
"It is necessary — secretly and urgently to prepare the terror." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1918
The toll in lives.
This is the second in a series of blog entries rebutting a "Catholic" defense of communism authored by Dean Dettloff in the Jesuit magazine America on July 23, 2019 that downplayed the crimes of communism much like the perpetrators. Counter-intuitively, the counter-argument began at the end and now work its way to the start.
At the beginning of his essay, Dettloff quoted Catholic convert and social activist Dorothy Day's observation that “[i]t is when the Communists are good that they are dangerous.” There is nothing more dangerous than being principled, honest, true believing, consistent, persistent, and hardworking in the service of a murderous ideology. At the conclusion of the essay Dettloff stated that "[i]t is when the communists are dangerous that they are good."
Years ago in a television studio in
Lima, Peru a Maoist Shining Path movement spokesman interviewed on a
television talk show denounced Fidel Castro for betraying communism Cuba.
This true believing, consistent, and honest communist denounced the Cuban dictator for not executing two
million Cubans in 1959.
Communist writings and ideology demands the use of revolutionary terror to take power and transform society believing they could create a paradise on Earth, but that it would require sacrificing large numbers of people to arrive at their utopia.
2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the founding of the first communist dictatorship that murdered
the Russian royal family, plunged Russia into what would be a bloody
century of war, repression, manufactured famines and terror that claimed
tens of millions of lives. Children were not spared. Think of it, over a 100 million
lives over the span of a century. One million state engineered violent
deaths a year for one hundred years. The death toll of communism can
clearly be seen today rising in places like Venezuela, North Korea, and China but the killings although lower profile also happen in other communist regimes.
Despite the high body count the utopia was not achieved. Karl Marx wrote plainly: "We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you. When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism."
German Nazi and Russian Communist soldiers greet one another in Poland (1939)
Marx's prediction came true. Communists are ruthless and do not give quarter to advance their goals. They starved millions of farmers, engaged in revolutionary terror campaigns. They allied with Nazi Germany and started WW2 with the joint invasion of Poland in 1939.
The
Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, killed two million Cambodians from
overwork, starvation and mass executions over the course of three years
and two months in power in the 1970s. They were also guilty of targeting ethnic
Vietnamese and Cham Muslim minority groups.
Watch the documentary S-21 and witness how dangerous a good communist is.
"They must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it must be sustained as long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses—instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated—the workers’ party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction." - Karl Marx, 1850
Child victims of the communist Khmer Rouge regime genocide in Cambodia 1975-79
Communist China is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx and commissioned a statue of the German philosopher that is now on display in Marx's German home town. It should not be surprising that the Chinese regime would push for this because Karl Marx is the intellectual author of the communist revolution led by Mao Zedong. What is shocking is that democrats in Germany accepted the statue and that Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the EU Commission would attend an event there to honor the German communist and declare "Marx isn't responsible for all the atrocity his alleged heirs have to answer for."
Alleged heirs? Karl Marx advocated revolutionary terror, moral relativism, and an end justifies the means approach in a toxic mix that produced a century of mass murder and totalitarianism. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. understood this and rejected communism and the Marxist Leninist vision which is why the KGB targeted him with an active measures program.
Communist China honors Karl Marx, but does it truthfully look at its own history as other nations have? Have any other communist regimes or communist parties?
An apology without making amends is not enough but it is something. It is at least a recognition of past wrongs and the need to do better. The Australian government apologized in 2008 for the policies that did great harm to the Aboriginal people during the colonization of Australia.The U.S. House of Representatives issued a formal apology for slavery and Jim Crow in 2008. In 2010 the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate passed a resolution apologizing for
treatment of indigenous people in the U.S. and the President signed it.
The fact that the Putin regime has refused to apologize for the crimes of Soviet Russia in the Baltics s worrisome. Have any existing communist regimes apologized for past crimes? Have any communist parties recognized their past crimes? Instead of rewriting history perhaps recognize the past, apologize and make amends?
Perhaps communists could apologize for how communist regimes have treated children?
Communists advocate and carry out policies to end families and replace the role of parent with the communist state. This means that the extrajudicial killings of children in communism are acts of state filicide. Filicide is the act of killing one's own son or daughter. Across the world from Europe, to Asia, to
Africa, and the Americas there is a pattern that transcends race and
ethnicity but have one commonality: all are communist regimes and they
murder their own innocent children.
China could also consider their legacy in Cambodia, a regime they backed and that was Marxist-Leninist and Maoist.
Spanish poster for S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Enemies of the People
There are two documentary films that you must see to gain an
understanding of how a true and pure communist regime operates. They both focus on events in Cambodia following the rise to power of the communist regime there. One of them Enemies of the People was released in 2010. The other S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (French: S-21, la machine de mort Khmère rouge)
is available online and was released in 2003. Both are works of art
that transcend the confines of documentary film making to serve an
important role in truth telling and national reconciliation. Members of
the Khmer Rouge were placed on trial,
but the verdict on their ideological project is still the subject of
fierce dialogue and debate among communists of what took place between 1975 and 1979. Both these films can serve to not only
inform but provide context into understanding revolution.
The films compliment each other. Enemies of the People
offers the perspective of the revolutionary leadership, their
ideological vision, and how they applied it as government policy. While
the S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine
documentary allows the viewer to see how that policy was implemented in
day by day accounts by the prison guards and surviving prisoners. Enemies of the People offers the perspective of the documentary's director Thet Sambath, a senior reporter for the Phnom Penh Post, and he is regarded as one of Cambodia’s best investigative journalists. On the other hand in S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine the director, Rithy Panh, is a lifelong filmmaker and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge camps who lost his parents, sister, and many other relatives to the genocide.
Both films offer something I have never seen before in a documentary
the voice of the individuals who committed the atrocities. In Enemies of the People the party’s ideological leader, Nuon Chea aka Brother Number Two – break a 30-year silence to give testimony never before heard or seen laying out what and why they did it, and in S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine
it is the guards themselves walking through S-21 prison with one of
their former captives describing in detail what was done there.
Instead of building new statues to the intellectual author of these horrors perhaps they should be torn down or placed in museums that provide the proper historical context. Meanwhile the European Union, whose countries gave birth to the two great totalitarian nightmares of the 20th century: Nazism and Communism, should reflect more deeply on what they seek to honor, to avoid repeating past mistakes.
"You should also tell the Cambodians (i.e., Khmer Rouge) that we will be
friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand
in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them
the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before.” - Henry Kissinger, The Secretary's Dining Room, November 26, 1975
“We will burn the old grass and the new will grow.” - Pol Pot, leader of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (1975 - 1979)
Victims of the Khmer Rouge
Today, August 7, 2014 two of the most senior surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge dictatorship, Khieu Samphan, and Nuon Chea, were found guilty of crimes against humanity and
sentenced to life in prison.
Khieu Samphan,
left, and Nuon Chea as their verdicts were delivered. Photo by: Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
The Khmer Rouge murdered a quarter of the entire population of Cambodia in under four years. Between 1975 and 1979 nearly 2 million people were killed. Thirty five years later and finally there is a measure of justice for the dead and their loved ones. Justice may have been delayed but it was not denied.
Nevertheless, for what were called strategic reasons at the time Secretary of State Henry Kissinger engaged in diplomatic outreach in 1975 with the Khmer Rouge who he himself recognized were murderous thugs and this "friendship" was maintained through the Carter years.
President Carter's former US National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, on China and the Khmer Rouge, 1979 despite a policy supposedly predicated on human rights explained: “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an
abomination. We could never support him, but China could.”
Chinese leader Jiang Zemin lunching with his employee Henry Kissinger in 2011
However, the true nature of the alleged realpolitik policy of the United States under the influence of Kissinger may, in fact, not have been policy decided by the United States but by the Peoples Republic of China. Phyllis Schlafly, who co-wrote with Chester Ward in 1975 Kissinger on the Couch, a 846 page expose on the Secretary of the State, in December of 2002 wrote a column exposing what really happened in the negotiations with the Soviets in the early 1970s:
John Newhouse's 1973 book "Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT" confirmed
that every substantive provision of the 1972 U.S.-Soviet agreements was
dictated secretly to Kissinger by the Kremlin without the knowledge of our
U.S. negotiating team, was accepted by Kissinger, and was then rationalized
by Kissinger to the President and Congress. Newhouse's book showed how
Kissinger was personally and solely responsible for promising the Soviets
that we would not build an anti-missile defense, even though the offensive-
weapons provisions of the SALT I agreements guaranteed the Soviet Union
superiority in numbers of missiles. In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kissinger
personally endorsed Newhouse and called his book "outstanding." This made
Newhouse's book the authentic historic account of the Moscow agreements.
In the same way that Kissinger advanced Soviet interests while passing them off as his own ideas in the SALT I negotiations he may have done so with Mainland China. Considering that he eventually became a paid consultant of the Chinese communist government only serves to underline that the idea is not so farfetched.
Unfortunately, the Kissinger legacy of self interested enrichment crosses party lines and can be seen to be continued by the Clintons.
Henry Kissinger and Hillary Clinton
Below are declassified excerpts from the meeting with the Foreign Minister of Thailand were the U.S. Secretary of State expressed the desire for friendship with the Khmer Rouge while recognizing their murderous nature.
Date: November 26, 1975 Time: 1:00p.m. Place: The Secretary's Dining Room
Subject: Secretary's Meeting with Foreign Minister Chatchai of Thailand
Participants:
Thailand Foreign Minister Chatchai Chunhawan [...]
US
The Secretary (Henry Kissinger) The Deputy Secretary Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Philip C. Habib Mr. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Council [...]
(At this point, the group went into the Madison Room for lunch.) The Secretary: What is the Cambodian attitude? Foreign Minister: The Cambodians want salt and fish. They wanted to barter for these items. The Secretary: Did Ieng Sary impress you? Foreign Minister: He is a nice, quiet man. The Secretary: How many people did he kill? Tens of thousands? Mr. Habib: Nice and quietly!! Foreign Minister: Not more than 10,000. That's why they need food. If they had killed everyone, they would not need salt and fish. All the bridges in Cambodia were destroyed. There was no transportation, no gas. That's why they had to chase people away from the capital. The Secretary: But why with only two hours' notice? Foreign Minister: (Shrugs.) The Secretary: What do the Cambodians think of the United States? You should tell them that we bear no hostility towards them. We would like them to be independent as a counterweight to North Vietnam. [...] We would support this. You should also tell the Cambodians (i.e., Khmer Rouge) that we will be
friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand
in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them
the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before.”
The Khmer Rouge murdered 1/4 of the entire population of Cambodia in under four years. Now more than 30 years later the 3 most senior remaining leaders of the Khmer Rouge are on trial for crimes against humanity and are offering differing explanations for the estimated 1.7 million deaths between 1975-1979. They are: Nuon Chea, 85; former head of state Khieu Samphan, 80; and former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, 86 and are all charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide and torture.
The trouble is that others, while still trying to justify their actions admit that the wholesale slaughter went on. There is also abundant evidence to back up the fact that a genocide took place in Cambodia. Nuon Chea in the documentary Enemies of the People spoke about it and justified it although expressing some regret: "I have always said I made mistakes. I am regretful and I have remorse. I am sorry for our regime. I am sorry," but then went on to add "that they were safeguarding the revolution and that they 'were enemies of the people.'"
The trial begin in 2009 with the case of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, and the guilty verdict was delivered 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 sentenced to 35 years in prison and the sentence was later reduced to 19 years. He is appealing the sentence.
Is it a Coincidence or Synchronicity? Cuba and Cambodia now share July 26 as a historic date
It matters little if they condemn me, even to the heaviest sentence.” Kaing Guek Eav “Duch” (2010)
“Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.” – Fidel Castro (1953)
The Trial Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) today found KAING Guek Eav alias Duch guilty of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and sentenced him to 35 (thirty-five) years of imprisonment.
Kaing Guek Eav a.k.a. "Duch" tortured and murdered thousands
Although there is no causal relationship between these two events they do have a shared meaning. Beyond the same basic Marxist-Leninist ideological framework one finds in both actions an attempt to defend the indefensible when now viewed through the prism of time. This is an example of what Carl Gustav Jung described as Synchronicity which he defined over the years as the "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events"; an "acausal connecting principle"; a "meaningful coincidence" and "acausal parallelism" or it could just be one huge coincidence.
This connection between events in Cuba and in Cambodia during revolutionary communist regimes is acausally linked again by the documentary, Enemies of the People, opening in New York City four days from now on July 30, 2010 at the Quad Cinema. The documentary is the winner of the 2010 Human Rights Watch Film Festival Nestor Almendros Award for Courage in Film making.The award is named after famed filmmaker Nestor Almendros, born in Spain raised in Cuba, who co-directed two important films about human rights in Cuba: Mauvaise conduite aka “Improper Conduct” (1984) about the persecution of gay people in Revolutionary Cuba and Nadie escuchaba (1987) aka "Nobody Listened" about the human rights situation overall under the Castro brothers.
"Comrade Cubans, I can recall those days of December 1977 and January 1978 when we said farewell to the first Cuban internationalist combatants who were leaving for Ethiopia. [...]Eighteen months later we have returned to a Ethiopia which is victorious be cause of its combative sons' heroism and the support of international solidarity, as Comrade Mengistu stated 2 days ago. Moreover, it is also an already powerful Ethiopia. Tuesday's popular parade confirmed the enormous popular support for this revolutionary change. Yesterday's military parade tells us of the degree of organization and discipline achieved by the combative and courageous fraternal Ethiopian people. The rapid revolutionary offensive of the Ethiopian and Cuban troops practically annihilated the enemy. [...]Ethiopian brothers, together with you we have fought and we have won. Together with you we are ready to fight again and to win again. Together with you we pledge: Fatherland or death, we shall win!
Castro's September 1978 speech places Cuban combatants on the ground in December of 1977. The importance of these dates will become evident later on. The next excerpt is from a conversation with the then East German dictator Erik Honecker discussing the situation in Ethiopia and Fidel Castro's assesment of Mengistu in February of 1977 following a visit and meeting with him:
Mengistu strikes me as a quiet, serious, and sincere leader who is aware of the power of the masses. He is an intellectual personality who showed his wisdom on 3 February. The rightists wanted to do away with the leftists on 3 February. The prelude to this was an exuberant speech by the Ethiopian president in favor of nationalism. Mengistu preempted this coup. He called the meeting of the Revolutionary Council one hour early and had the rightist leaders arrested and shot. A very consequential decision was taken on 3 February in Ethiopia. The political landscape of the country changed, which has enabled them to take steps that were impossible before then. Before it was only possible to support the leftist forces indirectly, now we can do so without any constraints.
Fidel Castro with close ally Mengistu Haile Mariam
The dates are important because it coincides with the beginning of the "Red Terror" in which 2,000 Africans were slaughtered. This was a purge of political opponents. According to press accounts: "Suspects were rounded up, some shot, others garrotted. The bodies were thrown on the streets." There would be a Cuban military presence on the ground until 1988. In December 2006 Ethiopia's former dictator was found guilty of the extrajudicial killing of thousands of political opponents and his involvement in a famine which killed one million people and found guilty of genocide in absentia. A Reuters video report on the 2006 trial is available below:
Video of the international tribunal announcing the guilty verdict on July 26 of war criminal Kaing Guek Eac, otherwise known as "Duch" can be heard with English translation here and is available below in Khmer:
Below is reproduced the statement of the international tribunal regarding the guilty verdict and sentence for Kaing Guek Eac, otherwise known as "Duch":
Subject: Kaing Guek Eav convicted of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949
Date: 26 July 2010
The Trial Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) today found KAING Guek Eav alias Duch guilty of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and sentenced him to 35 (thirty-five) years of imprisonment.
KAING Guek Eav, the first person to stand trial before the ECCC, served as Deputy and then Chairman of S-21, a security centre tasked with interrogating and executing persons perceived as enemies of Democratic Kampuchea by the Communist Party of Kampuchea. S-21 was operational between 1975 and 1979. The Chamber found that every individual detained within S-21 was destined for execution in accordance with the Communist Party of Kampuchea policy to “smash” all enemies. In addition to mass executions, many detainees died as a result of torture and their conditions of detention. Although finding a minimum of 12,272 individuals to have been detained and executed at S-21 on the basis of prisoner lists, the Chamber indicated that the actual number of detainees is likely to have been considerably greater.
The Trial Chamber found that KAING Guek Eav acted with various individuals, and through his subordinates, to operate S-21 and S-24: an adjunct facility used as a re-education camp, and where a minimum of a further 1,300 individuals were detained. It further found that KAING Guek Eav possessed and exercised significant authority at S-21 and that his conduct in carrying out his functions showed a high degree of efficiency and zeal. He worked tirelessly to ensure that S-21 ran as efficiently as possible and did so out of unquestioning loyalty to his superiors. The Chamber found that KAING Guek Eav therefore not only implemented but actively contributed to the development of Communist Party of Kampuchea policies at S-21.
KAING Guek Eav had also been charged with national crimes of premeditated murder and torture, punishable before the ECCC under Article 3 (new) of the ECCC Law. The Chamber, in a separate decision also issued today, disagreed on whether responsibility for these crimes had already been extinguished before the ECCC investigation of the Accused commenced. The absence of a required majority prevented the Chamber exercising its jurisdiction in relation to these national crimes. This decision had no impact on sentence.
KAING Guek Eav was convicted of crimes against humanity (persecution on politicalgrounds) (incorporating various other crimes against humanity, including extermination,imprisonment and torture), as well as numerous grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, for which, by a majority, the Chamber imposed a single, consolidated sentence of 35 (thirty-five) years of imprisonment. In deciding on an appropriate sentence, the Chamber noted a number of aggravating features, in particular the gravity of the offences, which were perpetrated against at least 12,272 victims over a prolonged period.
The Chamber decided that there are significant mitigating factors that mandated the imposition of a finite term of imprisonment rather than one of life imprisonment. These factors include cooperation with the Chamber, admission of responsibility, limited expressions of remorse, the coercive environment in Democratic Kampuchea, and the potential for rehabilitation.
Following an earlier decision of the Chamber of 15 June 2009, the Chamber considered that a reduction in the above sentence of 5 (five) years was appropriate given the violation of KAING Guek Eav’s rights occasioned by his illegal detention by the Cambodian Military Court between 10 May 1999 and 30 July 2007. KAING Guek Eav is further entitled to credit for time already spent in detention, under the authority both of the Cambodian Military Court and the ECCC.
In its judgement, the Trial Chamber declared 66 Civil Parties either to have 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. They have further shown that the death of these victims caused demonstrable injury and that this harm was a direct consequence of KAING Guek Eav’s offending. The Chamber granted the request of these Civil Parties that their names be included in the judgement. 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.
The substantive part of the trial against KAING Guek Eav commenced on 30 March 2009. Closing arguments ended on 27 November 2009 after a total of 72 trial days, during which 24 witnesses, 22 Civil Parties and nine experts were heard. More than 28,000 people followed the proceedings from the public gallery.
Hopefully one day soon the war criminals responsible for mass murders in Cuba such as the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre will be brought to justice before an international tribunal inside of Cuba. It would be wonderful if it happened as it has happened today on July 26, 2010 in Cambodia. Whether justice is obtained in Cuba in the future or continues to slog its way through in Cambodia will be up to primarily but not only for Cubans and Cambodians in their respective countries but also the international community. Amnesty International has called today's conviction a first step towards justice for the nearly two million killed by the Khmer Rouge and called for more prosecutions of those responsible for the Cambodian genocide. Let us pray and do our part to see that justice is done.
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.
"Reconciliation should be accompanied by justice, otherwise it will not last. While we all hope for peace it shouldn't be peace at any cost but peace based on principle, on justice." - Corazon Aquino
"It is essential that justice be done, and it is equally vital that justice not be confused with revenge, for the two are wholly different." - Oscar Arias Sanchez
Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot slaughtered one third of the entire population of Cambodia. Imagine for a moment 1 in 3 Cambodians extrajudicially executed by their own government in the course of 3 years, 8 months and 20 days. The end of the regime was a civil war and invasion by neighboring Vietnam. Thirty years later the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. A Cambodian court with international participation is seeking to apply international standards while having to recognize national realities. The world is monitoring the proceedings and although imperfect 7 out of 10 Cambodians believe that some measure of justice is being achieved as a small number of Khmer Rouge members are brought to justice.
Totalitarian regimes thrive on violence born of frustration in the populace. These regimes typically obtain power through violence and the propagation of hatred for different groups in the country in the process demonizing and liquidating them. Successful opposition to these regimes has been demonstrated with great creativity, discipline, and a systematic rejection of violence and hatred even of one's political adversary as a profound rejection of the foundations of totalitarianism that seeks to turn the "mass man" into a citizen of a republic or a subject in a constitutional monarchy.
A free society cannot long exist where impunity thrives. To end impunity requires that both justice and memory be investigated, honored, and upheld. Corazon Aquino, who led the people power movement that ousted the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos expressed a profound truth that a lasting national reconciliation can only be achieved with justice and sound principles. Today, Cuba's prisoners of conscience, behind bars, and their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers in the Ladies in White are demonstrating the power of demanding justice and an end to impunity. A civic nonviolent movement has despite brutal repression created a space for itself that challenges the totalitarian regime. This is the basis for the Cuban democracy of tomorrow.
Cuban cultural icons in the island such as Carlos Varela are beginning to speak out more clearly both in their music and in their public statements.
This is a positive development and appears to be a gesture of principled reconciliation. An end to the structural injustice and violence that the dictatorship has imposed on the island for a half century is a necessary step for reconciliation to flourish and survive.
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