Moving Beyond the Killing Fields
by Thomas Park on September 17, 2007 in Features
It was a hot evening even though it was the rainy season. “It’s usually much cooler than this,” shrugged my friend. I was sitting with my colleagues on the stairs near my office, located in what was supposed to be Cambodia’s military headquarters. I was not sure what we were waiting for – we had just filed all the evidence related to the crimes committed by the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the Khmer Rouge. We would soon have our first suspect in custody. I voiced my confusion to my supervisor. She looked at me with a wry smile and said, “I’ve been waiting for more than 30 years for this.”
Her sentiment is shared by many. It’s been more than 30 years since the toppling of the Khmer Rouge, a regime that left one-third of Cambodia’s population dead. I had come to Phnom Penh to work in the office of the co-prosecutors at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Our job was to bring the most senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge to trial, and help the country strengthen its failing judicial system and move beyond the legacy of the “killing fields,” a phrase made popular by the 1984 film that depicted the tragic saga. It was a historic summer for the court. Kang Kack Iev, aka Duch, was the first suspect detained by the Tribunal. He was the director of Tuol Sleng prison located in Phnom Penh, codenamed S-21. Now a slim, elderly man with thinning white hair, Duch oversaw more than 14,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng. Over a four-year period, his victims were subjected to the most horrific treatment including torture, inhumane living conditions, and beatings. Seven people survived. All that remains of the prisoners are their somber photographs, the metal shackles that held them and thousands of pages of forced confessions, carefully preserved by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia. Many believed that justice for the Khmer Rouge would be elusive. Duch’s imprisonment has proved them wrong, and he will not be alone for long.
I came to Cambodia with some modest experience in international crime. Within the field of post-conflict reconstruction and development, it’s a more somber job than others. We look to the past, not to the future. Often, when our work is done, there is no new infrastructure or policy to be implemented for future generations. A more cynical viewpoint would suggest that such tribunals are part sanitized retribution, part lame apology by the international community for its inaction.
But such cynicism is based on a false understanding. Holding individuals accountable for egregious violations of international law is crucial for any society to move forward. A culture of impunity is even more degenerative to a society than corruption: if people can get away with genocide, then what can’t they get away with?
One of the first things the Khmer Rouge leaders did when they came to power was to kill all Cambodia’s lawyers. The country has been paying the price ever since. With a shaky grasp of what the rule of law means, the younger generation has had little experience with a functioning legal system. Political interference in judicial decisions and corruption is common. It is the hope of the Tribunal that by conducting fair and public trials, carried out by Cambodian attorneys and judges, the legal process will show people what they can achieve with their legal system. If successful, this will prove to be the court’s lasting legacy once the senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge pass onto historical ignominy. And to the world can learn from Cambodians how they were able to piece together a society after the Khmer Rouge and the decades of civil war that followed.
I look back on my time in Phnom Penh with mixed feelings. I feel that Cambodia’s future can only get better than its past – there’s a large amount of investment within the country, and tourism has been thriving. However, after sifting through the evidence and talking to survivors of the recent genocide, I wonder whether the country can ever truly heal. It was disturbing to learn that so many younger Cambodians don’t believe the Khmer Rouge committed such atrocities. Perhaps, with this court, Cambodia can finally overcome the dark legacy from which it has only recently emerged.
This article is part of a longer series “Summer Dispatches.”
Comments
Got something to say?
