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Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Royal Pawns Between The Tiger and The Crocodile
Then-Prince Sihanouk and then-Princess MoniqueThursday, August 05, 2010
Op-Ed by MP
THOSE of us who have been keen observers of Cambodian politics within recent decades are more or less used to idiosyncratic reminiscences emanating from N. Sihanouk's camp. There's no real cause for doubting KI Media's sincerity in rendering this kind of anecdotes, which has been profusely produced by the former monarch himself and accumulated in abundance, no doubt, in his Royal Library.
What should interest any independent, fair-minded observer is to what extent and how much of an influence had our Royal Princess Monique who formed the other Half of the Khmer Royal pair been part of Sihanouk's decision-making throughout his long convoluted political career and, through that, her own personal involvement in the making of Cambodian history - its salvation and tragedies alike - in the course of the same period. In his own memoir, Sihanouk recalls how Monique was persistent in 'persuading' him - following his overthrow by Lon Nol - to join force with the Khmer Rouge who were then still under de facto influence of the North Vietnamese whose troops remained on Khmer soil even after April 1975 and would have remained there longer had it not been for Beijing's mounting pressure on Hanoi to withdraw.
Perhaps, China did exert pressure on the exiled Khmer royals to return to reinforce Sihanouk's erstwhile opponents (Red Khmers) whom he now described as ‘patriots’ or maybe the Royal Couple themselves were counting on the Vietminhs repaying them in gratitude for what the latter owed the former for that vital assistance provided prior to the 1970 coup. What is beyond debate is the fatal 'mistake' committed by Sihanouk in his decision to embrace the Red Khmers so soon after that coup; an error which he subsequently himself publicly acknowledged in an off-guard moment to a journalist. If Monique did sway this historical decision then she may have, even with her youth and legendary beauty in mind, reduced more than a couple of Soviet leaders to helpless victims by the power of her spells.
With the benefit of hindsight and with our bitter taste of what was to follow as a direct outcome of this course of action and gamble by Sihanouk one could not help but wonder what course history might have taken instead had he not allowed his Royal name and presence to be used by cold-hearted men and revolutionary groups whose ideology the US ambassador to Cambodia at the time described as ‘un-Cambodian’. And he was not simply referring to the North Vietnamese.
But even without the benefit of hindsight, it is plausible to take the view that there would have been no logical need for the Prince to plunge his small kingdom that had no real quarrel with the US into full blown armed conflict by embracing the Communists. Lon Nol might have grave difficulties holding out against the battle- hardened Vietminhs, but at least he would not have to dispense so much energy killing – or trying not to be killed by – his own compatriots in the Red Khmers who were now responding to Sihanouk’s call to bear arms against the ‘traitorous’ Khmer republicans with alarming fanaticism and zeal. The Vietnamese might also have eventually achieved their ultimate ambition of bringing the Indochina-coursing Mekong under their control by one means or another, but the most likely scenario that would have prevailed would have been the absence of executions and killings that had been a most salient and grim pattern in Cambodia’s ‘civil wars’ in recent decades. Even the systematic executions of between 40-60,000 defeated Lon Nol soldiers most of whom had once been Sihanouk’s ‘children’ and subjects – the part of that mass killings to only have been openly acknowledged by Pol Pot - would have been too much a price for Cambodia to have to pay. The survival of trained non-Communist military personnel would have provided the country with a much better material with which to resist outright foreign domination in later years. Even the North Vietnamese recognised the pragmatic benefit of incorporating former South Vietnamese soldiers and officers into their unified national military rank, some of whom were subsequently dispatched as ‘volunteers’ to Cambodia and Laos. This familiar mistake – committed again by the CPP in 1997 to neutralise Funcinpec’s military threat - should never be repeated. It is a senseless waste of human resource in the glaring face of the nation’s much lamented numerical handicap with relations to its neighbours, never mind the charge of rights violation against captured military personnel in time of war.
As a keen reader of world history, Sihanouk would have taken note with some personal trepidation of the massacre of the entire Russian royal family carried out by the Bolsheviks to ensure that the monarchy could never again re-emerge to reclaim the political throne in Russia. That he overlooked this personal risk and made a decision to throw in his lot with the Communist camp does seem to testify to his overall misplaced (and perhaps, reckless) optimism that the North Vietnamese and their Khmer Rouge allies would save his nation and people from any likely catastrophe - which they singularly failed, by force of their own respective motives and in line with their own ulterior agendas (and are arguably failing still) to do. Not only that. Once their common Foe – the US - had been overcome traditional distrust resurfaced between the North Vietnamese and their Pol Pot-led Communist allies leaving Sihanouk in a precarious position as he was now caught between the Tiger of the Khmer Rouge and the Crocodile of the Vietminhs in his Unholy Royal Alliance with them both, who by way of their own imperceptible metamorphoses and un-evolved predatory traits, continue to keep him through his ceremoniously enthroned royal heir firmly between their threatening jaws - a tragic fate and dilemma, furthermore, to which by way of perverted extension the Khmer people and nation are presently condemned.
What should interest any independent, fair-minded observer is to what extent and how much of an influence had our Royal Princess Monique who formed the other Half of the Khmer Royal pair been part of Sihanouk's decision-making throughout his long convoluted political career and, through that, her own personal involvement in the making of Cambodian history - its salvation and tragedies alike - in the course of the same period. In his own memoir, Sihanouk recalls how Monique was persistent in 'persuading' him - following his overthrow by Lon Nol - to join force with the Khmer Rouge who were then still under de facto influence of the North Vietnamese whose troops remained on Khmer soil even after April 1975 and would have remained there longer had it not been for Beijing's mounting pressure on Hanoi to withdraw.
Perhaps, China did exert pressure on the exiled Khmer royals to return to reinforce Sihanouk's erstwhile opponents (Red Khmers) whom he now described as ‘patriots’ or maybe the Royal Couple themselves were counting on the Vietminhs repaying them in gratitude for what the latter owed the former for that vital assistance provided prior to the 1970 coup. What is beyond debate is the fatal 'mistake' committed by Sihanouk in his decision to embrace the Red Khmers so soon after that coup; an error which he subsequently himself publicly acknowledged in an off-guard moment to a journalist. If Monique did sway this historical decision then she may have, even with her youth and legendary beauty in mind, reduced more than a couple of Soviet leaders to helpless victims by the power of her spells.
With the benefit of hindsight and with our bitter taste of what was to follow as a direct outcome of this course of action and gamble by Sihanouk one could not help but wonder what course history might have taken instead had he not allowed his Royal name and presence to be used by cold-hearted men and revolutionary groups whose ideology the US ambassador to Cambodia at the time described as ‘un-Cambodian’. And he was not simply referring to the North Vietnamese.
But even without the benefit of hindsight, it is plausible to take the view that there would have been no logical need for the Prince to plunge his small kingdom that had no real quarrel with the US into full blown armed conflict by embracing the Communists. Lon Nol might have grave difficulties holding out against the battle- hardened Vietminhs, but at least he would not have to dispense so much energy killing – or trying not to be killed by – his own compatriots in the Red Khmers who were now responding to Sihanouk’s call to bear arms against the ‘traitorous’ Khmer republicans with alarming fanaticism and zeal. The Vietnamese might also have eventually achieved their ultimate ambition of bringing the Indochina-coursing Mekong under their control by one means or another, but the most likely scenario that would have prevailed would have been the absence of executions and killings that had been a most salient and grim pattern in Cambodia’s ‘civil wars’ in recent decades. Even the systematic executions of between 40-60,000 defeated Lon Nol soldiers most of whom had once been Sihanouk’s ‘children’ and subjects – the part of that mass killings to only have been openly acknowledged by Pol Pot - would have been too much a price for Cambodia to have to pay. The survival of trained non-Communist military personnel would have provided the country with a much better material with which to resist outright foreign domination in later years. Even the North Vietnamese recognised the pragmatic benefit of incorporating former South Vietnamese soldiers and officers into their unified national military rank, some of whom were subsequently dispatched as ‘volunteers’ to Cambodia and Laos. This familiar mistake – committed again by the CPP in 1997 to neutralise Funcinpec’s military threat - should never be repeated. It is a senseless waste of human resource in the glaring face of the nation’s much lamented numerical handicap with relations to its neighbours, never mind the charge of rights violation against captured military personnel in time of war.
As a keen reader of world history, Sihanouk would have taken note with some personal trepidation of the massacre of the entire Russian royal family carried out by the Bolsheviks to ensure that the monarchy could never again re-emerge to reclaim the political throne in Russia. That he overlooked this personal risk and made a decision to throw in his lot with the Communist camp does seem to testify to his overall misplaced (and perhaps, reckless) optimism that the North Vietnamese and their Khmer Rouge allies would save his nation and people from any likely catastrophe - which they singularly failed, by force of their own respective motives and in line with their own ulterior agendas (and are arguably failing still) to do. Not only that. Once their common Foe – the US - had been overcome traditional distrust resurfaced between the North Vietnamese and their Pol Pot-led Communist allies leaving Sihanouk in a precarious position as he was now caught between the Tiger of the Khmer Rouge and the Crocodile of the Vietminhs in his Unholy Royal Alliance with them both, who by way of their own imperceptible metamorphoses and un-evolved predatory traits, continue to keep him through his ceremoniously enthroned royal heir firmly between their threatening jaws - a tragic fate and dilemma, furthermore, to which by way of perverted extension the Khmer people and nation are presently condemned.
Scholarship for Asia Leaders Programme at the University For Peace
KI-Media Note: Dear Readers, should you need additional information about this scholarship, please contact Mr. Sovannarith Keo (email: skeo@student.upeace.org) who was a former alumni there.
Asia Leaders Programme
(MA Dual Campus with Ateneo de Manila University)
(MA Dual Campus with Ateneo de Manila University)
The Asia Leaders Programme, a Dual Campus Master Programme, is a shared initiative between The Nippon Foundation, the University for Peace, and Ateneo de Manila University. The objective of the programme is to train Asians to become practitioners who will work in the field for peace building. Take special note that the programme is not designed to train and develop academics.
This modality offers the support for individuals who do not have a proficient command of English to work in this increasingly common international language and to become comfortable in their professional abilities as they gain academic skills.
Description of the Programme
This 19-month intensive academic programme begins in April and is accomplished in three terms: the initial language-training module and courses at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines; regular courses at UPEACE headquarters in Costa Rica; and a practical four-month internship in the Philippines.
Admitted applicants will be automatically granted full scholarships provided by The Nippon Foundation. A full scholarship includes: tuition fee, language-training module, academic materials, air travel and living expenses during the period of studies.
The Asia Leaders Programme offers the theoretical and practical post graduate education to Asians from diverse cultures and backgrounds to attain a deep understanding of the central issues of peace building. Participants will broaden their base of knowledge and will be able to engage with the major concepts, themes, and debates within peace studies, preparing themselves for work with NGOs, governments, aid agencies, the UN and other organizations.
Furthermore, this programme empowers participants to conceptualize the key challenges faced by the international community, and the most promising potential areas and courses of action through an interdisciplinary and multicultural perspective.
Academic Schedule
From April to August (The Philippines): Content based English language instruction module. Participants are expected to reach a score of 600 points of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) at the end of the academic courses of the programme.
From August to spring (Costa Rica): Participants will continue their studies in one of the Regular MA Programmes at UPEACE:
- Environmental Security and Peace
- Environmental Security and Peace - Specialization in Climate Change and Security (CCS)
- Gender and Peace Building
- International Law and Human Rights
- International Law and the Settlement of Disputes
- International Peace Studies
- Media, Peace and Conflict Studies
- Natural Resources and Peace
- Peace Education
- Responsible Management and Sustainable Economic Development
- Gender and Peacebuilding in Asia
- Asia Peace Psychology
- Small Arms, Arms Control and Human Society in Asia
- Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Asia
- Graduate Project preparation workshop
Examples of professional involvement of our graduates
- A student from Bangladesh is now working at UNDP Liberia, as an International Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist through United Nations Volunteers (UNV).
- A student from Sri Lanka is working at UNDP Indonesia on the position of Project Officer for the ART GOLD programme.
- One student from Japan is working in the Japanese diplomatic mission in Afghanistan.
- One student from Indonesia is UN Office of the Recovery Coordinator in one region from Indonesia.
For further information on admission, please contact: admissions@upeace.org
- Application Deadline: 15 October
- Notification of Admission: 3 December
Your application represents you, so be sure that it is complete and accurate and that the essays and supplementary materials represent your own work. It is not acceptable to misrepresent one's accomplishments, to borrow from the works of others without proper acknowledgment, or to submit as one's own material that has been written, re-written or heavily edited by others. Breaches of these protocols will result in rejection of the application.
YOU MUST SUBMIT THE COMPLETE APPLICATION PACKAGE containing all supporting documents. Incomplete packages will not be reviewed.
The instructions below will help you complete all forms that will make your application package complete. Please read the guidelines carefully to determine which documentation is needed.
- Fill out the on-line application form
- Gather and send a complete hard-copy (i.e. printed paper) of all the following materials:
Applicants are responsible for gathering hard copies of all these materials and for submitting them in a single package to the UPEACE Department of Academic Administration (DAA) by the application deadline.
- Official Undergraduate Transcript (Original or certified true copy)
- Certified True Copy of Diploma
- Two letters of recommendation
- Curriculum Vitae or Résumé
- Statement of Purpose
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Letters of recommendation, English proficiency test scores, and transcripts must all be in sealed envelopes
Please, send all materials to the following address by the Application Deadline:
University for Peace
Department of Academic Administration
Application for Asia Leaders Programme
P.O. Box 138-6100
San José, Costa Rica
ZIP Code: 10701
Department of Academic Administration
Application for Asia Leaders Programme
P.O. Box 138-6100
San José, Costa Rica
ZIP Code: 10701
We will confirm receipt of application materials by e-mail. If you wish to receive swifter verification of the receipt of materials, you should send them via registered mail or other receipt-requested service using the following address:
University for Peace
Department of Academic Administration
Application for Asia Leaders Programme
El Rodeo de Mora, Ciudad Colón
San José, Costa Rica
Tel: (506) 22-05-90-00
Department of Academic Administration
Application for Asia Leaders Programme
El Rodeo de Mora, Ciudad Colón
San José, Costa Rica
Tel: (506) 22-05-90-00
My young and beautiful Monique earned the lust of two Soviet bears: Sihanouk
Kruschev and Brezhnev: The two Soviet bears (bores?)
Then-Princess Monique
Now-Queen-Mother Monineath
Translated from French by Prince Lusty de LustHistory
1960 – N. Sihanouk, Head of State of the kingdom of Cambodia on official visit to the Soviet Union
H.E. Kruschev, fell very very much in love with my wife, Monique, then young and more beautiful than ever.
Day of the Soviet-Khmer negotiations: Mr. Kruschev, the master of Kremlin, let me know through a French-speaking Soviet diplomat, that Princess Monique should be present to these negotiations (!?)
As the negotiations time arrived, H.E. Kruschev placed himself in front of Monique and spent his time admiring her. He told his “lieutenant”, Mr. Brezhnev, to talk to me. I obtained from the Soviet Union the donation to Cambodia of a large hospital with 500 beds, as well as a large technological institute.
In fact, H.E. Brezhnev told his main French-speaking comrades to “negotiate” with me and he did not stop admiring the extraordinary beauty of Monique.
01 August 2010
(Signed) N. Sihanouk
H.E. Kruschev, fell very very much in love with my wife, Monique, then young and more beautiful than ever.
Day of the Soviet-Khmer negotiations: Mr. Kruschev, the master of Kremlin, let me know through a French-speaking Soviet diplomat, that Princess Monique should be present to these negotiations (!?)
As the negotiations time arrived, H.E. Kruschev placed himself in front of Monique and spent his time admiring her. He told his “lieutenant”, Mr. Brezhnev, to talk to me. I obtained from the Soviet Union the donation to Cambodia of a large hospital with 500 beds, as well as a large technological institute.
In fact, H.E. Brezhnev told his main French-speaking comrades to “negotiate” with me and he did not stop admiring the extraordinary beauty of Monique.
01 August 2010
(Signed) N. Sihanouk
Revisiting the Killing Fields
August 04, 2010
By Luke Hunt
The Diplomat (Japan/Australia)
The trial of the first Khmer Rouge leader by the Cambodia Tribunal leaves Cambodians with a mix of relief and frustration.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, stood as Judge Nil Nonn read the charge sheet. Around him, Muslim Chams and Buddhist monks sat patiently with ordinary Cambodians, diplomats, aid workers and journalists. Among them were hundreds of victims—survivors of the Khmer Rouge—who along with millions more across the country waited anxiously for the verdict.
Late last month, a freshly-built courthouse on the outskirts of Phnom Penh became the focus of justice in a nation craving admonishment of the Khmer Rouge and international recognition that atrocities committed here between April 1975 and January 1979 were indeed war crimes.
Inside the courtroom, Judge Nonn detailed charges that included murder, torture, extermination and crimes against humanity. As he rattled off the names of victims, whose relatives had featured prominently in court hearings, viewers in the public gallery became fidgety, while outside hundreds sat on the muddy lawns listening intently to public address systems.
The gathered crowds were a scene repeated in thousands of villages across the country, from the northern reaches of the Mekong Delta to its coastal towns in the south. Local TV and radio networks had been ordered to broadcast the verdict in Case 001, the first international effort to prosecute the surviving ultra-Maoists leaders, live from the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts in Cambodia (ECCC).
The public’s anxiety had manifested itself since closing arguments seven months earlier when Duch, the first Khmer Rouge leader to be tried by the ECCC, had thrown a last minute spanner into the legal works and changed his plea of no contest to not guilty. He’d also sacked his French lawyer Francois Roux and demanded a replacement from the only country to recognise Pol Pot during his time in power—China.
That Duch had overseen ghastly ritual torture and the deaths of thousands at the S-21 prison seemed undeniable, but the Christian convert and former mathematics teacher had created an avenue for acquittal and Cambodians are used to fearing the worst.
So when Nonn finally released the guilty verdict, reached by three Cambodian and two international judges, the sense of relief was palpable. Cheers and a few tears followed as people hugged and shook hands. Commonsense and a touch of United Nations justice had prevailed.
Nonn sentenced Duch to 35 years in jail minus 11 years for time already served. A further five years was also taken off because six of those years in prison were spent in illegal incarceration. On this reading, Duch has only 19 years left to serveand, under standard sentencing procedures, Duch could see one-third of his 35-year term removed for good behavior.
One woman at the court said Duch should be killed, fried and his body dismembered to be eaten by his victims. A Cambodian newspaper publisher, an American who lives abroad, wrote a letter to their own paper comparing the Khmer Rouge with the Nazis and the holocaust, and fumed that Pol Pot’s lieutenants should hang (Cambodia abolished the death penalty in 1993).
The Survivors
The ECCC had been given the names of more than 12,000 men, women and children who were processed at S-21—an abandoned high school in suburban Tuol Sleng—tortured, then ferried to the Killing Fields just outside of Phnom Penh. There they were bludgeoned to death with an iron bar to the nape of the neck and buried in mass graves.
Duch admitted that more than the 12,000 named had perished. But the widely accepted figure is 16,000 and some experts believe as many as 25,000 people were killed. Duch ran S-21 and S-24, another similar facility, based on a prototype called M-13 that he had built in 1971 while the Khmer Rouge were still battling the US-backed Lon Nol forces. About 300 people died in M-13, near Omlaing, about 80 kilometres west of Phnom Penh.
From behind a wall of bullet-proof glass, Duch told the court that M-13 was designed to ‘detain, to torture and to smash, that is to kill’and according to evidence from Chan Voeun it was here that Duch was ‘happy like a madman’ while torturing prisoners.
As an M-13 employee, Voeun had watched Duch hang a woman from a tree, strip-off her shirt and burn her breasts with a lit kerosene rag.
In all, 196 death camps were built around the country based on the S-21 and M-13 models after Pol Pot seized the capital in 1975. Less than a handful of S-21 inmates are alive today.
‘I’m not the court, but I want Duch to be jailed for life,’ says one survivor, Bou Meng. ‘He doesn’t deserve a reduced sentence because he has committed very serious crimes. Whoever reduces his sentence should go to jail instead of him.’
Vann Nath, a 65-year-old stillquietly dealing with health issues that can be traced back to his time in S-21, is now a tireless worker at conferences and workshops aimed at helping Cambodia cope with Pol Pot’s legacy and recuperate from more than three decades of war.
Vann Nath’s artistic abilities are what saved him. A gifted painter, he was taken from his cell and told to paint portraits of Khmer Rouge leaders. And although a diminutive figure in size, he seems to tower among others for his candor and decency. On the verdict he was gracious.
‘For justice, it’s up to court to deliver,’he says. ‘It’s like a life sentence for him because Duch is…old already.’
‘What we have suffered is too great to describe, it’s difficult for us to reconcile, but we must forgive,’ he says, adding in regards to his friends and relatives who did not survive: ‘We can’t demand something that’s already lost, so let it go.’
Duch’s sentencing was, infact, in keeping with international laws and any leniency was on this basis justified given that the evidence he has provided will be used in Case 002 to prosecute Brother Number Two Nuon Chea, former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife, the former minister for social affairs Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan, a former head of state.
All four were on the Khmer Rouge central and standing committees that wrote and initiated government policy.
The Numbers Game
In urging the court to jail Duch for 40 years, after taking into consideration the 10 years already served, co-prosecutor William Smith from Australia said his crimes against humanity were comparable with those committed in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.
Strangely, this was also a point taken up by the defense, for a different purpose. Before he was sacked, Roux compared his client’s crimes with those committed by Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production for Adolf Hitler and Dragan Obrenovic. Obrenovic, the Bosnian Serb army brigade commander, was tried for war crimes in connection with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre during which 8000 men and boys were killed.
Roux won few fans with his final arguments.
‘I apologise in advance to the victims for what I am about to say,’Roux said. He then noted that the total number of deaths under Duch’s stewardship was less than one percent of those who perished across the country at that time.
Certainly, the inhumanity and damage inflicted by the Khmer Rouge on a nation-wide scale was breathtaking. Up to two million people—or about quarter of Cambodia’s population—died through murder, starvation and illnesses related to forced labor and malnutrition during the years of its regime.
The cities were emptied and Cambodia’s cultural life was abandoned for Pol Pot’s vision of an agrarian utopia. Unfortunately, there was little room for ethnic Vietnamese, Muslim Chams and other minorities who were singled out for extermination. Intellectuals were targeted as enemies of the people and sometimes branded as such simply because they wore glasses. Those with dark skin were favoured as communist approved peasants because their tone represented time under the sun and in the paddy fields.
The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia ended Pol Pot’s rule in 1979 and with it one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century (although another two decades of conflict based on Cold War animosities and local factions continued until 1998).
So Roux’s mathematics were correct. The death rate at S-21 was much lower than what was being experienced elsewhere in the country. However, the numbers game is also dangerous because it underestimates the extent of barbarity that was inflicted at S-21 under Duch’s stewardship.
Evidence offered in case 001 included testimonies from the victims, S-21 guards and relatives of the dead. They revealed the existence of a special team of five female interrogators to deal with women prisoners, and that Duch’s preferred methods of torture were whips and electric shocks, as these were simpler than water boarding and less likely to kill the victim at an ‘inconvenient’time.
Still, water boarding was common, as was asphyxiation, meals were rare and beatings common. Prisoners were left chained to rotting corpses for days at time. Operations were performed on inmates without anesthetic and at times blood was drained for use in transfusions elsewhere.
Death was the only relief, provided after a prisoner had signed off on a forced confession. About 5000 confessions were eventually obtained. Perversely, lawyers for Ieng Thirith have indicated they will argue that such confessions are inadmissible as evidence in court because they were obtained under duress, violating the victims’ human rights.
Cheam Soeu, a former guard at S-21, told how four Westerners—an Australian, an American a New Zealander and a Briton—were brought there and eventually killed.
He says one was taken outside the jail by three guards, told to sit down, a tire was placed over him and he was set a light. Cheam Soeu could not say which Westerner had died.
Kerry Hamill was one of the Westerners killed after his yacht was blown off course and into Cambodian waters in 1978. In a powerful testimony, his brother slowly read a victim impact statement to the trial and wept. He told Duch that he had ruined his family and that his parents had learned of their son’s death two months later from a newspaper report.
‘At times, I have imagined you shackled, starved, whipped and clubbed, viciously. I have imagined your scrotum electrified, being forced to eat your own faeces, being nearly drowned and having your throat cut,’ Hamill said, referring to some of the horrors faced by prisoners.
Duch eventually expanded S-21 to implement a purge of Khmer Rouge no longer considered pure—dubbed ‘evil eating evil’ by some.
But the extent of Duch’scrimes was probably best captured by a Vietnamese cameraman who entered Toul Sleng with Hanoi’s invasion in late 1978.
The grisly footage includes decapitated bodies chained to their beds, footage ruled inadmissible by judges after it was challenged by the defence for its authenticity.
But Greg Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, has no doubts it was real.
‘It makes Nazi death camps look tame,’ he says. ‘It’s black and white, silent, about ten minutes. It shows bodies chained to beds…Bodies were shackled at the ankles and disemboweled. It’s the most horrible thing on earth.’
‘Shocking and Heinous’
Judge Nonn described the crimes as ‘shocking and heinous’ but Duch sought to mitigate his involvement with limited remorse and by emphasizing his role as just a cog in a much bigger machine. He corroborated earlier claims over chains of command made by Ieng Thirith that ultimate responsibility for S-21 lay with Nuon Chea.
‘It's really important, in the telling of history, what happened more than 30 years ago,’ says Khmer American author and lawyer, Theary Seng. ‘The Khmer Rouge tribunal is shedding light on this very, very dark period.’
She says Duch's testimony surrounding M-13 death as well as his naming of names had left a powerful and poignant mark on the tribunal.
‘Even for those of us who have been following the tribunal since its establishment, who have been reading up on the tribunal, on the history of the Khmer Rouge, we’ve found surprising pieces of information we didn’t know existed before,’she says.
The other four Khmer Rouge leaders currently in detention have said they will plead not guilty to charges of murder, torture and crimes against humanity. They won’t cooperate,and according to Seng, Duch’s trial will be seen as a cakewalk when compared with what’s to come once Case 002 gets underway in early 2011.
This is where the court’s sentencing—while upsetting many over the short term—is important for two reasons. First, time off for good behavior and remorse could be used as an inducement to convince any of the four to testify against the others.
Second, Duch still has the option of appealing. If he does, this could complicate Case 002 with evidence that was once taken as read being thrown open and questioned again as Duch seeks to overturn the previous ruling.
If Duch accepts his maximum 19 years left to serve then prosecutors can expect a smoother ride. If Duch rejects this and appeals as his lawyer says he intends to, then he risks receiving a much harsher sentence, one that would probably guarantee his last days will be spent behind bars regardless of how long he lives.
Given the ‘Hang ‘em High’ climate in some quarters of Phnom Penh, Duch should weigh his options very carefully.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, stood as Judge Nil Nonn read the charge sheet. Around him, Muslim Chams and Buddhist monks sat patiently with ordinary Cambodians, diplomats, aid workers and journalists. Among them were hundreds of victims—survivors of the Khmer Rouge—who along with millions more across the country waited anxiously for the verdict.
Late last month, a freshly-built courthouse on the outskirts of Phnom Penh became the focus of justice in a nation craving admonishment of the Khmer Rouge and international recognition that atrocities committed here between April 1975 and January 1979 were indeed war crimes.
Inside the courtroom, Judge Nonn detailed charges that included murder, torture, extermination and crimes against humanity. As he rattled off the names of victims, whose relatives had featured prominently in court hearings, viewers in the public gallery became fidgety, while outside hundreds sat on the muddy lawns listening intently to public address systems.
The gathered crowds were a scene repeated in thousands of villages across the country, from the northern reaches of the Mekong Delta to its coastal towns in the south. Local TV and radio networks had been ordered to broadcast the verdict in Case 001, the first international effort to prosecute the surviving ultra-Maoists leaders, live from the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts in Cambodia (ECCC).
The public’s anxiety had manifested itself since closing arguments seven months earlier when Duch, the first Khmer Rouge leader to be tried by the ECCC, had thrown a last minute spanner into the legal works and changed his plea of no contest to not guilty. He’d also sacked his French lawyer Francois Roux and demanded a replacement from the only country to recognise Pol Pot during his time in power—China.
That Duch had overseen ghastly ritual torture and the deaths of thousands at the S-21 prison seemed undeniable, but the Christian convert and former mathematics teacher had created an avenue for acquittal and Cambodians are used to fearing the worst.
So when Nonn finally released the guilty verdict, reached by three Cambodian and two international judges, the sense of relief was palpable. Cheers and a few tears followed as people hugged and shook hands. Commonsense and a touch of United Nations justice had prevailed.
Nonn sentenced Duch to 35 years in jail minus 11 years for time already served. A further five years was also taken off because six of those years in prison were spent in illegal incarceration. On this reading, Duch has only 19 years left to serveand, under standard sentencing procedures, Duch could see one-third of his 35-year term removed for good behavior.
One woman at the court said Duch should be killed, fried and his body dismembered to be eaten by his victims. A Cambodian newspaper publisher, an American who lives abroad, wrote a letter to their own paper comparing the Khmer Rouge with the Nazis and the holocaust, and fumed that Pol Pot’s lieutenants should hang (Cambodia abolished the death penalty in 1993).
The Survivors
The ECCC had been given the names of more than 12,000 men, women and children who were processed at S-21—an abandoned high school in suburban Tuol Sleng—tortured, then ferried to the Killing Fields just outside of Phnom Penh. There they were bludgeoned to death with an iron bar to the nape of the neck and buried in mass graves.
Duch admitted that more than the 12,000 named had perished. But the widely accepted figure is 16,000 and some experts believe as many as 25,000 people were killed. Duch ran S-21 and S-24, another similar facility, based on a prototype called M-13 that he had built in 1971 while the Khmer Rouge were still battling the US-backed Lon Nol forces. About 300 people died in M-13, near Omlaing, about 80 kilometres west of Phnom Penh.
From behind a wall of bullet-proof glass, Duch told the court that M-13 was designed to ‘detain, to torture and to smash, that is to kill’and according to evidence from Chan Voeun it was here that Duch was ‘happy like a madman’ while torturing prisoners.
As an M-13 employee, Voeun had watched Duch hang a woman from a tree, strip-off her shirt and burn her breasts with a lit kerosene rag.
In all, 196 death camps were built around the country based on the S-21 and M-13 models after Pol Pot seized the capital in 1975. Less than a handful of S-21 inmates are alive today.
‘I’m not the court, but I want Duch to be jailed for life,’ says one survivor, Bou Meng. ‘He doesn’t deserve a reduced sentence because he has committed very serious crimes. Whoever reduces his sentence should go to jail instead of him.’
Vann Nath, a 65-year-old stillquietly dealing with health issues that can be traced back to his time in S-21, is now a tireless worker at conferences and workshops aimed at helping Cambodia cope with Pol Pot’s legacy and recuperate from more than three decades of war.
Vann Nath’s artistic abilities are what saved him. A gifted painter, he was taken from his cell and told to paint portraits of Khmer Rouge leaders. And although a diminutive figure in size, he seems to tower among others for his candor and decency. On the verdict he was gracious.
‘For justice, it’s up to court to deliver,’he says. ‘It’s like a life sentence for him because Duch is…old already.’
‘What we have suffered is too great to describe, it’s difficult for us to reconcile, but we must forgive,’ he says, adding in regards to his friends and relatives who did not survive: ‘We can’t demand something that’s already lost, so let it go.’
Duch’s sentencing was, infact, in keeping with international laws and any leniency was on this basis justified given that the evidence he has provided will be used in Case 002 to prosecute Brother Number Two Nuon Chea, former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife, the former minister for social affairs Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan, a former head of state.
All four were on the Khmer Rouge central and standing committees that wrote and initiated government policy.
The Numbers Game
In urging the court to jail Duch for 40 years, after taking into consideration the 10 years already served, co-prosecutor William Smith from Australia said his crimes against humanity were comparable with those committed in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.
Strangely, this was also a point taken up by the defense, for a different purpose. Before he was sacked, Roux compared his client’s crimes with those committed by Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production for Adolf Hitler and Dragan Obrenovic. Obrenovic, the Bosnian Serb army brigade commander, was tried for war crimes in connection with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre during which 8000 men and boys were killed.
Roux won few fans with his final arguments.
‘I apologise in advance to the victims for what I am about to say,’Roux said. He then noted that the total number of deaths under Duch’s stewardship was less than one percent of those who perished across the country at that time.
Certainly, the inhumanity and damage inflicted by the Khmer Rouge on a nation-wide scale was breathtaking. Up to two million people—or about quarter of Cambodia’s population—died through murder, starvation and illnesses related to forced labor and malnutrition during the years of its regime.
The cities were emptied and Cambodia’s cultural life was abandoned for Pol Pot’s vision of an agrarian utopia. Unfortunately, there was little room for ethnic Vietnamese, Muslim Chams and other minorities who were singled out for extermination. Intellectuals were targeted as enemies of the people and sometimes branded as such simply because they wore glasses. Those with dark skin were favoured as communist approved peasants because their tone represented time under the sun and in the paddy fields.
The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia ended Pol Pot’s rule in 1979 and with it one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century (although another two decades of conflict based on Cold War animosities and local factions continued until 1998).
So Roux’s mathematics were correct. The death rate at S-21 was much lower than what was being experienced elsewhere in the country. However, the numbers game is also dangerous because it underestimates the extent of barbarity that was inflicted at S-21 under Duch’s stewardship.
Evidence offered in case 001 included testimonies from the victims, S-21 guards and relatives of the dead. They revealed the existence of a special team of five female interrogators to deal with women prisoners, and that Duch’s preferred methods of torture were whips and electric shocks, as these were simpler than water boarding and less likely to kill the victim at an ‘inconvenient’time.
Still, water boarding was common, as was asphyxiation, meals were rare and beatings common. Prisoners were left chained to rotting corpses for days at time. Operations were performed on inmates without anesthetic and at times blood was drained for use in transfusions elsewhere.
Death was the only relief, provided after a prisoner had signed off on a forced confession. About 5000 confessions were eventually obtained. Perversely, lawyers for Ieng Thirith have indicated they will argue that such confessions are inadmissible as evidence in court because they were obtained under duress, violating the victims’ human rights.
Cheam Soeu, a former guard at S-21, told how four Westerners—an Australian, an American a New Zealander and a Briton—were brought there and eventually killed.
He says one was taken outside the jail by three guards, told to sit down, a tire was placed over him and he was set a light. Cheam Soeu could not say which Westerner had died.
Kerry Hamill was one of the Westerners killed after his yacht was blown off course and into Cambodian waters in 1978. In a powerful testimony, his brother slowly read a victim impact statement to the trial and wept. He told Duch that he had ruined his family and that his parents had learned of their son’s death two months later from a newspaper report.
‘At times, I have imagined you shackled, starved, whipped and clubbed, viciously. I have imagined your scrotum electrified, being forced to eat your own faeces, being nearly drowned and having your throat cut,’ Hamill said, referring to some of the horrors faced by prisoners.
Duch eventually expanded S-21 to implement a purge of Khmer Rouge no longer considered pure—dubbed ‘evil eating evil’ by some.
But the extent of Duch’scrimes was probably best captured by a Vietnamese cameraman who entered Toul Sleng with Hanoi’s invasion in late 1978.
The grisly footage includes decapitated bodies chained to their beds, footage ruled inadmissible by judges after it was challenged by the defence for its authenticity.
But Greg Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, has no doubts it was real.
‘It makes Nazi death camps look tame,’ he says. ‘It’s black and white, silent, about ten minutes. It shows bodies chained to beds…Bodies were shackled at the ankles and disemboweled. It’s the most horrible thing on earth.’
‘Shocking and Heinous’
Judge Nonn described the crimes as ‘shocking and heinous’ but Duch sought to mitigate his involvement with limited remorse and by emphasizing his role as just a cog in a much bigger machine. He corroborated earlier claims over chains of command made by Ieng Thirith that ultimate responsibility for S-21 lay with Nuon Chea.
‘It's really important, in the telling of history, what happened more than 30 years ago,’ says Khmer American author and lawyer, Theary Seng. ‘The Khmer Rouge tribunal is shedding light on this very, very dark period.’
She says Duch's testimony surrounding M-13 death as well as his naming of names had left a powerful and poignant mark on the tribunal.
‘Even for those of us who have been following the tribunal since its establishment, who have been reading up on the tribunal, on the history of the Khmer Rouge, we’ve found surprising pieces of information we didn’t know existed before,’she says.
The other four Khmer Rouge leaders currently in detention have said they will plead not guilty to charges of murder, torture and crimes against humanity. They won’t cooperate,and according to Seng, Duch’s trial will be seen as a cakewalk when compared with what’s to come once Case 002 gets underway in early 2011.
This is where the court’s sentencing—while upsetting many over the short term—is important for two reasons. First, time off for good behavior and remorse could be used as an inducement to convince any of the four to testify against the others.
Second, Duch still has the option of appealing. If he does, this could complicate Case 002 with evidence that was once taken as read being thrown open and questioned again as Duch seeks to overturn the previous ruling.
If Duch accepts his maximum 19 years left to serve then prosecutors can expect a smoother ride. If Duch rejects this and appeals as his lawyer says he intends to, then he risks receiving a much harsher sentence, one that would probably guarantee his last days will be spent behind bars regardless of how long he lives.
Given the ‘Hang ‘em High’ climate in some quarters of Phnom Penh, Duch should weigh his options very carefully.
Caritas Australia slams Khmer Rouge sentence
Wednesday, 04 August 2010
The Record (Australia)
THE 30 July announcement that former Khmer Rouge official and prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known as “Duch”, has had his sentence for murder, torture and crimes against humanity reduced from 35 years to just 19 has been greeted with outrage by Caritas Australia’s coordinator in Phnom Penh.
Contacting head office in Sydney, CA’s Lay Sothy, said the survivors and other victims of the Khmer Rouge regime have waited more than 30 years for justice but the reduced sentence has left his country depressed and disappointed.
“If we consider more than 14,000 lives were lost at his command, and that he will spend just 19 years in prison, it amounts to less than two days behind bars for every life he took,” Lay Sothy said.
Sothy, who was 15 and living in rural Cambodia during the brutal and bloody Pol Pot regime of 1975 and 1979, said the trial and sentence of the man responsible for so many deaths has opened old wounds and brought great pain to the people of Cambodia, but has not brought justice.
“I understand we should forgive the past, forgive wrongdoings and should look to the future,” he said.
“But it deeply concerns me that so much money - millions of dollars - was spent to give victims and families justice, but that this has not been done,” he said.
Sothy, now 45, said that while he welcomed the trial, its result has not satisfied him or anyone else who lived through those terrible times and he believes the 19 year sentence is far too short for such enormous guilt and for so many “Duch” ordered killed.
The international tribunal, which tried the former leader within the Khmer Rouge and chief of the Phnom Penh’s notorious Toul Sleng Prison, found “Duch” guilty on all counts. But the 35 year sentence, reduced to 19 years on time already served, was lenient compared with his crimes, Sothy says, and forcefully criticises the tribunal.
“Survivors of Pol Pot expected the hybrid court to give them full justice so their suffering could begin to heal,” he says.
But he said that this will not happen now as instead of giving the man who was responsible for so many deaths a sentence befitting his crimes, the tribunal took the prisoner’s cooperation, confession and expressions of remorse into consideration and handed down a relatively mild 35 years behind bars, which in reality will become less than 20 years.
The Khmer Rouge Tribunal was established within a United Nations framework. “Duch” was the first of the Pol Pot regime’s elite to come before the tribunal. But Sothy says he and his country-men hold out little hope for real justice.
For Sothy, “Duch’s” so-called remorse was not “from the heart” and was simply another sign that he continues to be a clever politician and player and “very, very manipulative.”
Contacting head office in Sydney, CA’s Lay Sothy, said the survivors and other victims of the Khmer Rouge regime have waited more than 30 years for justice but the reduced sentence has left his country depressed and disappointed.
“If we consider more than 14,000 lives were lost at his command, and that he will spend just 19 years in prison, it amounts to less than two days behind bars for every life he took,” Lay Sothy said.
Sothy, who was 15 and living in rural Cambodia during the brutal and bloody Pol Pot regime of 1975 and 1979, said the trial and sentence of the man responsible for so many deaths has opened old wounds and brought great pain to the people of Cambodia, but has not brought justice.
“I understand we should forgive the past, forgive wrongdoings and should look to the future,” he said.
“But it deeply concerns me that so much money - millions of dollars - was spent to give victims and families justice, but that this has not been done,” he said.
Sothy, now 45, said that while he welcomed the trial, its result has not satisfied him or anyone else who lived through those terrible times and he believes the 19 year sentence is far too short for such enormous guilt and for so many “Duch” ordered killed.
The international tribunal, which tried the former leader within the Khmer Rouge and chief of the Phnom Penh’s notorious Toul Sleng Prison, found “Duch” guilty on all counts. But the 35 year sentence, reduced to 19 years on time already served, was lenient compared with his crimes, Sothy says, and forcefully criticises the tribunal.
“Survivors of Pol Pot expected the hybrid court to give them full justice so their suffering could begin to heal,” he says.
But he said that this will not happen now as instead of giving the man who was responsible for so many deaths a sentence befitting his crimes, the tribunal took the prisoner’s cooperation, confession and expressions of remorse into consideration and handed down a relatively mild 35 years behind bars, which in reality will become less than 20 years.
The Khmer Rouge Tribunal was established within a United Nations framework. “Duch” was the first of the Pol Pot regime’s elite to come before the tribunal. But Sothy says he and his country-men hold out little hope for real justice.
For Sothy, “Duch’s” so-called remorse was not “from the heart” and was simply another sign that he continues to be a clever politician and player and “very, very manipulative.”
Hun Xen: "The government has no right to interfere or to put any pressure on the court" (sic! sic! sic!)
Cambodia 'respects' KRouge jailer's conviction: PM
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
AFP
PHNOM PENH — Cambodia's premier said Wednesday his government respected the landmark conviction of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief and would not interfere in the UN-backed war crimes court.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, was sentenced to 30 years in jail last month for war crimes and crimes against humanity over his role in overseeing the mass murder of 15,000 men, women and children at the Tuol Sleng prison.
"The government respects the court's decision because the court is independent," Prime Minister Hun Sen said during a university graduation ceremony, in his first public reaction to the tribunal verdict.
"The government has no right to interfere or to put any pressure on the court."
Human rights campaigners have expressed concern that political interference could prevent further trials of leaders of the 1975-1979 regime, which killed up to two million people through starvation, overwork and executions.
Hun Sen, himself a mid-level Khmer Rouge cadre before turning against the movement, said last year he would "prefer for this court to fail" than see new cases opened against five more suspects, which he said would stoke civil war.
Duch, 67, was the first Khmer Rouge cadre to face an international tribunal.
He was initially handed 35 years but the court reduced the jail sentence on the grounds that he had been detained illegally for years before the UN-backed tribunal was established. His lawyer has said he plans to appeal.
Many survivors and relatives of victims were dismayed by the sentence, which also took into account the years Duch has served since his arrest in 1999, meaning that he could walk free in about 19 years.
Cambodia's Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said last week that he believed the punishment was "too light."
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, was sentenced to 30 years in jail last month for war crimes and crimes against humanity over his role in overseeing the mass murder of 15,000 men, women and children at the Tuol Sleng prison.
"The government respects the court's decision because the court is independent," Prime Minister Hun Sen said during a university graduation ceremony, in his first public reaction to the tribunal verdict.
"The government has no right to interfere or to put any pressure on the court."
Human rights campaigners have expressed concern that political interference could prevent further trials of leaders of the 1975-1979 regime, which killed up to two million people through starvation, overwork and executions.
Hun Sen, himself a mid-level Khmer Rouge cadre before turning against the movement, said last year he would "prefer for this court to fail" than see new cases opened against five more suspects, which he said would stoke civil war.
Duch, 67, was the first Khmer Rouge cadre to face an international tribunal.
He was initially handed 35 years but the court reduced the jail sentence on the grounds that he had been detained illegally for years before the UN-backed tribunal was established. His lawyer has said he plans to appeal.
Many survivors and relatives of victims were dismayed by the sentence, which also took into account the years Duch has served since his arrest in 1999, meaning that he could walk free in about 19 years.
Cambodia's Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said last week that he believed the punishment was "too light."
Cambodia bans imports of pigs, fearing spread of disease
August 04, 2010
Xinhua
Cambodia authorities on Wednesday imposed ban on import of pigs from neighboring countries, fearing the spread of disease.
Srun Pov, president of Association of Pigs Raising in Cambodia, said Wednesday that he had raised the fear of the pig disease spread to Cambodia through the import from Vietnam to the authorities several weeks ago.
According to Srun Pov, Cambodia needs a total of more than 4, 000 pigs for daily consumption, and in Phnom Penh alone it needs between 1,200 to 1,300 pigs.
Cambodia is reported to have imported about one million pigs per year from Thailand alone.
Srun Pov, president of Association of Pigs Raising in Cambodia, said Wednesday that he had raised the fear of the pig disease spread to Cambodia through the import from Vietnam to the authorities several weeks ago.
According to Srun Pov, Cambodia needs a total of more than 4, 000 pigs for daily consumption, and in Phnom Penh alone it needs between 1,200 to 1,300 pigs.
Cambodia is reported to have imported about one million pigs per year from Thailand alone.
"Terrible Fate": Inpromptu performance by Cambodian factory workers demanding salary raise
Report and Video by Uon Chhin, Radio Free Asia
http://www.rfa.org/khmer/ http://www.rfakhmerplus.com/
Dan Krahorm - "Red Print": New fiction on the KR era by Kho Dararith
Translated from Khmer by Socheata
Red Print is a short novel about an interview between a reporter and Mao, a former KR solider. Mao described about his life from the beginning until now, a sad life filled with poverty that he shares with his two children in Pailin after the war ended. The disabled former soldier faces sadness, hardship and constant fear both during the war and during peace time. This is a testimony of the hard life faced by disabled veterans in general after the end of the war.
The author provides a vivid account that is easy to understand and grasp.
What is of the current fate of the former KR soldiers or that of soldiers belonging to other political parties?
This is a social issue that poets and authors should provide an account of as testimonials for future generations of Cambodian people.
Khing Hok Dy, Ph.D.
The author provides a vivid account that is easy to understand and grasp.
What is of the current fate of the former KR soldiers or that of soldiers belonging to other political parties?
This is a social issue that poets and authors should provide an account of as testimonials for future generations of Cambodian people.
Khing Hok Dy, Ph.D.
[Thai] Minister Suwit denies signing legally binding document on Preah Vihear
BANGKOK, Aug 5 (MCOT online news) - Thailand's Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Suwit Khunkitti on Wednesday denied he had signed any legally binding document on Preah Vihear, asserting that the document he signed at the World Heritage Committee (WHC) meeting in Brazil was a non-binding draft and Thailand consequently is not at a disadvantage against Cambodia.
Mr Suwit, who led the Thai delegation to the just ended the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Commission (WHC) meeting in Brazil, was interviewed by telephone on a Modernine TV news programme saying that the five-point document he signed was a general document including the result of the WHC meeting, the documentation report and the meeting resolution to postpone the discussion in Cambodian Preah Vihear development plan to next year's meeting.
As for the issue on the approval on the joint committee establishment, Mr Suwit said it was the progress report and Thailand had asserted that it did not agree with the plan.
He added that the document was only a draft and not a Memorandum of Understanding or similar document that could bind Thailand legally or put Thailand at a disadvantage.
The minister also said he was still wondering about the statement by Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An who led the Cambodian delegation at WHC meeting announcing victory over the matter.
The WHC last week postponed discussing Cambodia's development-management plan for the ancient temple until next year when it meets in Bahrain.
The heritage committee had decided to postpone discussion on the thorny issue because the two neighbouring countries could not find common ground to settle the disputed 4.6 sq km of lightly forested land near the temple.
Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An however said later that Cambodia had achieved its goal when the UNESCO committee agreed to consider its plan for managing Preah Vihear temple -- but not emphasising it would be next year.
Political activist Veera Somkwamkid on Monday urged Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to clarify Mr Sok An's claim that the two countries had reached an understanding on managing areas near the temple.
He also questioned the document Mr Suwit had signed during the meeting over Cambodian Preah Vihear management plan.
Preah Vihear temple was awarded to Cambodia by the International Court of Justice in 1962. UNESCO named the temple a World Heritage site in 2008 after Cambodia applied for the status, while the dispute over the 4.6 sq km contested zone between the two countries remains unsolved.
Under the terms of the listing, Cambodia is required to submit a management plan for WHC approval, but Thailand insisted that the matter should not be discussed unless the two neighbours first resolve their dispute over the zone adjacent to the temple.
Mr Suwit, who led the Thai delegation to the just ended the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Commission (WHC) meeting in Brazil, was interviewed by telephone on a Modernine TV news programme saying that the five-point document he signed was a general document including the result of the WHC meeting, the documentation report and the meeting resolution to postpone the discussion in Cambodian Preah Vihear development plan to next year's meeting.
As for the issue on the approval on the joint committee establishment, Mr Suwit said it was the progress report and Thailand had asserted that it did not agree with the plan.
He added that the document was only a draft and not a Memorandum of Understanding or similar document that could bind Thailand legally or put Thailand at a disadvantage.
The minister also said he was still wondering about the statement by Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An who led the Cambodian delegation at WHC meeting announcing victory over the matter.
The WHC last week postponed discussing Cambodia's development-management plan for the ancient temple until next year when it meets in Bahrain.
The heritage committee had decided to postpone discussion on the thorny issue because the two neighbouring countries could not find common ground to settle the disputed 4.6 sq km of lightly forested land near the temple.
Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An however said later that Cambodia had achieved its goal when the UNESCO committee agreed to consider its plan for managing Preah Vihear temple -- but not emphasising it would be next year.
Political activist Veera Somkwamkid on Monday urged Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to clarify Mr Sok An's claim that the two countries had reached an understanding on managing areas near the temple.
He also questioned the document Mr Suwit had signed during the meeting over Cambodian Preah Vihear management plan.
Preah Vihear temple was awarded to Cambodia by the International Court of Justice in 1962. UNESCO named the temple a World Heritage site in 2008 after Cambodia applied for the status, while the dispute over the 4.6 sq km contested zone between the two countries remains unsolved.
Under the terms of the listing, Cambodia is required to submit a management plan for WHC approval, but Thailand insisted that the matter should not be discussed unless the two neighbours first resolve their dispute over the zone adjacent to the temple.
Hun Xen's regime helps the Yuon regime to break down Khmer Krom in Kampuchea Krom
Tran Dai QuangVietnam applauds Cambodia's help in combating 'plots'
Wed, 04 Aug 2010
DPA
Phnom Penh - A senior Vietnamese government official has welcomed efforts by the Cambodian government to combat "plots" by ethnic Cambodians in southern Vietnam, local media reported Wednesday.
Tran Dai Quang, Vietnam's deputy minister of public security, made the comments to 200 government officials during a meeting in Phnom Penh on Tuesday, the Phnom Penh Post newspaper reported.
"With the cooperation and positive assistance of the Cambodian armed forces, Vietnam's police force has struggled to disable plots and operations of hostile forces opposing the Vietnamese revolution," he said.
Tran said combined efforts against Khmer Krom - ethnic Cambodians living in southern Vietnam - had resulted in the arrests of three people for handing out leaflets, and another for possession of a weapon.
He accused Khmer Krom activists of trying to "oppose and destroy."
Human rights groups have long complained that Khmer Krom face discrimination and persecution by the Vietnamese and Cambodian authorities in both southern Vietnam and Cambodia.
In January last year, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Hanoi of engaging in repressive activities in a bid to prevent the nationalist aspirations of the Khmer Krom minority in the Mekong Delta region.
HRW's report documented violations against Khmer Krom in Vietnam and against others who had fled to Cambodia. At least one Buddhist monk was deported to Vietnam by Phnom Penh.
HRW described the tactics Hanoi was using against Khmer Krom as "bare-knuckled, indefensible political repression."
The Phnom Penh Post quoted Cambodian opposition parliamentarian Yont Tharo, who heads a Khmer Krom cultural organization in Phnom Penh, as saying that actions by the authorities that affected freedom of expression were "unacceptable."
Hanoi and Phnom Penh have a close relationship, stemming from Vietnam's assistance in overthrowing Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge government in 1979.
Vietnam is also one of the biggest investors in Cambodia, with interests in telecoms, banking, mining and land concessions.
Tran Dai Quang, Vietnam's deputy minister of public security, made the comments to 200 government officials during a meeting in Phnom Penh on Tuesday, the Phnom Penh Post newspaper reported.
"With the cooperation and positive assistance of the Cambodian armed forces, Vietnam's police force has struggled to disable plots and operations of hostile forces opposing the Vietnamese revolution," he said.
Tran said combined efforts against Khmer Krom - ethnic Cambodians living in southern Vietnam - had resulted in the arrests of three people for handing out leaflets, and another for possession of a weapon.
He accused Khmer Krom activists of trying to "oppose and destroy."
Human rights groups have long complained that Khmer Krom face discrimination and persecution by the Vietnamese and Cambodian authorities in both southern Vietnam and Cambodia.
In January last year, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Hanoi of engaging in repressive activities in a bid to prevent the nationalist aspirations of the Khmer Krom minority in the Mekong Delta region.
HRW's report documented violations against Khmer Krom in Vietnam and against others who had fled to Cambodia. At least one Buddhist monk was deported to Vietnam by Phnom Penh.
HRW described the tactics Hanoi was using against Khmer Krom as "bare-knuckled, indefensible political repression."
The Phnom Penh Post quoted Cambodian opposition parliamentarian Yont Tharo, who heads a Khmer Krom cultural organization in Phnom Penh, as saying that actions by the authorities that affected freedom of expression were "unacceptable."
Hanoi and Phnom Penh have a close relationship, stemming from Vietnam's assistance in overthrowing Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge government in 1979.
Vietnam is also one of the biggest investors in Cambodia, with interests in telecoms, banking, mining and land concessions.
Monday, 2 August 2010
Cambodia prepares reserve soldiers
August 02, 2010
Xinhua
Cambodia is preparing to have reserve soldiers in a move to reform and perform better military affairs, a military official said Monday.
Gen. Chhum Socheat, spokesman of Cambodia's Ministry of National Defense said the draft decree on recruiting reserve soldiers was approved by the Council of Ministers last Friday and is now awaiting final approval by His Majesty King Norodom Sihamoni.
He said the reserve soldiers are practiced in many other countries around the world and it has nothing related to the border conflict with Thailand.
Chhum Socheat said the main purpose of having reserve soldiers is to apply to military reform and to better perform in military affairs for a long-time vision, and that has nothing behind the border conflict with Thailand.
He said the reserve military will include those contracted soldiers, professional retired soldiers or those who retired from the military before retiring age.
According to the decree, the reserve soldiers will serve five years and if necessary, will extend two more years.
Cambodia adopted the conscription law in 2006 which requires all Cambodian citizens aged 18 to 30 years to enter a compulsory military service.
Gen. Chhum Socheat, spokesman of Cambodia's Ministry of National Defense said the draft decree on recruiting reserve soldiers was approved by the Council of Ministers last Friday and is now awaiting final approval by His Majesty King Norodom Sihamoni.
He said the reserve soldiers are practiced in many other countries around the world and it has nothing related to the border conflict with Thailand.
Chhum Socheat said the main purpose of having reserve soldiers is to apply to military reform and to better perform in military affairs for a long-time vision, and that has nothing behind the border conflict with Thailand.
He said the reserve military will include those contracted soldiers, professional retired soldiers or those who retired from the military before retiring age.
According to the decree, the reserve soldiers will serve five years and if necessary, will extend two more years.
Cambodia adopted the conscription law in 2006 which requires all Cambodian citizens aged 18 to 30 years to enter a compulsory military service.
Cambodia in clasp of cluster bombs - Al Jazeera video
At least 26 million cluster bombs were dropped on Cambodia by the United States during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s.
And decades after the bombs stopped falling, millions of undetonated bombs lying in fields across the country continue to maim thousands of people who are unfortunate enough to step on them.
However, the Cambodian government has yet to agree to a global treaty on cluster munitions, which came into force on Monday.
The convention mandates signatory countries to find and clear their land of all the bomblets.
Al Jazeera Stephanie Scawen reports from the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, on why the government has not signed the treaty to clear their land of the mines.
Cambodia’s Struggle With Globalization [-Corruption, Corruption, Corruption!!!]
Monday, August 02, 2010
Hal Hill, Jayant Menon & Chan Sopha
East Asia Forum
The Jakarta Globe (Indonesia)
The charming riverside capital of Phnom Penh, home to about 1.5 million inhabitants, has seen a lot in its turbulent history. But arguably nothing is on the scale of its first skyscraper, the 42-floor Gold Tower now nearing completion, not to mention the university and bank complexes mushrooming throughout this ancient city.
- Legal judgements are routinely for sale
- Ministers receive about $500 per month, but some seem to live quite lavishly
- The country’s tax effort (its tax revenue as a percentage of GDP) is a paltry 11 percent
This changing physical landscape reflects broader developments across the country, which has been experiencing rapid economic growth — the sixth fastest in the world in the decade to 2007 — for the first time in its history.
More than two million tourists now visit this country of 14 million, a 20-fold increase over the figure in the early 1990s.
The Cambodian people have better nutrition and access to education and health services than ever before.
Since the cessation of internal hostilities almost two decades ago, life expectancy has risen by almost a decade and infant mortality has fallen significantly.
The macroeconomy is stable, with inflation under control, underpinned by very high levels of dollarization, currently about 90 per cent.
Debt service is almost negligible and public debt has fallen sharply, to about one-quarter of GDP.
The economy is highly open, with exports plus imports equivalent to more than 120 per cent of GDP. The investment climate is welcoming, with generous tax incentives and low tariffs.
Aid flows are very large, currently almost $1.1 billion in a $10 billion economy. The country’s openness meant that growth dried up in 2009 as the global financial crisis hit, but the economy is now rebounding.
So much for the good news. Cambodia, however, also faces many daunting problems.
The country ranks 166th and 135th respectively out of 181 countries surveyed in the Transparency International corruption perception index and the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators.
Deforestation and what is referred to locally as “land grabbing” have also been rampant.
The local dailies abound with reports of land being awarded to the politically powerful for nominal amounts, and a startling detailed account is presented in the 2008 study by Global Witness entitled “Country for Sale.”
In addition, the land price boom has often made some of the most vulnerable worse off, as they have been evicted or forced off their land. The periodic household expenditure surveys report a significant increase in inequality.
The country will also miss some of its Millennium Development Goal targets.
These problems are illustrative of the challenges faced by poor transitional economies in the process of opening up without the institutions to manage the complex process of globalization.
In this environment, the recent discovery of oil and gas could complicate things, as articulated in the resource curse thesis put forth by Richard Auty.
The central challenge is to achieve growth that is durable, equitable and environmentally sustainable. This in turn requires the development of institutions which, while they may be rudimentary, are effective, trusted and clean.
Where to start? Consider the following, for example:
- Cambodia has no shortage of laws, especially after its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2004. But businesses view the courts as the most expensive last resort when all else fails. Legal judgements are routinely for sale.
- Civil service salaries are meagre. A mid-level senior employee with a foreign masters degree receives $70 per month, compared to a private sector alternative of about 20 times this amount. Ministers receive about $500 per month, but some seem to live quite lavishly.
- The country’s tax effort (its tax revenue as a percentage of GDP) is a paltry 11 percent, despite the introduction of a broad value-added tax. Thus the country’s infrastructure remains inadequate, in spite of the very large aid flows, and notwithstanding recent improvements.
- The number of banks has increased rapidly due to unfettered entry. The lax prudential supervision carries with it the possibility of a future meltdown.
- Shipping a container from factory to port costs about double the regional average owing to widespread “facilitation” costs, a feature apparently of most transactions with the government.
First, liberal and open economies cannot function without due respect for property rights, as exemplified by the widespread land grabs.
Second, these liberal regimes need adequate regulatory capacity to manage a modernizing market economy, as illustrated by the banking example above.
Third, large inflows of foreign aid and natural resource revenues ought to be viewed as transitory, and invested wisely for broad-based development.
Fourth, donors need to better coordinate their work and avoid imposing excessively on a weak bureaucracy.
Fifth, civil service reform has to be undertaken early, with clear incentives and disciplines.
Unless these conditions are met, the danger is that in Cambodia, and many other similar states, the achievements over the past decade in particular could be undone by economic crises, or rising civil unrest driven by outrage at the political and bureaucratic excesses.
Hal Hill is a professor of economics at the Australian National University; Jayant Menon is principal economist at the Asian Development Bank; and Chan Sophal is president of the Cambodia Economic Association.
After politicizing Preah Vihear temple issue, now Thailand claims that it will depoliticize border problem with Cambodia, can you believe that?
Thailand to depoliticize border problem with Cambodia
August 02, 2010
Xinhua
Thailand will try to depoliticize the ongoing border conflict with Cambodia and to solve the problem through negotiation, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said on Monday.
"We don't want to have any political problem with the neighboring country. The border is still open now. And, all agreements we have had with Cambodia are still in place," Kasit told a press conference.
Kasit's remark was made after the World Heritage Committee ( WHC) decided on July 29 to reschedule its discussion on Cambodia's management plan for the Hindu Preah Vihear Temple to its annual meeting in Bahrain in 2011.
Prior to the WHC decision to postpone its discussion, Thailand threatened to walk out of the WHC meeting if the panel considered the Cambodian plan since the Thai side had not yet looked into details of the plan, which was handed in by Cambodia to the WHC panel just shortly before the meeting.
Thailand will proceed with the Thai-Cambodia memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the overlapping continental shelf area signed in June, 2000, under the then-Democrat-led Government, instead of the 2001 MOU signed under the People's Power Party-led Administration, Kasit said.
The current Abhisit Vejjajiva-led government has earlier protested against Cambodia by deciding to cancel the bilateral agreement based on the 2001 MOU, which later paved the way for Cambodia to register the Preah Vihear Temple as its unilateral World Heritage in October, 2009.
The 2001 MOU was allegedly unconstitutional. Ousted former Thai Premier Thaksin Shinnawatra and the then People's Power Party-led government linked to Thaksin were allegedly having conflict of interest behind the 2001 MOU.
Thailand and Cambodia have historically laid claim to the site, which is located on a mountain top on the Thai-Cambodia border. The disputed area of 4.6 square kilometers has not been demarcated.
In 1962, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Preah Vihear temple belonged to Cambodia. But, the 11th-century Hindu temple can only be easily accessed from Thailand.
"We don't want to have any political problem with the neighboring country. The border is still open now. And, all agreements we have had with Cambodia are still in place," Kasit told a press conference.
Kasit's remark was made after the World Heritage Committee ( WHC) decided on July 29 to reschedule its discussion on Cambodia's management plan for the Hindu Preah Vihear Temple to its annual meeting in Bahrain in 2011.
Prior to the WHC decision to postpone its discussion, Thailand threatened to walk out of the WHC meeting if the panel considered the Cambodian plan since the Thai side had not yet looked into details of the plan, which was handed in by Cambodia to the WHC panel just shortly before the meeting.
Thailand will proceed with the Thai-Cambodia memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the overlapping continental shelf area signed in June, 2000, under the then-Democrat-led Government, instead of the 2001 MOU signed under the People's Power Party-led Administration, Kasit said.
The current Abhisit Vejjajiva-led government has earlier protested against Cambodia by deciding to cancel the bilateral agreement based on the 2001 MOU, which later paved the way for Cambodia to register the Preah Vihear Temple as its unilateral World Heritage in October, 2009.
The 2001 MOU was allegedly unconstitutional. Ousted former Thai Premier Thaksin Shinnawatra and the then People's Power Party-led government linked to Thaksin were allegedly having conflict of interest behind the 2001 MOU.
Thailand and Cambodia have historically laid claim to the site, which is located on a mountain top on the Thai-Cambodia border. The disputed area of 4.6 square kilometers has not been demarcated.
In 1962, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Preah Vihear temple belonged to Cambodia. But, the 11th-century Hindu temple can only be easily accessed from Thailand.
War of words over heritage meeting
The 1908 map of what Cambodia insists is the legitimate boundary (with Cambodia south of the red border line), is shown alongside a Thai map that was rejected by the International Court of Justice in 1962. (Photo Supplied)Monday, 02 August 2010
Cheang Sokha
The Phnom Penh Post
CAMBODIAN officials have declared victory in a standoff with Thailand after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s World Heritage Committee noted the submission of the government’s conservation management plan for Preah Vihear temple and scheduled it for consideration next year.
On Thursday, the Cambodian and Thai delegations to the WHC hashed out a compromise relating to the plan, which has ignited nationalist protests in Bangkok.
According to the compromise draft decision – signed by Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, Thai Natural Resources and Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti and WHC President Joao Luiz Silva Ferreira – the committee noted the progress report submitted by Cambodia and postponed consideration of the documents until its next session in Bahrain in 2011.
It also welcomed “the steps taken by the State Party towards the establishment of an international coordination committee for the sustainable conservation of the Temple of Preah Vihear”.
Other documents released during Thursday’s meeting, copies of which have been obtained by the Post, state that Cambodia submitted its management plan in February, along with a report containing information about the current conservation efforts being carried out at the site.
On Friday, Sok An declared the outcome a “big victory” for Cambodia. “What Thailand did not accept before, now they did,” he said in a statement issued by the Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick Reaction Unit on Friday.
He said that the body not only accepted the proposal, “but they also praised us for good planning”.
The compromise followed Thai threats to withdraw from UNESCO if the WHC signed off on Cambodia’s management plan.
Thailand has opposed the listing of Preah Vihear as a World Heritage site since it was approved by the WHC in July 2008, and claims sovereignty over a 4.6-square kilometre area adjacent to the temple.
On Saturday, Thai Foreign Affairs Minister Kasit Piromya said the outcome of the meeting did not benefit one country over the other.
“Neither country wins on the issue. What [Sok An] said Cambodia had won was [not correct],” Thai news agency TNA quoted him as saying.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said yesterday morning that Bangkok would only accept the management plan if the temple was jointly administered by both countries, and that Cambodia’s proposed plan infringed on the disputed area.
Sue Williams, a UNESCO spokeswoman, said Thursday that the WHC lacked the mandate to “approve” anything and could only note the acceptance of Cambodia’s management plan.
Tith Sothea, spokesman for the Press and Quick Reaction Unit, said the WHC was only empowered to monitor the country’s adherence to the WHC’s guidelines.
“Cambodia still has the right for the development and conservation of the temple as normal,” he said.
On Thursday, the Cambodian and Thai delegations to the WHC hashed out a compromise relating to the plan, which has ignited nationalist protests in Bangkok.
According to the compromise draft decision – signed by Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, Thai Natural Resources and Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti and WHC President Joao Luiz Silva Ferreira – the committee noted the progress report submitted by Cambodia and postponed consideration of the documents until its next session in Bahrain in 2011.
It also welcomed “the steps taken by the State Party towards the establishment of an international coordination committee for the sustainable conservation of the Temple of Preah Vihear”.
Other documents released during Thursday’s meeting, copies of which have been obtained by the Post, state that Cambodia submitted its management plan in February, along with a report containing information about the current conservation efforts being carried out at the site.
On Friday, Sok An declared the outcome a “big victory” for Cambodia. “What Thailand did not accept before, now they did,” he said in a statement issued by the Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick Reaction Unit on Friday.
He said that the body not only accepted the proposal, “but they also praised us for good planning”.
The compromise followed Thai threats to withdraw from UNESCO if the WHC signed off on Cambodia’s management plan.
Thailand has opposed the listing of Preah Vihear as a World Heritage site since it was approved by the WHC in July 2008, and claims sovereignty over a 4.6-square kilometre area adjacent to the temple.
On Saturday, Thai Foreign Affairs Minister Kasit Piromya said the outcome of the meeting did not benefit one country over the other.
“Neither country wins on the issue. What [Sok An] said Cambodia had won was [not correct],” Thai news agency TNA quoted him as saying.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said yesterday morning that Bangkok would only accept the management plan if the temple was jointly administered by both countries, and that Cambodia’s proposed plan infringed on the disputed area.
Sue Williams, a UNESCO spokeswoman, said Thursday that the WHC lacked the mandate to “approve” anything and could only note the acceptance of Cambodia’s management plan.
Tith Sothea, spokesman for the Press and Quick Reaction Unit, said the WHC was only empowered to monitor the country’s adherence to the WHC’s guidelines.
“Cambodia still has the right for the development and conservation of the temple as normal,” he said.
Justice Denied for Cambodians
August 2, 2010
By KUONG LY
Letter to The International Herald Tribune
Last week, a U.N.-backed tribunal convicted Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, for war crimes in what was the first trial of a major Khmer Rouge figure. Many media reports portrayed the verdict in a positive light, but for survivors, victims and their families, there was nothing positive in this outcome.
An editorial in the International Herald Tribune (“Forgotten victims?” July 29) stated that while the sentence handed down by the tribunal may be disappointing, at least Duch was held to account for his war crimes. Unfortunately, “at least” isn’t good enough for me and for those who suffered from the murderous actions of the Khmer Rouge, especially after waiting 30 years for this verdict.
My mother and my late father both endured what are known as the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia. They lost their siblings, parents and home when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in April, 1975.
Somewhere between 1.7 and 2 million people — nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population — were executed or died from disease, starvation and overwork. My family was forced to flee Cambodia and suffered in the poverty of refugee camps for almost a decade before making it to the United States, where we overcame tremendous obstacles in trying to rebuild our lives.
As I followed the trial of Duch and heard him take responsibility for directing the notorious prison, S-21, where more than 12,273 people were tortured and killed, I was confident the court would place him behind bars for life. But last week, he was given a 35-year sentence. Because Duch had served several years in prison while awaiting trial, and the Cambodian government infringed upon his rights while he was detained, his sentence was significantly reduced.
In the end, Duch was sentenced to no more than 19 years behind bars. That translates to one year for every 646 Cambodians he tortured and killed at S-21. This does not include the millions of Cambodians like my parents who suffered under the Khmer Rouge policies he helped implement. The feeling of injustice for me and many others stems from knowing that Duch may walk free at age 86.
Survivors, victims and their families have been asked to see the silver lining in Duch’s verdict. Impunity has finally been broken, many observers reason. A perpetrator of the Khmer Rouge regime was brought to justice by legal proceedings for the world to watch, they say. And in reducing Duch’s sentence by 16 years, some will argue, the tribunal was attempting demonstrate the rule of law and lead by example — in a country where thousands of citizens are illegally detained.
From the beginning, I harbored grave doubts about these legal proceedings. The U.N.-backed tribunal resulted from the lack of judicial independence in Cambodia. I was willing to look past the criticism and cynicism in hopes that a guilty verdict and a heavy punishment in Duch’s case would set a precedent for future international criminal cases. The international community, I reasoned, had an opportunity to deter other ruthless, oppressive regimes from committing genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity. But the tribunal failed to deliver a satisfactory verdict.
If the Duch verdict foreshadows the tribunal’s next case — the trial of the senior Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan — there will be a decline in support from the Cambodian people — and perhaps the world community.
I will never forget how my late father was used like an ox to plow and till the land. Nor will I forget that my maternal grandfather, aunts, uncles and cousins were either starved to death, beaten to death, or disappeared.
No verdict will heal the pain. But for survivors, victims and their families, this verdict was simply not good enough. We may have to accept that the international community denied us — and those we lost — a sense of closure.
More than 12,273 people entered Duch’s S-21 prison and were tortured and killed. While Duch will be in prison for 19 years, the possibility remains that he may one day walk free. Is that justice?
Kuong Ly is an L.L.M. candidate in International Human Rights Law at the University of Essex, where he is a British Marshall Scholar.
An editorial in the International Herald Tribune (“Forgotten victims?” July 29) stated that while the sentence handed down by the tribunal may be disappointing, at least Duch was held to account for his war crimes. Unfortunately, “at least” isn’t good enough for me and for those who suffered from the murderous actions of the Khmer Rouge, especially after waiting 30 years for this verdict.
My mother and my late father both endured what are known as the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia. They lost their siblings, parents and home when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in April, 1975.
Somewhere between 1.7 and 2 million people — nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population — were executed or died from disease, starvation and overwork. My family was forced to flee Cambodia and suffered in the poverty of refugee camps for almost a decade before making it to the United States, where we overcame tremendous obstacles in trying to rebuild our lives.
As I followed the trial of Duch and heard him take responsibility for directing the notorious prison, S-21, where more than 12,273 people were tortured and killed, I was confident the court would place him behind bars for life. But last week, he was given a 35-year sentence. Because Duch had served several years in prison while awaiting trial, and the Cambodian government infringed upon his rights while he was detained, his sentence was significantly reduced.
In the end, Duch was sentenced to no more than 19 years behind bars. That translates to one year for every 646 Cambodians he tortured and killed at S-21. This does not include the millions of Cambodians like my parents who suffered under the Khmer Rouge policies he helped implement. The feeling of injustice for me and many others stems from knowing that Duch may walk free at age 86.
Survivors, victims and their families have been asked to see the silver lining in Duch’s verdict. Impunity has finally been broken, many observers reason. A perpetrator of the Khmer Rouge regime was brought to justice by legal proceedings for the world to watch, they say. And in reducing Duch’s sentence by 16 years, some will argue, the tribunal was attempting demonstrate the rule of law and lead by example — in a country where thousands of citizens are illegally detained.
From the beginning, I harbored grave doubts about these legal proceedings. The U.N.-backed tribunal resulted from the lack of judicial independence in Cambodia. I was willing to look past the criticism and cynicism in hopes that a guilty verdict and a heavy punishment in Duch’s case would set a precedent for future international criminal cases. The international community, I reasoned, had an opportunity to deter other ruthless, oppressive regimes from committing genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity. But the tribunal failed to deliver a satisfactory verdict.
If the Duch verdict foreshadows the tribunal’s next case — the trial of the senior Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan — there will be a decline in support from the Cambodian people — and perhaps the world community.
I will never forget how my late father was used like an ox to plow and till the land. Nor will I forget that my maternal grandfather, aunts, uncles and cousins were either starved to death, beaten to death, or disappeared.
No verdict will heal the pain. But for survivors, victims and their families, this verdict was simply not good enough. We may have to accept that the international community denied us — and those we lost — a sense of closure.
More than 12,273 people entered Duch’s S-21 prison and were tortured and killed. While Duch will be in prison for 19 years, the possibility remains that he may one day walk free. Is that justice?
Kuong Ly is an L.L.M. candidate in International Human Rights Law at the University of Essex, where he is a British Marshall Scholar.
Closure for Cambodia [-Sorry, not for all Cambodians!]
Monday, August 02, 2010
Katherine Marshall
Georgetown/On Faith
The Washington Post (USA)
Phnom Penh was hot, noisy, and bustling last week. Cars, motorcycles, and the ubiquitous tuk tuks (motorcycle taxis) raced through the city with perpetual near collisions. Markets were full. Children were everywhere. There were clouds gathering, but the coming storms of the rainy season held off.
The talk of the town was the long-awaited verdict in the international trial of Kaing Guek Eav, alias Commandant Duch, announced on July 26 by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, a joint United Nations-Cambodian Government tribunal set up to try some of the leaders responsible for the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. Thirty years have passed, so it's high time to bring the surviving perpetrators to account. The trial of Duch is the first to come to a conclusion.
Duch's conviction was not in question. He was in charge of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 plus people entered, to be registered, tortured, and sent to their death. Fewer than ten who entered are thought to have emerged alive. Duch was renowned for his meticulous attention to detail - incredible records survive - and his cruelty. He acknowledged what he had done; his lame defense was that he was following orders. A convert to Christianity, he held out his faith and the good he said he has done since the Khmer Rouge period as character evidence.
Duch was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but with two reductions, the first to compensate for a period when he was held illegally, and for time served. The bottom line is 19 more years to serve.
The first reaction was outrage at the lightness of the sentence. Duch is now 67 so he is likely to die in prison, but still the sentence seemed almost an insult. But there is also a complex sense of pride that the trial took place. While an initial reaction is to want Duch to suffer at least a fraction of the torment he inflicted on his victims, many in this country permeated with Buddhist thinking take satisfaction that he will suffer horribly in a future life. Vengeance does not seem high on the agenda and many who hold prominent positions have some shadows in their past that they would just as soon leave be.
There was outrage also that the tribunal essentially ducked all issues of reparations, arguing that it had no way to enforce such awards. Page after page of motions for memorials and other steps were dismissed on those grounds. That, surely, is unfinished business for Cambodia, as a government and a people.
The monumental effort to ensure justice that the long verdict report reflects gets some credit. So does the fact that the glacial process does represent a route to come to terms with the past. The proceedings have been televised, and the newspapers have reported on witness after witness over the long life of the trial. But so far only one man has been in the dock. Four more are slated for trials, but most former Khmer Rouge live normal lives. Cambodian children are taught little about what happened, much less why, so they grow up with an uneasy sense of storms left behind.
Closure in the Duch case is a milestone but only a first step toward the reconciliation that needs to occur among the survivors and the perpetrators. Many programs work to address this challenge, including the remarkable Documentation Center of Cambodia led from Yale University and village by village programs in Cambodia, like those of the International Center for Conciliation. But the efforts are barely scratching the surface.
Many Cambodians want to look to the future and relegate the past to some distant drawer. But the heavy clouds are there, and it often feels as if a new storm could break. Pained memories and buried anger are very much part of Cambodian reality today. The multiple efforts to face it, with justice, compassion and understanding, are not only desirable. They are essential.
Katherine Marshall is a senior fellow at Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, a Visiting Professor, and Executive Director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue.
The talk of the town was the long-awaited verdict in the international trial of Kaing Guek Eav, alias Commandant Duch, announced on July 26 by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, a joint United Nations-Cambodian Government tribunal set up to try some of the leaders responsible for the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. Thirty years have passed, so it's high time to bring the surviving perpetrators to account. The trial of Duch is the first to come to a conclusion.
Duch's conviction was not in question. He was in charge of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 plus people entered, to be registered, tortured, and sent to their death. Fewer than ten who entered are thought to have emerged alive. Duch was renowned for his meticulous attention to detail - incredible records survive - and his cruelty. He acknowledged what he had done; his lame defense was that he was following orders. A convert to Christianity, he held out his faith and the good he said he has done since the Khmer Rouge period as character evidence.
Duch was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but with two reductions, the first to compensate for a period when he was held illegally, and for time served. The bottom line is 19 more years to serve.
The first reaction was outrage at the lightness of the sentence. Duch is now 67 so he is likely to die in prison, but still the sentence seemed almost an insult. But there is also a complex sense of pride that the trial took place. While an initial reaction is to want Duch to suffer at least a fraction of the torment he inflicted on his victims, many in this country permeated with Buddhist thinking take satisfaction that he will suffer horribly in a future life. Vengeance does not seem high on the agenda and many who hold prominent positions have some shadows in their past that they would just as soon leave be.
There was outrage also that the tribunal essentially ducked all issues of reparations, arguing that it had no way to enforce such awards. Page after page of motions for memorials and other steps were dismissed on those grounds. That, surely, is unfinished business for Cambodia, as a government and a people.
The monumental effort to ensure justice that the long verdict report reflects gets some credit. So does the fact that the glacial process does represent a route to come to terms with the past. The proceedings have been televised, and the newspapers have reported on witness after witness over the long life of the trial. But so far only one man has been in the dock. Four more are slated for trials, but most former Khmer Rouge live normal lives. Cambodian children are taught little about what happened, much less why, so they grow up with an uneasy sense of storms left behind.
Closure in the Duch case is a milestone but only a first step toward the reconciliation that needs to occur among the survivors and the perpetrators. Many programs work to address this challenge, including the remarkable Documentation Center of Cambodia led from Yale University and village by village programs in Cambodia, like those of the International Center for Conciliation. But the efforts are barely scratching the surface.
Many Cambodians want to look to the future and relegate the past to some distant drawer. But the heavy clouds are there, and it often feels as if a new storm could break. Pained memories and buried anger are very much part of Cambodian reality today. The multiple efforts to face it, with justice, compassion and understanding, are not only desirable. They are essential.
Katherine Marshall is a senior fellow at Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, a Visiting Professor, and Executive Director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue.
Bilateral talk with Cambodia may be held to resolve border conflict: Thai minister
August 02, 2010
Xinhua
A bilateral talk with Cambodia may be held in a bid to seek solution to the ongoing conflict over the Preah Vihear Temple, Thailand's Natural and Environment Minister Suvit Khunkitti said on Monday.
The Thai News Agency (TNA) reported that the natural and environment minister was speaking in Thailand's capital Bangkok shortly after he returned from Brazil, where he attended the annual 34th meeting of the UNESCO's World Heritage Committee (WHC).
It is expected that next month the WHC panel will present Cambodia's management plan for the 11th century Preah Vihear Temple to Thailand, Suvit said.
After obtaining the Cambodian management plan for Preah Vihear Temple, Thailand will look into details of the plan in a bid to protect the country's sovereignty, he said.
However, the Thai side will keep abiding by international laws to find the solution to the conflict, the Thai minister said.
The Thai people and concerned organizations will be informed of the development to be made on the Preah Vihear Temple, Suvit said.
During the meeting on July 29, the WHC decided to reschedule its discussion on Cambodia's management plan to its annual meeting in Bahrain in 2011.
Prior to the WHC decision to postpone its discussion, Thailand threatened to walk out of the WHC meeting if the panel considered the Cambodian plan since the Thai side had not yet looked into details of the plan, which was handed in by Cambodia to the WHC panel just shortly before the meeting.
Thailand and Cambodia have historically laid claim to the site, which is located on a mountain top on the Thai-Cambodia border. The disputed area of 4.6 square kilometers has not been demarcated.
In 1962 the International Court of Justice ruled that the Preah Vihear temple belonged to Cambodia. But, the 11th-century temple can only be easily accessed from Thailand.
The Thai News Agency (TNA) reported that the natural and environment minister was speaking in Thailand's capital Bangkok shortly after he returned from Brazil, where he attended the annual 34th meeting of the UNESCO's World Heritage Committee (WHC).
It is expected that next month the WHC panel will present Cambodia's management plan for the 11th century Preah Vihear Temple to Thailand, Suvit said.
After obtaining the Cambodian management plan for Preah Vihear Temple, Thailand will look into details of the plan in a bid to protect the country's sovereignty, he said.
However, the Thai side will keep abiding by international laws to find the solution to the conflict, the Thai minister said.
The Thai people and concerned organizations will be informed of the development to be made on the Preah Vihear Temple, Suvit said.
During the meeting on July 29, the WHC decided to reschedule its discussion on Cambodia's management plan to its annual meeting in Bahrain in 2011.
Prior to the WHC decision to postpone its discussion, Thailand threatened to walk out of the WHC meeting if the panel considered the Cambodian plan since the Thai side had not yet looked into details of the plan, which was handed in by Cambodia to the WHC panel just shortly before the meeting.
Thailand and Cambodia have historically laid claim to the site, which is located on a mountain top on the Thai-Cambodia border. The disputed area of 4.6 square kilometers has not been demarcated.
In 1962 the International Court of Justice ruled that the Preah Vihear temple belonged to Cambodia. But, the 11th-century temple can only be easily accessed from Thailand.
[Thai] Minister Suwit: Thailand may receive Cambodia's temple management plan in September
BANGKOK, Aug 2 (MCOT online news) - Thailand's Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Suwit Khunkitti on Monday said Cambodia will send its management plan for the ancient Preah Vihear temple to Thailand in September and concerned agencies will have to study it thoroughly.
Mr Suwit commented as he and the Thai delegation returned from Brazil and the 34th annual meeting of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Commission (WHC) which ends Tuesday. They were in Brasilia to oppose Cambodia's unilaterally proposed management plan for the historic Hindu temple and its environs.
The World Heritage Commission on Thursday agreed to postpone reviewing the Cambodian plan until next year when the WHC meets in Bahrain after Thailand, led by Mr Suwit, threatened to review its membership. At the same time a number of Thais rallied at the UNESCO regional headquarters in Bangkok last week, calling on the commission to hold off on its consideration of the issue.
Mr Suwit thanked the Thai public for expressing their objection to Cambodia's move, as well as members of his team for their work in Brazil despite pressure and tension, especially when negotiating with the Cambodian representatives.
The Thai delegation head reaffirmed what he termed as that the stance of Thailand on the issue is clear and creative. Thailand is not seen as a villain in the eyes of other countries and many countries have congratulated the kingdom's success at Brazil.
The Thai minister said the officials are now preparing to look through documents of the Cambodian management plan which is expected to be sent to them in September, to see the map details and conditions or attachment which may lead to further conflict.
Preah Vihear was awarded to Cambodia by the International Court of Justice in 1962. UNESCO named the temple a World Heritage site in 2008, after Cambodia applied for the status while dispute over 4.6 sq km contested land between the two countries remains unsolved.
Under the terms of the listing, Cambodia is required to submit a management plan for WHC approval, but Thailand insisted that the matter should not be discussed unless the two neighbours first resolve their dispute over the zone adjacent to the temple.
Meanwhile, the Thailand's First Army Area Commander Lt-Gen Kanit Sapithak said Monday that the army is ready to protect the country's sovereignty but there has been no movement of Cambodian troops.
Gen Kanit however said the military ties between the two neighbours remains good and both agreed at the last month's regional Border Committee (RBC) that they will not use force against each other if any problem arises, but will solve it through talks at a local level first.
The Thai army first area commander said he hoped the good military ties between Thailand and Cambodia will help ease the tensed situation and conflict.
Mr Suwit commented as he and the Thai delegation returned from Brazil and the 34th annual meeting of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Commission (WHC) which ends Tuesday. They were in Brasilia to oppose Cambodia's unilaterally proposed management plan for the historic Hindu temple and its environs.
The World Heritage Commission on Thursday agreed to postpone reviewing the Cambodian plan until next year when the WHC meets in Bahrain after Thailand, led by Mr Suwit, threatened to review its membership. At the same time a number of Thais rallied at the UNESCO regional headquarters in Bangkok last week, calling on the commission to hold off on its consideration of the issue.
Mr Suwit thanked the Thai public for expressing their objection to Cambodia's move, as well as members of his team for their work in Brazil despite pressure and tension, especially when negotiating with the Cambodian representatives.
The Thai delegation head reaffirmed what he termed as that the stance of Thailand on the issue is clear and creative. Thailand is not seen as a villain in the eyes of other countries and many countries have congratulated the kingdom's success at Brazil.
The Thai minister said the officials are now preparing to look through documents of the Cambodian management plan which is expected to be sent to them in September, to see the map details and conditions or attachment which may lead to further conflict.
Preah Vihear was awarded to Cambodia by the International Court of Justice in 1962. UNESCO named the temple a World Heritage site in 2008, after Cambodia applied for the status while dispute over 4.6 sq km contested land between the two countries remains unsolved.
Under the terms of the listing, Cambodia is required to submit a management plan for WHC approval, but Thailand insisted that the matter should not be discussed unless the two neighbours first resolve their dispute over the zone adjacent to the temple.
Meanwhile, the Thailand's First Army Area Commander Lt-Gen Kanit Sapithak said Monday that the army is ready to protect the country's sovereignty but there has been no movement of Cambodian troops.
Gen Kanit however said the military ties between the two neighbours remains good and both agreed at the last month's regional Border Committee (RBC) that they will not use force against each other if any problem arises, but will solve it through talks at a local level first.
The Thai army first area commander said he hoped the good military ties between Thailand and Cambodia will help ease the tensed situation and conflict.
Thomico's Open letter to Thai PM ... But, Prince, where is your open letter to the Viet leaders on Viet encroachments?
Click on the letters in English and French to zoom inCliquez sur les letters en anglais et français pour aggrandir
Beijing
August 2, 2010
August 2, 2010
His Excellency Mr. Abhisit Vejjajiva
Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand
Care of the Royal Thai Embassy
Phnom Penh
Kingdom of Cambodia
Dear Mr. Prime Minister:
Please convey to His Majesty the King of Thailand my very respectful homages and my wishes for a long life, good health and a long and prosperous reign.
I present to Your Excellency and to the eminent members of the Royal Thai Government as well my compliments.
I feel great admiration for the impressive economic, social and cultural development that the Kingdom of Thailand has achieved in recent decades, and particularly for the strong commitment to education that has underpinned the country’s rise. And I feel particularly grateful to the Kingdom of Thailand for the important role it played in the recent past to help Cambodia recover her sovereignty and put an end to two decades of conflict and suffering.
The Khmer people have no other desire than to heal the wounds of the past and live peacefully. As a member of the international community, of global and regional organizations, Cambodia wishes to achieve its development in harmony with every country, to nurture and reinforce relationships of friendship and cooperation with every nation, and above all with our direct neighbors.
The Kingdom of Cambodia and the Kingdom of Thailand have a long history together, marked indeed by conflicts but also by periods of peace during which exchanges between the two countries have greatly benefited both. We share a common civilization, culture, and religion. Whatever may separate us is not as strong as that which binds us together.
For these reasons it has been especially painful to witness the fast deterioration of relations between our two countries over the last two years. Both our populations are easily stirred by the ultra-nationalistic rhetoric of a minority. But a calm appraisal of history should make it clear that the territorial claims that have so animated the recent popular and political discourse in Thailand have no basis.
That history, in fact, is not a pretty one. The borders between our two countries have indeed been imposed on us by colonial powers who respected nothing but their own interests. While the Kingdom of Thailand was not colonized by Western powers, Khmers and Thais both can rightfully consider themselves victims of this colonial past. I understand the feeling of injustice borne by the Thai people against the impositions made on them by foreign powers. As a Cambodian, I cannot forget that the Governor of Cochinchina, Charles Thomson, arrayed guns in front of the Royal Palace to force HM King Norodom to sign the infamous 1884 Convention. Neither do I forget that the 1896 Convention was adopted by the United Kingdom and France in contempt of both Cambodia and Thailand.
The current Thai territorial claims, just like the 1954 fait accompli against Preah Vihear, use geographical criteria as justification, and as demonstration of how unjust the 1904 Border Treaty was. Natural features such as streams, watershed boundaries, mountain ridges, and escarpment lines, are indeed used to demarcate borders between countries. Bear in mind, however, that ethnic and linguistic considerations are also important criteria. From this point of view, it is undeniable that the 1904 Border Treaty left millions of Khmers separated from their motherland. Cambodia has been torn apart and left in pieces by foreign powers in full contempt of the aspirations of its people. If our two nations have a claim to historical injustice, it should be clear that Cambodia bears the greater burden.
In that era, it must be noted, a people’s right to self-determination was not yet part of international law. Nonetheless, the result today is that more Khmers are living outside of Cambodia, including in Thailand, than on Cambodian soil. Should ethnic and linguistic criteria have been used to demarcate the borders between Cambodia and Thailand, the outcome would have been completely different.
The example of ex-Yugoslavia, artificially created by the superpowers in full contempt of the regional historical, cultural, religious and ethnic realities, the ensuing conflicts of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo show how fragile those manipulations are and how evil their consequences have been.
In this regard, and as far as nationalistic overbidding is concerned, Cambodia could rightfully be in a position to denounce the 1904 Treaty in order to take into consideration the ethnic and linguistic criteria. Then there would be no Preah Vihear issue as the temple and its surroundings would consequently be located deep inside Cambodia -- where they belong.
But ever since full independence in 1953, under the leadership of then-Prince Sihanouk, Cambodia has only demanded the de jure recognition by its neighbors and by the international community of its borders in accordance with treaties imposed in the 20th century. This is still true today: Cambodia has no other claim.
Our two nations are fated to live side by side. We are both members of ASEAN, a regional organization which aspires, as the European Union has done, to open borders among nations to free the creative energies that are the source of sustainable development. Raising territorial claims is a futile attempt that flies in the face of history, and that harms our peoples by diverting significant resources that could otherwise be invested in development and the fight against poverty on both sides of our shared border.
As a Cambodian - and I am convinced that millions of Khmers do share my feeling - my dearest wish, Your Excellency, would be to see Preah Vihear standing as the enduring symbol of the reconciliation between our two nations, of the harmony of our relationship, and a model of fruitful cooperation between two neighbors.
Please accept, Mr. Prime Minister, the assurances of my very high consideration.
(signed) Sisowath Thomico
Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand
Care of the Royal Thai Embassy
Phnom Penh
Kingdom of Cambodia
Dear Mr. Prime Minister:
Please convey to His Majesty the King of Thailand my very respectful homages and my wishes for a long life, good health and a long and prosperous reign.
I present to Your Excellency and to the eminent members of the Royal Thai Government as well my compliments.
I feel great admiration for the impressive economic, social and cultural development that the Kingdom of Thailand has achieved in recent decades, and particularly for the strong commitment to education that has underpinned the country’s rise. And I feel particularly grateful to the Kingdom of Thailand for the important role it played in the recent past to help Cambodia recover her sovereignty and put an end to two decades of conflict and suffering.
The Khmer people have no other desire than to heal the wounds of the past and live peacefully. As a member of the international community, of global and regional organizations, Cambodia wishes to achieve its development in harmony with every country, to nurture and reinforce relationships of friendship and cooperation with every nation, and above all with our direct neighbors.
The Kingdom of Cambodia and the Kingdom of Thailand have a long history together, marked indeed by conflicts but also by periods of peace during which exchanges between the two countries have greatly benefited both. We share a common civilization, culture, and religion. Whatever may separate us is not as strong as that which binds us together.
For these reasons it has been especially painful to witness the fast deterioration of relations between our two countries over the last two years. Both our populations are easily stirred by the ultra-nationalistic rhetoric of a minority. But a calm appraisal of history should make it clear that the territorial claims that have so animated the recent popular and political discourse in Thailand have no basis.
That history, in fact, is not a pretty one. The borders between our two countries have indeed been imposed on us by colonial powers who respected nothing but their own interests. While the Kingdom of Thailand was not colonized by Western powers, Khmers and Thais both can rightfully consider themselves victims of this colonial past. I understand the feeling of injustice borne by the Thai people against the impositions made on them by foreign powers. As a Cambodian, I cannot forget that the Governor of Cochinchina, Charles Thomson, arrayed guns in front of the Royal Palace to force HM King Norodom to sign the infamous 1884 Convention. Neither do I forget that the 1896 Convention was adopted by the United Kingdom and France in contempt of both Cambodia and Thailand.
The current Thai territorial claims, just like the 1954 fait accompli against Preah Vihear, use geographical criteria as justification, and as demonstration of how unjust the 1904 Border Treaty was. Natural features such as streams, watershed boundaries, mountain ridges, and escarpment lines, are indeed used to demarcate borders between countries. Bear in mind, however, that ethnic and linguistic considerations are also important criteria. From this point of view, it is undeniable that the 1904 Border Treaty left millions of Khmers separated from their motherland. Cambodia has been torn apart and left in pieces by foreign powers in full contempt of the aspirations of its people. If our two nations have a claim to historical injustice, it should be clear that Cambodia bears the greater burden.
In that era, it must be noted, a people’s right to self-determination was not yet part of international law. Nonetheless, the result today is that more Khmers are living outside of Cambodia, including in Thailand, than on Cambodian soil. Should ethnic and linguistic criteria have been used to demarcate the borders between Cambodia and Thailand, the outcome would have been completely different.
The example of ex-Yugoslavia, artificially created by the superpowers in full contempt of the regional historical, cultural, religious and ethnic realities, the ensuing conflicts of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo show how fragile those manipulations are and how evil their consequences have been.
In this regard, and as far as nationalistic overbidding is concerned, Cambodia could rightfully be in a position to denounce the 1904 Treaty in order to take into consideration the ethnic and linguistic criteria. Then there would be no Preah Vihear issue as the temple and its surroundings would consequently be located deep inside Cambodia -- where they belong.
But ever since full independence in 1953, under the leadership of then-Prince Sihanouk, Cambodia has only demanded the de jure recognition by its neighbors and by the international community of its borders in accordance with treaties imposed in the 20th century. This is still true today: Cambodia has no other claim.
Our two nations are fated to live side by side. We are both members of ASEAN, a regional organization which aspires, as the European Union has done, to open borders among nations to free the creative energies that are the source of sustainable development. Raising territorial claims is a futile attempt that flies in the face of history, and that harms our peoples by diverting significant resources that could otherwise be invested in development and the fight against poverty on both sides of our shared border.
As a Cambodian - and I am convinced that millions of Khmers do share my feeling - my dearest wish, Your Excellency, would be to see Preah Vihear standing as the enduring symbol of the reconciliation between our two nations, of the harmony of our relationship, and a model of fruitful cooperation between two neighbors.
Please accept, Mr. Prime Minister, the assurances of my very high consideration.
(signed) Sisowath Thomico
