If Cambodia seeks to become China's little brother. Do we really need to worry about the Siems and the Yuons?
----- Original Message ---- From: Mekong River <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:23:49 PM Subject: Re: Khmer Rouge victims given a voice in Cambodia trials. Ly Monysar - I have been very frustrated to see the snail-pace trial taking place. But I say to you now there is no time for revenge among Khmer. We must move on. It is very disturbing to read your thirst for revenge. Reconiliation doesn't start with talk of revenge like this. It happened 30 years ago. Time is also a kind of medicine in the healing process. I advocate the trial, albeit imperfect, but let's be realistic, we would have no cells for the Ex-KR cadres. A few top people would be enough for me. Then some form of truth finding commission should be set up for serious historical study so Khmer can learn from the past. The survival of the Khmer nation now is at stake - much more important than the trial. The siems and the yuons are threatening our survival on a daily basis. On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 9:01 PM, Ông-thu N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: If Sok Chear had her way, she would slice the elderly man into ribbons and pour salt into his wounds. She would beat him up and torture him and give him electric shocks to make him talk. For Ly Monysar, "Only killing them will make me feel calm. I want them to suffer the way I suffered. I say this from the heart." Sok Chear, an office worker, and Ly Monysar, a security guard, are two of the millions of Cambodians who suffered for four years in the late 1970s under the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge, who caused the deaths of 1.7 million people. Today, three decades later, five aging former Khmer Rouge leaders have been arrested and are awaiting trial. And Sok Chear and Ly Monysar have an innovative role to play in the tribunal, where the first case is expected to get under way this autumn. They are two of hundreds of people who have applied to the court to be recognized officially as victims of the Khmer Rouge and to bring parallel civil cases against them. They will have the chance, not to beat and torture them but to seek symbolic reparations - a monument, perhaps, or a museum or a trauma center. It is a controversial experiment in this unusual hybrid tribunal, which is administered jointly by the United Nations and the Cambodian government, cobbling together elements of both local and international law. "For the first time in history the internal rules of a tribunal will give victims of crimes the possibility to participate as parties," said Gabriela González Rivas, deputy head of the tribunal's victims unit. Victims have been included in other comparable tribunals like the International Court of Justice, but their role has been more limited. As civil parties, the victims here will have standing comparable to those of the accused, including the rights to participate in the investigation, to be represented by a lawyer, to call witnesses and to question the accused at trial, according to a court statement. "Participation in these types of proceedings is a tool of empowerment," Rivas said. "People can tell their story, feel that what happened to them is a consideration, a recognizing that what happened to them shouldn't have happened." The inclusion of victims is part of the evolution and refining of the mechanisms of international justice, said Diane Orentlicher, special counsel of the Open Society Justice Initiative, in an interview by telephone from New York. "There has been a growing recognition, after 15 years of international and hybrid courts like this one, not to exclude victims from the justice that is being dispensed on their behalf," she said. "This is one of the frontier issues in ongoing efforts to improve ways in which war crimes trials are carried out." The Cambodia tribunal has been criticized for compromising international standards of justice with its awkward admixture of Cambodian law and its vulnerability to manipulation by the country's strongman, Prime Minister Hun Sen. The participation of victims is drawing more criticism, partly from people concerned for the rights of the accused and the preservation of the presumption of innocence. Victor Koppe, a defense attorney for one of the Khmer Rouge leaders, called the presumption of innocence "the most fundamental issue" in a case whose defendants have already found a place in history books as the perpetrators of the killings. "The question is whether or not everything in this tribunal is institutionalized in such a way that only guilty verdicts can come," he said. Other critics say the court is being distracted by social agendas from its core task of seeking justice for crimes against humanity. "I would put this under the category of therapeutic legalism," said Peter Maguire, a specialist in international justice and author of "Facing Death in Cambodia." "The task of an international criminal court is to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent," he said. "To ask more of it than that is asking way too much of any criminal trial." For many people, though, these related benefits are the main purpose of the trials in a country that has never fully come to grips with its tormented past. The trials will offer a catharsis and a measure of healing, they say, and will set a base line for an end to impunity in this still raw and sometimes lawless country. "This is an invention of the 1990s where people freighted the trials with all this baggage," said Maguire. "How do you measure closure, how do you measure truth, how do you measure reconciliation? These are not empirical categories." These added elements can also encumber an already tortuously slow process, the critics say. Almost two years of the tribunal's budgeted three-year mandate have passed since it was set up in August 2006, after nearly a decade of contentious negotiation between the United Nations and the Cambodian government. Nearly a year has passed since the first of the five defendants was charged in the case. A new budget has been submitted, and most analysts are confident that more money will be found from international donors to extend the life of the tribunal. But as Maguire put it, this court needs to get hustling. So far, Rivas said, her office is processing about 1,300 applications to participate from people who say they are victims. About half of them seek to be civil parties, while the other half offer evidence that could be submitted to prosecutors. Most names have been channeled through a documentation center or through human rights groups. Ten people have been accepted so far as civil parties, she said. As the number grows, it is likely that they will be combined into class actions representing religious or ethnic groups, victims of particular crimes or other parties. Theary Seng, 37, a Cambodian-born American lawyer who lost her parents to the Khmer Rouge, is organizing two groups of orphans - including Sok Chear and Ly Monysar - to bring civil cases. In February, Seng became the first - and so far the only - victim to address the court, standing face to face with a man she blames for the deaths of her parents. Though her words were addressed to the court, she said, her eyes were locked directly with those of the defendant, Nuon Chea, 81, the most senior of the five imprisoned leaders - the man Sok Chear said she wanted to flay. In a short statement, Theary Seng contrasted the legal protections that Nuon Chea is receiving with the arbitrary arrest and abuse she said she and her younger brother suffered as children under the Khmer Rouge. Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge ideologue, was sometimes known as Brother No. 2 to Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader, who died in 1998.. "He was stoic, stoic," said Theary Seng, recalling the confrontation. "He's completely stoic. Eighty percent of the time I was addressing him in my statement. He didn't break the stare." Nearly one-fourth of the Cambodian population died between 1975 and 1979 from execution, torture, starvation and overwork in the mass labor brigades the Khmer Rouge created. Today, though, most of the survivors are as stoic as their victimizers. When asked about the tribunal, most simply say they want to know who caused their suffering and why. But the approach of the court sessions has aroused the feelings of many people, and those who have applied to be counted as victims are among those with the strongest emotions. Sok Chear, 32, who said she was raped and brutalized as a girl by the Khmer Rouge, remains inconsolable over the loss of her father, an engineer, who disappeared into the hands of the black-clothed cadre and never returned. "We were always waiting for him to come home, but he never came," she said. "We were always waiting and waiting. Even now, I still look around. Maybe my father is still alive." Tears still come when she talks about him. "He gave me rice to eat, and I want to repay him," she said, "even one plate of rice, my gift to him, even one plate for him to eat from his daughter." Ly Monysar, 41, is a broken man, poor and sick and bitter, his voice quavering as he tells of the loss of his entire family when he was a boy of 9. He sustains himself with fantasies of revenge every bit as chilling as the calculated brutality of men like Nuon Chea. "I want to kill all those people who did this to me," he said. "And if I can't, I'll come back in the next life and find them. I'll create my own genocidal regime and take my revenge on them all." ================================================================================== London calling After one of the most impressive modern games, the Olympic flag has been handed to London, marking the start of the four-year countdown. The British capital took centre stage with an eight-minute presentation to the world during Beijing's closing ceremony on Sunday. The five-ringed flag was handed from Beijing's mayor to the president of the International Olympic Committee, and then on to London's mayor who waved it four times, signalling the official start of the London Olympiad. Topping Beijing It is not just the athletes who will be competing in Britain in 2012. Rania Wannous from Visit London, the city's official tourism organisation, says the UK wants to show the world it can host a better party than China. "Each Olympic games is unique, what we are committed to is really delivering an amazing and best-ever games. London showed the world we were ready, we were energised and we couldn't wait for our own games," she said. But the British press has not been so positive.The Independent newspaper suggested that Britain's "collective toes were starting to curl in anticipatory embarrassment" while the Telegraph claimed that nothing could top the Beijing games.. Boxing gold medalist James Degale [GALLO/GETTY] Nevertheless, the organisers are not being put off. Construction of the main stadium on an "island" in east London started in May, three months ahead of schedule. They needed to start digging early to avoid any repeat of the Wembley fiasco. In 2007, the national football stadium in north London finally opened - a year late - turning what was designed as a symbol of national pride into a source of national embarrassment. The Olympic organisers are aware that any delays in the 2012 facilities would be an embarrassment on an international scale. But there is already criticism of the stadium's design. It is not impressing the British media in the way that Beijing's Bird's Nest wowed the world. The Guardian newspaper called it "plain and practical", while The Times described it as "deflated architecture at an inflated price". The organisers insist they are not just designing the building for a fortnight in 2012. Once the global spotlight moves away from the Olympic stadium at the end of the games, it will be transformed from an 80,000-capacity arena into a 25,000-seater local venue for community sports. Changing London Politicians and business leaders have made it clear that London is going to be a very different city in four years. A number of projects intended to change the lives of people living there are set to be completed in 2012.. A controversial east-west rail link has been forced through. The 30-year-old idea had been written off, because of the cost of digging a new route under London, but the Olympics changed that. Large parts of Heathrow Airport are being rebuilt, despite the objections of local residents who do not want any further expansion at the site. New London underground trains and lines will be unveiled. And a plan to put tens of thousands of free-to-use bicycles on the city's streets is under way. Ideas which could have stayed on the drawing board are coming to life faster than most Londoners are accustomed to. But the competition with Beijing to host the best Olympics ever does not come cheap. The estimated cost of the 2012 games has tripled since London was named as the host city in 2005. This has not gone down well with the British press. "London could end up worse off after [the] Olympics," read The Telegraph. "Don't waste public money on sport," urgedThe Times. A large part of the cost of the games is being paid by Londoners. That has led some taxpayers to threaten not to pay the extra $40 a year. Mark Wallace from campaign group, the Taxpayers' Alliance, understands their anger: "People are looking forward to it, but they're also concerned that if there are more budget problems, it's going to hit all of us in the pocket.. And it might look quite bad internationally. "The Olympics mustn't be used as an excuse just to splash as much cash as politicians want on everything. It's got to be done sensibly and we've got to realise that the money comes out of people's pockets." Team GB But the International Olympic Committee has made it clear that it does not want corners to be cut. The games are for the athletes, it says, not for the host city. And the bar has been set high for the British athletes. They have a target of propelling Team GB into fourth place in the medals table, something unthinkable even a few months ago. After finishing fourth in Beijing, Team GB have high expectations for London [GALLO/GETTY] The bitter memory of Atlanta in 1996, when Britain picked up just one gold, was overcome in style in Beijing. The UK's Olympians leapt into fourth place, with their best showing in nearly a century. Earlier this year, the British Olympic Association was ridiculed when it said it wanted Britain to finish fourth in the 2012 games. Until Beijing, Team GB had not managed to score better than tenth place since 1980. Matthew Crawcour from UK Sport hinted that Britain could go for third in 2012: "A new benchmark has been set and nobody likes to stand still, so our job is to look at how we move things on." Much of this year's success is being attributed to increased funding. One-quarter of the amount spent on National Lottery tickets goes to charity. A large percentage of that is given to Britain's Olympic hopefuls. The better a sport does, the more Lottery cash it gets. The hope is that the impact of that spending will trickle down to the rest of the country. A survey by online researchers Opinium has found that the excitement of the Beijing games has already inspired one in 20 people to get into sport. "It's great to have a new set of role models out there, and role models are important because they're the ones that bring people into sport," Crawcour said. "Even if they don't make it, if they don't become [Olympic champions like] Chris Hoy or Rebecca Adlington, the great thing is, it's a healthy way to go and if we're becoming a healthier nation then that's positive." Cash boost The games are also expected to bring new jobs to the capital. A huge global advertising campaign designed to attract visitors to the Olympic city has already started. It is estimated that tourists traveling to Britain because of the games will give the country a $10 billion cash boost. The games will be hosted in east London, the poorest part of the city, which lives in the shadow of the financial district – one of the world's wealthiest square miles. The Olympics will bring jobs and visitors to this traditionally deprived area. It will also bring much needed housing. The Olympic village where the athletes stay will be converted into affordable homes for Londoners after the games. The first residents will move in by Christmas 2012. With less than half of Beijing's Olympics budget allocated for the games, London knows that 2012 will never be as big and bold as 2008. So it is trying to impress the world in a different way. London won its Olympic bid by convincing the world that the games would have a lasting legacy – an impact on Londoners outside the stadia. "I witnessed the power of the [2000 Sydney] games to really transform a city and I think we're going to see that even bigger and better in 2012 in London," says Wannous. And once the Olympic flame is extinguished in London, that is how organisers hope the success of the games will be remembered. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cambodia Discussion (CAMDISC) - www.cambodia.org" group. This is an unmoderated forum. Please refrain from using foul language. Thank you for your understanding. Peace among us and in Cambodia. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/camdisc Learn more - http://www.cambodia.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
