Tuol Sleng Prisoners (S21)
I am in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge trials are currently on. Sponsored by the international community. Three million people is the upper estimate of people killed from April 1975 to January 1979 under the Khmer Rouge. Lower estimates still place the number of deaths over 1.1 million.
Death, like life is not a simple concept to understand. What does it mean to kill 3 million people? There is a legal response, an international state sovereignty response, an international self interest response. What are the geo-political interests the justified this? I could name a few, communism for one. But it can hardly be said with any sort of satisfaction can it.
And what can you do, when 30 years down the track collective guilt takes hold and you want to be seen to be doing something good. We are afterall the good guys aren’t way? I’m white, middle class, male and from the west. We promote freedom and democracy and justice. Well we couldn’t deliver on the first two in Cambodia, although we were complicit in freeing many people from a life they may have otherwise had. And the UN run elections in 1993 have eventually resulted in a quasi-democracy. Well, a one man system of governance overseen by Hun Sen. With USAIDS slogan “From the American People” in my mind, I wonder what these trials mean to the people. Pol Pot gave the Cambodian people Comrade Duch to oversee Tuol Sleng prison. A former high school that was a place of tortue and death in Phenom Penh, with over 17,000 people taken from here to the killing fields. Twelve people survived. And guiltily for me it is the 79 foreigners, including from America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand that impact the most.
Comrade Duch is now appearing in the court. And we the international community are taking the moral lead in prosecuting him. If you want to, give the Cambodian people a Kangaroo Court – but don’t let it absolve you from any guilt – an illusory act at abdicating responsibility.
Death like life is complex. Can death lead to justice? There is a true story that during the holocaust, in a concentration camp in Germany occupied Europe, the Jewish population held a trial. They charged God with murder – or complicity in it. How could there be a God watching and caring when 6 million of his followers were being systematically slaughtered? Following official proceedings the verdict was made. Guilty. Then they made their prayers and went back to their daily rituals. God had not died. But justice was a process – not an outcome. One owned by the people.
Who owns the Cambodia trials?
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