Injustice, Deceit at Two-hundred-million-dollar Court for KR Victims

Injustice, Deceit at Two-hundred-million-dollar Court for KR Victims

Theary Seng with her four brothers and their mother in Phnom Penh, most likely in 1974. In early 1978 for a period of 5-6 months, all six of them and their paternal grandfather were imprisoned in Wat Tlork Security Center and later transferred to Boeung Rai Security Center where the Khmer Rouge killed their mother Seng Chan Eat.

Boeung Rai Security Center where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned Theary Seng and her family and killed her mother, Seng Chan Eat. Among the 30,000 skulls, these are the only ones remaining: over the years, the villagers have been taking the skulls at liberty to grind them into traditional medicine. The bones are still in the mass graves in and around the pagoda and the nearby prison. This government has done absolutely nothing to preserve the other 200 security centers around the country, besides Tuol Sleng which came into being as result of January 1979 politics. Theary Seng, as the only civil party accepted in Case 002 for the Boeung Rai Security Center, is still awaiting the response of the Co-Prosecutors to be on their witness list. (Photo: Theary Seng, 4 Sept. 2010).

Monday, May 09, 2011
Letter to The Phnom Penh Post

On Sunday, May 8, the Americans celebrated Mother’s Day. We, Cambodians, can join them in honoring our mothers and grandmothers by demanding greater, more dignified justice from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

The Khmer Rouge created over 1,200,000 orphans of whom I am one of them when they extinguished 1,700,000 lives including those of my father and mother. The last words of my mother—My daughter, go back to sleep—continue to haunt me, as she lulled me in her arms the night of her violent death in Boeung Rai Security Center whose mass graves contained 30,000 skulls.

My parents and those of the 1,200,000 other orphans’ were flesh and blood—with a name, a history, a family—and not some statistics or legal theories to be conveniently disposed of—again!—by the Tribunal.

We honor them by demanding justice. Whatever justice may be—legal, social, restorative, etc.—it must include TRUTH. TRUTH IS A PRE-CONDITION OF JUSTICE. Truth involves who speaks and who gets heard. In extinguishing Cases 003 and 004, the Tribunal extinguishes truth; it extinguishes justice; it extinguishes the voices of victims—those who died and those who survived—and our right to REPARATIONS.

We have been crudely conditioned to think of reparations mainly in monetary terms, which factor but insignificantly to what we desire of truth via reparations. It is useful to think of reparations with these 6 Rs:

1. RECOGNITION. There must be public recognition of the crimes, of the perpetrators and of the suffering of the victims. This recognition must include obligations of the State. Not only has the Tribunal been negligent in recognizing the suffering of the victims, it is being deceitful about its dealings of Cases 003/004.

2. RIGHT TO REMEDY. This includes rights of participation, of design, of citizenship.

3. REPAIR. Even if symbolic.

4. REFORM. Let’s start with the judiciary!

5. REAL AND REALISTIC. The reparations offered must be tangible and practical, e.g. provincial learning centers and memorials; the physical assets of the Tribunal to furnish these learning centers and memorials.

6. RECONCILIATION. It is not a moment but a process; it is not a principle but a strategy. What is happening now with regards to Cases 003/004 works against reconciliation as it works against truth-seeking.

The Tribunal (including the UN) is engaging in great deceit. It thinks that truth is inconvenient, justice is inconvenient. Well, so are 1,200,000 orphans living without our parents for the last 35 years.

But let me conclude not with these sordid facts but with the inspiration from the reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to raise all of us to higher grounds from the dirt of the Tribunal: “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

- Theary C. Seng, president of CIVICUS: Center for Cambodian Civic Education; president of Association of Khmer Rouge Victims of which the Civil Parties of Orphans Class is a subgroup.