The appearance of the first former Khmer Rouge leader in a special hybrid court established in Cambodia to bring that movement's surviving leaders to justice provoked a question on which the tribunal's integrity will depend: should an accused mass murderer be released from prison pending his trial?
Kaing Guek Eav, commonly known as "Duch," presided over the deaths of more than 14,000 people at S-21, a former Phnom Penh high school turned into a torture center. He is one of five former senior Khmer Rouge leaders who will be made to answer for their roles during Pol Pot's genocide, in which an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians perished. Until recently, Duch was the only one imprisoned, after being exposed in 1999.
The court -- with its improbable blend of Cambodian and foreign judges and attorneys as well as laws -- is meant to be a model for judicial reform and independent justice in a country where impunity has long been the rule.
The five red-robed judges who preside over the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia -- the tribunal's official name -- are the final arbiters of Duch's detention, but the question they are now considering belongs as much to the people of Cambodia as it does to the court. Should mass murderers be afforded the same rights as everyone else?
One of my aunts believes has a strong opinion on the matter. Khmer Rouge soldiers beat her father to death, and she remembers being shot at for sport by communist cadres as she and dozens of other peasants scuttled up a mountainside. She now lives one block from S-21.
"Human rights are for humans," she said emphatically when I asked her about Duch's case. "He is a monster."
I once believed that, too. When I first visited Duch's house of horrors in 1990, I was 15 and full of wonder about the country where I was born but had never lived. My family escaped the Khmer Rouge on April 17, 1975, the day they claimed victory. When my mother and I journeyed home to reunite with relatives who had survived the genocide, S-21 (also known as Tuol Sleng) was among our first stops.
By then, the torture facility had been turned into a museum. I remember feeling claustrophobic as I walked down its narrow halls and into classrooms turned into crude cellblocks. The air was stale but heavy with the stench of death in interrogation chambers, barren save for a single bed frame, shackles and a chair. Flecks of dried blood peeled up from the floor.
This was a place where fingernails of countless victims were ripped out, where others were strung upside down and dunked in barrels of water, where many were brutalized with metal prongs and batons. This was a place of utter brokenness. This was Duch's place.
Mostly, I remember the hundreds of black-and-white mug shots of prisoners and victims that covered every inch of the walls -- a ghastly montage of human suffering that haunts me to this day. I couldn't help but think: This was somebody's daughter, somebody's son. This was somebody's mother or sister or brother.
Back then, I thought: What monster could do such things?
Now, that monster was sitting in a courtroom, looking scared and meek as prosecutors catalogued his alleged war crimes. Sitting in the packed auditorium where snatches of Duch's face flash by on a movie screen, I'm struck by what I see: A face that belongs to someone. This alleged perpetrator of unspeakable misdeeds is, like his victims, someone's son, someone's brother, someone's father.
This might have been only a fleeting thought had I not seen Duch's family members, who attended the hearings. Hang Seav Heang, 28, described the defendant as a gentle man, a good father. One of his sisters said he was a caring, protective brother and that she would always love him.
Outside the courtroom and in the community, most of the Khmers I talked to were, like my aunt, quick to categorize Duch as something other than human. Duch must have thought much the same thing about his victims when he ordered them to their deaths. When we start to see each other as less than human, we respond with inhuman acts.
It is this narrow, black-and-white view of humanity that has perpetuated a cycle of violence in Cambodia, where raging mobs beat to death robbery suspects and young mistresses suffer acid attacks by jealous wives. To say that Duch is a monster who does not deserve rights ignores the gray area between good and evil, between man and monster, where anything is possible.
This trial is about that gray area, about that place in us all where morality decays and evil takes root and grows, the way mold prevails given the right conditions. Each of us carries this potential for rot.
There is no dispute that Duch violated the rights of thousands of Khmers. But if the basic premise of these trials is to uphold human rights, then we are obliged to extend that same principle to Duch. What does it say to the country and the world if a court convened to mete out justice flouts the law? Isn't lawlessness the plague we are finally trying to eradicate in Cambodia?
The judges have offered no indication when they will make a decision. And no one would blame them for taking their time to consider their options. This is, after all, the court's first test of fairness before the trials of Duch and four of Pol Pot's other henchmen begin next year.
We all want justice, but that justice should not come at the cost of our humanity.
Putsata Reang is a fellow of the Asia Society
Copyright: Project Syndicate/the Asia Society
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS