We've left Vietnam and are now in Cambodia, which makes Vietnam feel positively western. The hotel we are staying at in Phnom Penh feels like something straight out of the British Raj. Built in the 1920's, it is laden with dark wood, vast cool, echoing spaces, and a gorgeous terrace upon which we breakfasted this morning in the shade of palm trees. At night, mosquitoes buzz languorously about my room. I sleep covered in thin cotton sheets and a heavy application of Deep Woods Off. Malaria may not be much of a problem around here, but Dengue Fever is on the march.
Obviously, the main piece of news here is the Khmer Rouge tribunal. 30 years later, Cambodia is seeking justice for Pol Pot's monstrous experiment.
The tribunal has been long awaited, but that doesn't mean it has been greeted with excitement in all quarters. Many of the human rights advocates who have been pushing for it have now washed their hands of the matter, declaring that it is going to be a farce. Cambodia's judicial system is in it's infancy; no one's clear on whether it can handle this trial.
The US government has so far declined to fund the tribunals, which was a big topic of discussion today when we met with the US Ambassador. So far the American State Department has not certified the tribunal's judicial setup to Congress (a prerequisite for obtaining funding). There are a lot of worries about the tribunal's french-style setup, which gives judges more leeway and permits the tribunal to somewhat curtail transparency--many of the documents, for example, will apparently not be released to the public. Nonetheless, one US official indicated that the embassy has recommended certification to Washington.
But that leaves problems with the administrative side: there have been allegations of corruption, specifically that some of the tribunal staff are unqualified, and have obtained their jobs through patronage or purchase. So it's not clear that the American government will come through with funds even if the judicial side gets the good housekeeping seal of approval.
Everyone we've spoken to so far has emphasized the shocking, nearly unique, absence of strong institutions in Cambodia. As the ambassador told us, "When the Khmer Rouge said they would take this country back to Year Zero, they did it." The country is still passing thousands of laws a year and struggling with land reform to replace just the basic legal infrastructure that was destroyed when Pol Pot came to power.
Cambodia needs to build its institutions for a lot of reasons--economic growth, democratic principle, social re-engagement--but this tribunal highlights the shortfall in a particularly painful way. It's very possible that it would be more effective five or ten years from now, when the government has had some chance to make headway on anti-corruption efforts and judicial procedures are more established. But "more effective" at what? Justice is now racing against time; the perpetrators are in their sixties, or later, in a country where life expectancies are under fifty. The deaths of over a million Cambodians demand some answer while the prosecution can still do something to the perpetrators besides spit on their graves.
You ought to get yourself a mosquito net for the bed. They are extremely lightweight and take up almost no space when folded, so you can easily take it with you on your travels. It's a lot safer than constantly spraying yourself with DEET.
Deep Woods Off is fantastic. That stuff will repel bears.
The ignorance about Cambodia, its history and its culture, which this article reflects makes one wonder why anyone would publish it, let alone waste time in reading it. She should stay a bit longer in the country and learn something of substance before presuming to pass judgments on a place about which she obviously has only the most limited knowlege.
It's amusing/hideous that the American ambassador will say that the U.S. State Department is worried that the Cambodian "French style" tribunals won't provide enough protections for the rights of defendants. What does State think of U.S. tribunals?
Lest I was unclear, that came from another source. But in general, Americans are uncomfortable with the French system, which offers a lot more judicial discretion, and has a different attitude towards defendants.
Don wrote: The ignorance about Cambodia, its history and its culture, which this article reflects makes one wonder why anyone would publish it, let alone waste time in reading it. She should stay a bit longer in the country and learn something of substance before presuming to pass judgments on a place about which she obviously has only the most limited knowlege.
Here's a thought, Don, which would be very helpful to the progress of the dialogue: Sharp criticisms require a demonstration that the criticizing party has better knowledge, and that the criticized knowledge deviates severely or dangerously from the facts of the mattter. Snippy "You knows nothin', nyah nyah!" posts only make the posting party look like the fool, without harming the target in the slightest.
We've left Vietnam and are now in Cambodia, which makes Vietnam feel positively western.
I am told the French were much more interested and involved in Vietnam, so you would expect their influence to be much greater there. Same with the Americans.