A group of people from ECCC did a fairly good job presenting to us one of the most fascinating topics among most Cambodian people. The topic of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal to bring justice to the victims of the most brutal act of crime against humanity in the history of Cambodia and, at the same time, to prosecute those who were involved in the conduct of this inhumane behaviour was brought onto the table for us to see and better understand. As part of the audience, our group is particularly interested in one issue as to the reason why, despite the consumption of a huge amount of resources—in terms of both money and time, this case is still quite far from being fully completed.
Based on our understanding about the presentation, this massive consumption of resources, both time and money, is the result of corruption and mismanagement of people working in the court. As said by one of the presenter, “some people in the court are living a very easy life.” Apparently, they are paid very high salaries, but some do very little work. The judges, for example, tend to work very slowly and spend a lot of time making decisions even on very small issues. This factor shows ineffectiveness and inefficiency in the way they work. Some may argue that those people intend to make the case continue as long as possible so that they can keep on taking advantage of their high salary. Anyway, despite the seeming concern and dissatisfaction of the speaker, who is one of the international employees in ECCC, on how the court is being processed, he sounded as there could not do anything much to fasten this prolonged procedure. Almost everything and power is in the hand of the local people.
In addition to the matter of corruption and mismanagement, it is also due to the presumption of guilt that makes it so hard to bring an end to this prosecution. Because the Khmer Rouge genocide is such an enormous issue and almost every Cambodian of the current generations is, to a great extent, educated to deem this act as so repugnant and inhumane to a point where everyone contributing—no matter how much—the making of the regime is automatically thought to be automatically wrong and deserve appropriate punishment and no further consideration and investigation is needed. In short, because of its being very infamous, guilt is automatically presumed upon everyone involved. This is why, in both international and national perspectives, decisions in the prosecution of the five persons being accused cannot be swiftly made.
Seeing the slow progress of this tribunal, doubts and negative opinions about it appear to have taken shape among some of us. Over the period of more than three years since the existence of ECCC, more than 100 million US dollars has been used up in the process. It has been definitely a very big investment that is not likely to earn back any appropriate result. There does not seem to be any success in prospect. Although successful, the impact the tribunal would make would be just to reduce the anger of some Cambodian people and bring some justice to those who are already dead. All that is done to punish the offenders, who are already very old and almost die, would be simply life imprisonment, which means just a few years, or even a few months, before natural death strikes them.
However, it is better to do something that is somehow impactful rather than doing nothing at all. In spite of the spending of millions of dollars and years of time, at least, ECCC has brought about some justice to Cambodian people who have lost their lives and to those whose beloved relatives and friends were killed in the regime. Also, ECCC has provided the new generations of Cambodians with better understandings and deeper insight into the issues, which is believed to discourage such atrocious acts from happening in the land of Cambodia ever again. For us, the Critical Thinking, this presentation has at least given us something to reflect upon and practice thinking critically about.
By:
An Polin
Chhom Sotheary
Tang Rothana
Yi Longdy
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