Defending Genocide with Dr Dre

I visit the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) which are held in a white ex-army base near Phnom Penh airport.

The viewing gallery is nearly full, as we dash in late the hundreds of Khmers in the audience turn to gaze at the barangs filing in; adding to their bemusement of the whole show. A public programme connected with the procedures busses in groups of Cambodians: children; old folk; monks; from across the provinces as part of a reconciliation process.  I long to be able to speak Khmer and ask them their impressions and I really hope that despite the process being so alien that there is some feeling of reconciliation for those older people who have lived through the terrible history of the country.

The court proceedings take place behind glass screens, a grand affair with so many people, lawyers, clerks, computers, interpreters.  Every Cambodian lawyer is shadowed by an international counterpart and there are scores of interns too. Displaced behind the glass the audience are provided with headsets with options in Khmer, English and French. It is quite exciting, like a film, a familiar scene from television, war hearings in The Hague etc. As I am taking it all in we stand as the five judges file in.

I have an information pack which has an excellent level of detail about the Khmer Rouge and the whole proceedings, so I sit down to multi-task, read the notes, take note myself of proceedings and listen to what’s going on. The first lawyer to speak is a young dark haired American man, one of the defence counsel, Andrew Ianuzzi, right from an American court room drama. He starts proceedings by complaining that during the previous day’s hearings Judge Cartwright had been seen to be mouthing “blah, blah, blah” while he was speaking. The matriarchal white haired Dame Cartwright, a leading judge from NZ quickly hides her surprise and composes herself. 

Ianuzzi said he couldn’t find anyinternational jurisprudence on the matter so resorted to quoting lyrics fromrap star Dr Dre: “Some musicians cuss athome but are afraid to use profanity before the microphone.”

Asked by Nil Nohn, the President of the Chamber, to repeat the totally inappropriate and surreal reference to the Cambodian court several times, Nohn finally dismisses Ianuzzi quite brilliantly:   “We are not aware of what you’re talking about, our knowledge is not as high as your’s. Be mindful that counsel is talking to the bench rather than talking to yourself.”

The proceedings then move onto the cross questioning of an old guard. I can’t quite follow the story here but gather he was worked as a guard in one of the Khmer Rouge camps, at one point he repeats one of the old regime’s freaky slogans:

“Disclosing secrecy will lead to death. Keeping secrecy will keep us 80% victory.”

Through the alien legal speak there is some familiarity with the slogan amongst the Cambodian audience and I’m aware of a ripple of titters.

The defence of secrecy seems to pervade the whole tribunal. The regime was clearly run on secrecy so ignorance seems to be an easy fall-back position for defendants and is being used repeatedly through the cases tried.  At the back of the court room the 3 elderly defendants of this Case (Case 002) can be seen cowering and doddering, often being wheeled in and out to the bathroom. It’s bizarre. After about two hours of seemingly inactivity the court is adjourned and will go into closed session.

A Cambodian friend tells me before I attend the tribunal that it is all a long dragged out game and already I can see what he means. It is difficult for me to judge the whole process but a few things stand out. It is 33 years since the Khmer Rouge were overthrown and it took until 2003 to start setting up a tribunal.  Since starting to set up in 2003,  the tribunal has cost nearly $150 million. In that time one man has been convicted, possibly the most evil man after the KR leader Pol Pot who died in the 90s:  Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, who was the Chairman of the notorious S-21 prison. Duch received a sentence of 35 years, then reduced to 30 years before being increased to a life sentence. I’m not quite sure why it took 3 trials before an appropriate sentence could be reached for a man responsible for the deaths of some 20,000 people.

Later I visit Tuol Seng, the S-21 prison which is maintained as a museum.  The KR took over a secondary school in the centre of Phnom Penh turning it into an unimaginably horrific torture centre and detention centre, today still you can see the gallows, metal beds, shackles and tens of wooden cells where prisoners were kept in cells 1 metre by 2 metre lying shackled down, starving, beaten and broken. Photos of the prisoners taken on their arrival to the camp are displayed, rows of haunting images of boys, mothers and babies, old ladies…faces of confusion, bemusement, sadness, fear and sometimes defiant smiles. I recognise the Khmer people from the people I know today.

After being held in S-21 prisoners were taken to the Killing Fields by night, having being told they were going to a new home. Loaded off trucks, one by one, people were made to kneel by pits and bludgeoned to death under florescent floodlights to the sound of propaganda music which blared out to drown out their screams. The most heart wrenching and difficult part of visiting the Killing Fields is the Killing Tree where KR soldiers (mostly boys themselves) smashed babies and children to death in front of their mothers.

This was one of many such sites across the country. During the horrific period of 1975-1979 some 3 million people of a population of 8 million died of torture, execution, starvation and disease. The regime evacuated the capital in a 3 day period and the whole population were displaced and made to work the land for rice cultivation and kept on basic rations, families split up and people indoctrinated. Following the overthrowing of the KR, Cambodia was then occupied for ten years by the Vietnamese. Even today the country is totally corrupt and far from a truly functioning democracy.

It’s unfortunate that there cannot yet be justice or closure on the Khmer Rouge period. Case 002 in the tribunal drags on while foreign lawyers delay proceedings quoting Dr Dre. A third and fourth case are under investigationhowever due to alleged government interference two international investigatingjudges have resigned within a recent 6 month period.  I’ve heard it suggested that these further cases may bring out connections with current politicians and governmental officials who are ex-Khmer Rouge cadres. To this end a tribunal held in another country could have avoided such interference.

Cambodia Pride: Inspirational Family Stories

Many countries have a Pride Day, some a Pride Week, Cambodia has a neverending Pride Festival…10 day of fun, but a little tiring…art, films, drag shows, parties, quizzes, a tuk-tuk race. I spent much of the festival dashing about distributing the CCHR Rainbow Krama (scarf) but the highlight for me was attending the Family Acceptance Workshop organized by Rainbow Kampuchea (RoCK) to mark the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) on 17 May.

RoCK is an organization with a great network of voluntary LGBT activists, led in part by the inspiring Srun Srorn, a leading activist in Cambodia. About 50 people were crammed cross legged into the room with a great mix of young to old LGBT people who had travelled to the capital for the event, visitors from NGOs in ASEAN countries also joined the day.  The morning’s activities were led by a visiting group from Vietnam from the organization ICS who are based in Ho Chi Minh City. ICS came to share the approach used by their project: Parents and Families of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).  Three inspirational and emotional presentations were given by the Vietnamese groups. Firstly 2 mothers of young gay men spoke about their stories.

With interpretation going on between Khmer, Vietnamese and English, and despite the constant murmur from the crowd, participants were captivated by the stories. LGBT people share similar experiences of family acceptance and can relate to fellow stories, these were particularly emotional.

“I threw a knife at him and told him, ‘kill me if you are gay.’”  The mother told, sobbing, with amazing honesty when her son came out.  “I went to church and prayed, I took him to the doctor, I cried.”  She then joined the PFLAG project who run family acceptance workshops and gradually began to understand and accept her son’s sexuality. After her presentation and the other Mother, all the workshop participants queued up to give the 2 ladies hugs. Then we heard from one of the ICS staff who told us:

“My parents took me to the psychoanalyst, they took me to see the monk and he fed me red rice to ‘cure’ me.” Teddy took his Mother to PFLAG and she also changed her way of thinking and accepted her son.  Cambodia and other neighbouring countries are now going to look to start PFLAG initiatives.

 In the afternoon we were treated to a song written by a Cambodian lesbian activist called “Give Our Children Human Rights” then there were 2 more emotional and inspiring presentations. Both by Khmer lesbian couples who have each couple been together for 40 years. The first couple, a manly character with a traditional red krama, and wife with polka dot blouse, both standing proudly with arms by their sides.  She spoke for both of them, explaining she had recognized herself as a lesbian from 9 years old. She met her partner in 1976 and they stayed together through the Khmer Rouge period, during the 1980s they lived together but faced difficulties from their families trying to force them apart and marry men. She told her brother she’d kill herself if he forced them apart. Defiantly and bravely they stayed together and adopted 3 babies from the community and now have 6 grandchildren.

The second couple, who again live and appear as man and wife….I am interested in this way of lesbian couples here living as man and wife but remember that the cultural perceptions here of being lesbian or gay or transgender are much different to the West and confused further by different perceptions of gender.  Again, the man in the couple spoke, they also met in 1976. Through the Khmer Rouge period (KR) they were able to firstly stay together as men and women lived separately, but when they were caught giving each other extra food they were separated and punished. Pointing her finger in the air, tears on her face she stood defiantly telling her story. She was made to dig a big hole for feeding her wife otherwise she would have been killed and in 1978 punished again for living as a couple she faced another obscure punishment of carrying and eating leaves.

Following the KR period when the population was dispersed they spent a year searching for each other. Happily they found each other but faced years of hardship as their families tried to force them to marry and they escaped to other provinces but struggled to support themselves.  Eventually due to their insistence at not being separated they were accepted into their community and the village chief gave a house to live in.  Their extended family began giving them children to adopt and they now have adopted 8 children. Her advice to the young people in the audience is to “love one person, one to one, not ten people!” The response of the participants was electric, hoots and cheers.

Lesbians in Cambodia are doubly disadvantaged by traditional values expecting certain roles of women.  The emergent gay scene in the urban centres is dominated by gay men and lesbians not visible in this scene.  Hearing from these 2 couples was certainly inspiring for me and hopefully for the many young Cambodian lesbians at the workshop too.