2 Big Brothers in Cambodia

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My editorial in the Post: January 7 remains a day of mixed emotions for Cambodians

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Brahmaputra Literary Festival (Guwahati, India, Feb. 2019)

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“But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law...”

- Galatians 4:4 (NKJV)

Lady Delilah’s and my future (2019) delight upon news that CPP has been replaced by CNRP with Sam Rainsy at the helm.

Getting ready for a Christmas dinner. The last time my hair was this short I think was at least 9 years ago.

And that half inch scar still very visible on my right eyelid—from 42 years ago, when I was 6, when a man (who’s alive to this day living in Chensa village of mostly paternal relatives) pierced my eye with his long fingernail. It took at least a month before the swell (the size of a baseball) went away from the herbs and leaves that my mother pounded and applied to my eye day after day, all the while murmuring that her only daughter is forever blinded. " Hi Mom, up there, I’m alright, my battle wound I carry with pride tied to your memory."

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America's New Religions

Andrew Sullivan | New York Magazine | December 2018

Everyone has a religion. It is, in fact, impossible not to have a religion if you are a human being. It’s in our genes and has expressed itself in every culture, in every age, including our own secularized husk of a society.

By religion, I mean something quite specific: a practice not a theory; a way of life that gives meaning, a meaning that cannot really be defended without recourse to some transcendent value, undying “Truth” or God (or gods).

Which is to say, even today’s atheists are expressing an attenuated form of religion. Their denial of any God is as absolute as others’ faith in God, and entails just as much a set of values to live by — including, for some, daily rituals like meditation, a form of prayer. (There’s a reason, I suspect, that many brilliant atheists, like my friends Bob Wright and Sam Harris are so influenced by Buddhism and practice Vipassana meditation and mindfulness. Buddhism’s genius is that it is a religion without God.)

In his highly entertaining book, The Seven Types of Atheism, released in October in the U.S., philosopher John Gray puts it this way: “Religion is an attempt to find meaning in events, not a theory that tries to explain the universe.” It exists because we humans are the only species, so far as we can know, who have evolved to know explicitly that, one day in the future, we will die. And this existential fact requires some way of reconciling us to it while we are alive.

This is why science cannot replace it. Science does not tell you how to live, or what life is about; it can provide hypotheses and tentative explanations, but no ultimate meaning. Art can provide an escape from the deadliness of our daily doing, but, again, appreciating great art or music is ultimately an act of wonder and contemplation, and has almost nothing to say about morality and life.

Ditto history. My late friend, Christopher Hitchens, with a certain glee, gave me a copy of his book, God Is Not Great, a fabulous grab bag of religious insanity and evil over time, which I enjoyed immensely and agreed with almost entirely. But the fact that religion has been so often abused for nefarious purposes — from burning people at the stake to enabling child rape to crashing airplanes into towers — does not resolve the question of whether the meaning of that religion is true. It is perfectly possible to see and record the absurdities and abuses of man-made institutions and rituals, especially religious ones, while embracing a way of life that these evil or deluded people preached but didn’t practice. Fanaticism is not synonymous with faith; it is merely faith at its worst. That’s what I told Hitch: great book, made no difference to my understanding of my own faith or anyone else’s. Sorry, old bean, but try again.

Seduced by scientism, distracted by materialism, insulated, like no humans before us, from the vicissitudes of sickness and the ubiquity of early death, the post-Christian West believes instead in something we have called progress — a gradual ascent of mankind toward reason, peace, and prosperity — as a substitute in many ways for our previous monotheism. We have constructed a capitalist system that turns individual selfishness into a collective asset and showers us with earthly goods; we have leveraged science for our own health and comfort. Our ability to extend this material bonanza to more and more people is how we define progress; and progress is what we call meaning. In this respect, Steven Pinker is one of the most religious writers I’ve ever admired. His faith in reason is as complete as any fundamentalist’s belief in God. [...]

Our modern world tries extremely hard to protect us from the sort of existential moments experienced by Mill and Russell. Netflix, air-conditioning, sex apps, Alexa, kale, Pilates, Spotify, Twitter … they’re all designed to create a world in which we rarely get a second to confront ultimate meaning — until a tragedy occurs, a death happens, or a diagnosis strikes. Unlike any humans before us, we take those who are much closer to death than we are and sequester them in nursing homes, where they cannot remind us of our own fate in our daily lives. And if you pressed, say, the liberal elites to explain what they really believe in — and you have to look at what they do most fervently — you discover, in John Gray’s mordant view of Mill, that they do, in fact, have “an orthodoxy — the belief in improvement that is the unthinking faith of people who think they have no religion.”

But the banality of the god of progress, the idea that the best life is writing explainers for Vox in order to make the world a better place, never quite slakes the thirst for something deeper. Liberalism is a set of procedures, with an empty center, not a manifestation of truth, let alone a reconciliation to mortality. But, critically, it has long been complemented and supported in America by a religion distinctly separate from politics, a tamed Christianity that rests, in Jesus’ formulation, on a distinction between God and Caesar. And this separation is vital for liberalism, because if your ultimate meaning is derived from religion, you have less need of deriving it from politics or ideology or trusting entirely in a single, secular leader. It’s only when your meaning has been secured that you can allow politics to be merely procedural.

So what happens when this religious rampart of the entire system is removed? I think what happens is illiberal politics. The need for meaning hasn’t gone away, but without Christianity, this yearning looks to politics for satisfaction. And religious impulses, once anchored in and tamed by Christianity, find expression in various political cults. These political manifestations of religion are new and crude, as all new cults have to be. They haven’t been experienced and refined and modeled by millennia of practice and thought. They are evolving in real time. And like almost all new cultish impulses, they demand a total and immediate commitment to save the world. Now look at our politics. We have the cult of Trump on the right, a demigod who, among his worshippers, can do no wrong. And we have the cult of social justice on the left, a religion whose followers show the same zeal as any born-again Evangelical. They are filling the void that Christianity once owned, without any of the wisdom and culture and restraint that Christianity once provided.

For many, especially the young, discovering a new meaning in the midst of the fallen world is thrilling. And social-justice ideology does everything a religion should. It offers an account of the whole: that human life and society and any kind of truth must be seen entirely as a function of social power structures, in which various groups have spent all of human existence oppressing other groups. And it provides a set of practices to resist and reverse this interlocking web of oppression — from regulating the workplace and policing the classroom to checking your own sin and even seeking to control language itself. I think of non-PC gaffes as the equivalent of old swear words. Like the puritans who were agape when someone said “goddamn,” the new faithful are scandalized when someone says something “problematic.” Another commonality of the zealot then and now: humorlessness.

And so the young adherents of the Great Awokening exhibit the zeal of the Great Awakening. Like early modern Christians, they punish heresy by banishing sinners from society or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame, and provide an avenue for redemption in the form of a thorough public confession of sin. “Social justice” theory requires the admission of white privilege in ways that are strikingly like the admission of original sin. A Christian is born again; an activist gets woke. To the belief in human progress unfolding through history — itself a remnant of Christian eschatology — it adds the Leninist twist of a cadre of heroes who jump-start the revolution.

The same cultish dynamic can be seen on the right. There, many profess nominal Christianity and yet demonstrate every day that they have left it far behind. Some exist in a world without meaning altogether, and that fate is never pretty. I saw this most vividly when examining the opioid epidemic. People who have lost religion and are coasting along on materialism find they have few interior resources to keep going when crisis hits. They have no place of refuge, no spiritual safe space from which to gain perspective, no God to turn to. Many have responded to the collapse of meaning in dark times by simply and logically numbing themselves to death, extinguishing existential pain through ever-stronger painkillers that ultimately kill the pain of life itself.

Yes, many Evangelicals are among the holiest and most quietly devoted people out there. Some have bravely resisted the cult. But their leaders have turned Christianity into a political and social identity, not a lived faith, and much of their flock — a staggering 81 percent voted for Trump — has signed on. They have tribalized a religion explicitly built by Jesus as anti-tribal. They have turned to idols — including their blasphemous belief in America as God’s chosen country. They have embraced wealth and nationalism as core goods, two ideas utterly anathema to Christ. They are indifferent to the destruction of the creation they say they believe God made. And because their faith is unmoored but their religious impulse is strong, they seek a replacement for religion. This is why they could suddenly rally to a cult called Trump. He may be the least Christian person in America, but his persona met the religious need their own faiths had ceased to provide. The terrible truth of the last three years is that the fresh appeal of a leader-cult has overwhelmed the fading truths of Christianity.

This is why they are so hard to reach or to persuade and why nothing that Trump does or could do changes their minds. You cannot argue logically with a religion — which is why you cannot really argue with social-justice activists either. And what’s interesting is how support for Trump is greater among those who do not regularly attend church than among those who do.

And so we’re mistaken if we believe that the collapse of Christianity in America has led to a decline in religion. It has merely led to religious impulses being expressed by political cults. Like almost all new cultish impulses, they see no boundary between politics and their religion. And both cults really do minimize the importance of the individual in favor of either the oppressed group or the leader.

And this is how they threaten liberal democracy. They do not believe in the primacy of the individual, they believe the ends justify the means, they do not allow for doubt or reason, and their religious politics can brook no compromise. They demonstrate, to my mind, how profoundly liberal democracy has actually depended on the complement of a tolerant Christianity to sustain itself — as many earlier liberals (Tocqueville, for example) understood.

It is Christianity that came to champion the individual conscience against the collective, which paved the way for individual rights. It is in Christianity that the seeds of Western religious toleration were first sown. Christianity is the only monotheism that seeks no sway over Caesar, that is content with the ultimate truth over the immediate satisfaction of power. It was Christianity that gave us successive social movements, which enabled more people to be included in the liberal project, thus renewing it. It was on these foundations that liberalism was built, and it is by these foundations it has endured. The question we face in contemporary times is whether a political system built upon such a religion can endure when belief in that religion has become a shadow of its future self.

Will the house still stand when its ramparts are taken away? I’m beginning to suspect it can’t. And won’t.

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70th Anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Adopted by UN on 10 December 1948 - 10 December 2018

ក្នុងឱកាស ប្រារព្ធ ទិវាសិទិ្ធមនុស្ស អន្តរជាតិ, ១០ ធ្នូ | In celebration of International Human Rights Day, December 10

សេចក្តីប្រកាស ជាសកល ស្តីអំពី សិទ្ធិមនុស្ស | Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ 70th anniversary

អាន ឯកសារ ទាំងស្រុង ជាភាសា ខ្មែរ និងអង់គ្លេស | Read the complete UDHR:

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GPPAC-IID International Learning and Solidarity Mission to the Philippines

Manila, 25-28 November 2018

Day 1: Meeting with NDFP consultant in Makati.

Day 2: Delegation with Lumad leaders in Manila. Lumad is the term for indigenous peoples in Mindanao.

Day 3: Delegation with the former chief negotiator for the GRP-MILF.

Day 3: Delegation with Norway ambassador at his embassy in Makati. Norway is the official facilitator of the peace process. And the ambassador in particular is lauded for his negotiation skills in the Colombian peace process.

Day 4: Delegation with senior officials of the Office of the President for the peace process. Crowne Plaza, Manila. The government's chief negotiator resigned the evening before our meeting the next day.

Reflection on the GPPAC-IID International Learning and Solidarity Mission to the Philippines and the GRP-NDFP Peace Process

25-28 November 2018, Manila, The Philippines

It is only within recent hours upon arrival home that I had the mental space to reflect on the International Learning and Solidarity Mission to the Philippines ("Mission") organized by the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict ("GPPAC") and its Southeast Asian partner, the Initiatives for International Dialogue ("IID").

I am deeply grateful to GPPAC-IID for the invitation to be a delegate on the Mission and to the individuals responsible for putting together and executing with aplomb the thoughtful, deeply-engaging, systematic process for learning and solidarity of the Mission, particularly Marc Batac, Pascal Richard and Gus Miclat (whose presence was dearly missed due to a family emergency; our thoughts and prayers continue to be with you and your family, Gus.).

As someone who had considered herself knowledgeable about international affairs, I quickly realized my ignorance on the first day of the Mission of this most protracted of armed conflicts in Asia between the communists NPA-NDFP (its armed forces and political body) and the respective Filipino governments since the 1970s, as well as the other conflicts embroiling Mindanao. It should have been a comfort that my ignorance was shared by the majority of Filipinos not in affected areas, but it wasn’t, as it only further impressed upon me the overwhelming odds against the millions of affected people, mostly the indigenous communities assaulted by modernity and left behind by their fellow citizens and the rest of the world. Toward this realization, I particularly appreciate the day spent with the Lumad leaders in learning and solidarity (ably facilitated by Max, to boot!).

I am still grappling with the onion-like layers of complexity—a complexity whose scope, magnitude, duration, and human misery challenges the mind’s agility for comprehension. I am, however, heartened by the peacemakers I’ve met during the Mission and the deep-thinking and broad consultation that have already been done as reflected in the various meetings and handouts prepared for the Mission, particularly the NOREF report of July 2016.

We all come to a situation through the prism of our unique experiences. Despite the different context, it is inevitable that I should view this communist armed conflict through the double-layered lens of the Khmer Rouge and my personal experience living and working through it, including my focus on transitional justice.

Thus, in light of the aforementioned, I share these first impressions:

a. There can be no peace without justice. Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin. Peace is more than the absence of conflict; a ceasefire is definitely necessary but not sufficient. Peace also requires the presence of justice. But justice is more than legal; in a situation of this grand scale, it will be more symbolic than punitive.

Justice is restorative; it must include restoration of individuals, families, society. Justice is fair; there must be fairness in economic policy, business dealings, especially for the most vulnerable in the community. Justice must have genuine opportunities to be heard, to have a say, to determine one’s future for flourishing; inter alia.

The enemy of justice is deceit, betrayal, exploitation. My heart breaks to hear that the Lumad, particularly children, are being used by both the government and the communists as political pawns/objects/tools—no longer valued as human beings made in the image of God with aspirations for flourishing—resulting not only in lives lost but the sowing of distrust and mistrust which further weakens already fragile communities, that will take years to mend, if the process ever gets started.

A peace that does not incorporate justice and a justice that is not genuine (and more than legal) will inevitably lead to an unraveling in the future, laying the groundwork for new conflicts, inviting insidious, even more powerful actors (think China). William I. Zartman wrote in Peace Versus Justice: Negotiating Forward-and-Backward Looking Outcomes, "A treaty to end a war is, in effect, a preparation for another war unless it addresses the reasons for that war and unless it recreates a new political order to prevent its recurrence." According to Prof. Jordi Urgell Garcia, a fellow delegate on the Mission from Spain, 40% of treaties signed in the 1990s have been broken.

Here, I am speaking from the Khmer Rouge and deep personal experience: do not make our immensely costly mistakes with destructive consequences to this day. Think the Paris Peace Agreements of 23 Oct. 1991, Hun Sen shooting his way back into power even after he lost the 1993 elections organized by the United Nations, 1997 coup d'état ousting Prince Ranariddh, the dissolution of the opposition CNRP in 2017.

b. Data collection, consolidation of existing record, documentation AND the sifting, organizing and archiving of these data. In our modern age, data is power. There is a powerful niche here for the amorphous civil society to strengthen its position in the peace process: to collect reliable data, sift through these raw data and organize them for present and future use. The present use of well-researched, highly-reliable data include (i) public awareness campaign—find a champion from the entertainment/celebrity industry to raise the profile—via video clips, films, pamphlets, etc.; (ii) negotiation leverage. The future use of data will be: (i) evidentiary, in the legal or truth-seeking process; (ii) to act as a counterweight to deceit in the re-writing of history by those in power.

Related, the Lumad can strengthen their position by visibly showing everybody involved that they are agents rather than waiting to be acted upon in this peace process by proactively documenting their personal story en masse and carefully, methodically archiving them in an accessible way. EVERYONE can do this with the use of a smartphone. The now-and-future use will be manifold and incalculable. There is strategy in this human storytelling. And the Lumad will need to STRATEGIZE, including positioning themselves to be included at the negotiation table, in addition to their storytelling (necessary in putting a human face to the conflict).

Amid the frenzy of peace activism, TIME, RESOURCES and INTENTIONALITY must be given to this data collection, consolidation, sifting and archiving.

c. I was deeply struck by the comment (and gentle demeanor) of one official from OPAPP who mentioned the common ground in Christianity and prayers among the top leaders. I hope he/OPAPP can organize a Peace Day Dinner or Peace Week Festival, or something of that sort (ex. around Christmas, Easter, and a time of religious significance for the Lumad) where there is a temporary ceasefire for the occasion, with ABSOLUTELY no talk of politics, accompanied by a rock concert and art fair. I am thinking of a family Thanksgiving dinner scaled up for all of the Philippines, or at least Mindanao. After 52 years of tension, everyone needs a concrete space (“down time”) to imagine peace.

d. I imagine that after five decades of conflict, there may have developed a level of comfort with a certain kind of violence and a certain egoism. Here, I will end my reflection with the wisdom of Pope Francis: The path to peace requires humility. It is a message for all of us, not just the high-level leaders.

Theary C. Seng

4 December 2018, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

GPPAC Regional Steering Committee Meeting for Southeast Asia

Manila, 29 November 2018

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The Khmer Rouge Tribunal "Genocide" Verdict

"If the term 'genocide' has been widely accepted in Cambodia's case, it is because of the enormity of what was done in this small Asian country seems beyond the power of ordinary words to convey. Yet from the very start there has been a political subtext. The term was first used by the Vietnamese in the spring of 1979, when they were turning the Tuol Sleng interrogation centre into a museum cleverly designed to recall images of Belsen. It touched a chord of guilt and horror in the West subconscious that was politically extremely rewarding. The US, too, found 'genocide' to its advantage. ...their condemnation for genocide, the most heinous of crimes, would allow the US to turn the page with honor and regain the moral high ground. ...

"But the end result has been to make genocide a political commodity, to be exploited by each outside institution, each outside power, in whichever way best fits its own interests.

"For the Cambodians, this is nothing new."

- Afterward, Pol Pot by Philip Short (published 2004, 14 years before the "genocide" verdict in 2018)

Viet Nam-Cambodia Joint Victory Commemorated (Viet Nam News | 5 Jan. 2019)

"According to Kiernan, Pol Pot's 'Khmer Rouge' regime was neither Marxist, nor communist, nor peasant, but simply racist and totalitarian. Thus, 'Khmer Rouge conceptions of race overshadowed those of class.' ...

"It is perhaps inevitable that Kiernan's final conclusion that Democratic Kampuchea's 'racialist preoccupations and discourse were of primary importance, but so were totalitarians and achievements' (p. 464) begs the issues of the relationship between 'racialism' and 'totalitarianism' and of what kind of totalitarians Pol Pot et al. were. It is also perhaps not surprising that his argument that Democratic Kampuchea was above all a racist regime is both unconvincing and shot through contradictions. ... His conclusion that this same coalition should be held almost solely accountable for launching an irredentist war against Viet Nam is also faulty, as is his attempt to present another Zone, the East, as bearing little responsibility for these attacks and as being the main locus of 'opposition to Pol Pot'.

"This review will argue that the dichotomy between Marxism and racism posited by Kiernan is false and untenable...

"...not a detached analysis of the political process but Kiernan’s own engagement in it. This is an engagement that aligns him with certain surviving East Zone cadres who became founding members of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea [the current Hun Sen gov’t], which was established in 1979 under Vietnamese tutelage and later renamed the State of Cambodia. It entangles him in their struggles against other Cambodians for political and historical legitimacy, including the battles over the writing of Cambodian history. [...]

“This review also raises questions about selectivity in Kiernan's use of non-confession documentary evidence, and about the accuracy of his translations. It points the need for readers to be cautious not only with regard to Kiernan's arguments and conclusions, but also the data presented to buttress them. ...

"As is all too well known, the victims included not only minorities, but Khmer, both 'new people' evacuated from urban areas int the countryside, and 'base people' who were already living in old communist 'liberated zones'. ...

"A telling problem for Kiernan's argument is the studious avoidance in CPK [Khmer Rouge] discourse of the ethnically exclusive term Khmer, in favor of the inclusive Kampuchea. ...This ignores official sources that clarify the CPK's doctrinal position. A 1976 text... 'Kampuchea nation and people had their genesis in a blend of many nationalities, among whom the Khmer nationality is...the majority nationality. ... The majority and all the the other minority nationalities are members of the same great family of broad national solidarity in which there is no racism.'

- Steve Heder

Waiting to go LIVE with Florence on Al Jazeera, followed by another interview but time-delayed. After the ECCC announced its verdict of "genocide" against the Vietnamese and Cham Muslims, 16 Nov. 2018. Thank you Sam Rith for this photo.

"Genocide" — how about the Christians? (see images below, 3 March 2019). The Chinese?

One western foreign expert, Henri Locard — in the camp that doesn’t believe the term “genocide" fit — said to me before the hearing: “The Vietnamese had it better; they were forced to return to Vietnam in 1975; everyone else died."

Because the Khmer Rouge killed EVERYONE, there was a heated debate earlier on whether “genocide” fit. Someone came up with “auto-genocide” as part of this earlier debate.

I can go either way (even if I believe the "genocide-doesn't-fit" group has the stronger argument, e.g. David Chandler, Philip Short, Stephen Heder, Stephen J. Morris, William Shawcross, etc.).

What is problematic with today’s verdict is THE EMPHASIS AND NARROW FOCUS of genocide against the Vietnamese to the exclusion of many other groups. This plays into the ongoing narrative that emerged out of the decade-plus-long Vietnamese military occupation of Cambodians as "racist" but almost solely toward the Vietnamese.

- Theary, 16 Nov. 2018

The Christian cathedral in Battambang obliterated by the Khmer Rouge.

The Christian church in Phnom Penh that the Khmer Rouge completely decimated.

The Christian church above Bokor Mountain, hollowed out, badly damaged and ransacked by the Khmer Rouge but they did not obliterate it with dynamites like the churches in Battambang and Phnom Penh. Aug. 2012

1970s and 1980s

Now, with Christianity in the ascendant, the Christian churches are being co-opted, particularly ones HQed in Phnom Penh with widespread presence in the provinces.

Prior to the Khmer Rouge, Christianity was also in the ascendant. "Anointed for Burial" tells this story. After the Khmer Rouge, during the Vietnamese military occupation--according to Cambodians, only a matter of switching one Communist genocidal driver for another Communist genocidal driver--Christians were persecuted, not only in Cambodia but in Laos and the Indochinese Federation under Big Brother, Vietnam.

- Images from church, a sermon the book of Ephesians, 3 March 2019

"Autogenocide"

Read "autogenocide" excerpts from Deliver Us From Evil by William Shawcross

Someone sent me this front page of the Phnom Penh Post Khmer, with me and other foreigners prominently featured, rather than local Cambodians. As the PPP is now owned by a Malaysian friend of the Hun Sen government, my first thought was: "legitimacy" as normally they sidelined me, but moreover "international legitimacy". Here I am at the head of the line, speaking with Henri Locard who has written about KR prisons and KR sayings, with Prof. Alex Hinton immediately behind me. Dr. Hinton tole me that I am in his most recent book. Will check it out. (ECCC, 16 Nov. 2018)

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I even got a new hair cut, just for Nuon Chea!

Interviews with the Associated Press, Deutsche Welle, the Dutch, Danish press.

LIVE interviews for Channel NewsAsia, Radio Free Asia.

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Taiwan News | Egypt Daily News

Associated Press (17 Nov. 2018): Other observers were less impressed.

Theary Seng, a U.S.-trained lawyer, writer and political analyst based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, who is an outspoken critic of Hun Sen’s government, called the tribunal “a complete failure for international justice” because it didn’t accomplish any of the established goals of reconciliation, symbolic justice and combating impunity.

Seng, whose parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge, pointed out that the hope that at least some of the Cambodian judges, prosecutors and lawyers that the government placed in the tribunal would somehow become champions of judicial fairness and the rule of law has been the opposite of fulfilled: they have all been deeply implicated in government abuse and perversion of the domestic justice system.

She said her top concern now was for the integrity of the tribunal’s documents to be preserved for researchers.

It is likely that the voluminous documentation used by the tribunal will be handed over to the government or institution controlled by the government, she said.

“This means that the printed documents could be selectively destroyed and the electronic version could be subtly altered,” she warned. “Future researchers writing the history of Cambodia will not know what’s what.”

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My personal encounter of the ECCC falsifying its document in 2012:

Read my editorial in the Phnom Penh Post and Press Release re this here:

Excerpt from my Press Release:

This Elite Club amended the above Article 39 of the ECCC Law, stripping it of the above quoted language, with the document falsely stating that it was last amended on 26 August 2007 (which opened up the possibility that I made up the above quoted language). As it stands now, the full Article 39 reads: “Those who have committed any crime as provided in Articles 3 new, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 shall be sentenced to a prison term from five years to life imprisonment.

In addition to imprisonment, the Extraordinary Chamber of the trial court may order the confiscation of personal property, money, and real property acquired unlawfully or by criminal conduct. The confiscated property shall be returned to the State.”

The vacuity of past discussions of the ECCC Elite Club on victims’ reparations was given the final seal of approval with the ECCC Supreme Court Chamber’s summary decision of 3 February 2012, in para. 67: “that awards are borne exclusively by convicted persons”, shielding the government and the UN of any responsibility.

Please note:

1. Art. 39 of the ECCC Law PRIOR to my press release of 26 June 2011: ...“be awarded against, and be borne by convicted persons”...

2. Art. 39 in full AFTER my press release of 26 June 2011, after the ECCC amended it, completely removing the prior phrase as well as altering other parts of Art. 39: “Those who have committed any crime as provided in Articles 3 new, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 shall be sentenced to a prison term from five years to life imprisonment. In addition to imprisonment, the Extraordinary Chamber of the trial court may order the confiscation of personal property, money, and real property acquired unlawfully or by criminal conduct. The confiscated property shall be returned to the State.”

3. The amended ECCC Law to Article 39 (after my 26 June 2011 press statement) states falsely that it was last amended on 26 August 2007. That is to say, according to the ECCC, the full language of Art. 39 I quoted in pt. 2 above had always been exactly the full language of Art. 39 since at least 26 August 2007 -- which is completely false!

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Verdict of Case 002

re Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan

Friday, 16 November 2018

After some vacillation I have decided to go see the denouement of this long-running Kabuki drama at the Globe Theatre this Friday.

13 Nov. 2018. Just had a great conversation with another European journalist in person here at Metro re this Friday verdicts of Case 002’s Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan. The most serious concern: the integrity of the printed and electronic documents generated by this ECCC for future researchers in the writing of history.

This Friday, 16 November 2018, the ECCC will issue its verdict on Case 002. Some thoughts:

1. THE VERY SERIOUS, TOP MOST CONCERN: protecting the INTEGRITY of the mounds of documents (print and electronic) generated by this "tribunal" during the past 12 years of its operation.

- In all likelihood, these documents will be handed over to the Hun Sen government or an institution controlled by this government. This means that the printed documents could be selectively destroyed and the electronic version could be subtly altered. Future researchers writing the history of Cambodia or about this Hun Sen regime or about international justice generally will not know what's what. Think of how during the occupation (1979-1993), the Vietnamese sifted through all the documents and left only what they wanted seen and found to be taken up by Ben Kiernan of the Yale Genocide Center and other researchers, writing a very skewered history of Cambodia with the emphasis on racism.

2. The ECCC is situated in the far back of a FUNCTIONING, STILL OPERATING MILITARY COMPOUND. It was remote in 2006 when the ECCC first came into operation; it was outside Phnom Penh. Cambodia had to redraw the map of Phnom Penh to include this military compound to satisfy the language of the Agreement that the ECCC be in Phnom Penh.

3. 10 years of negotiation (1997-2006) because this Hun Sen regime never wanted this ECCC. When international pressure was too much and the ECCC was inevitable, Hun Sen, a former KR, did everything to make sure that he/CPP controls the process, e.g. pushed for it to be in a remote military compound to instill fear and hinder easy access.

4. The tribunal has resoundingly succeeded in accomplishing Hun Sen's twin goals: (i) to be known as the person/regime who put the Khmer Rouge on trial, and (ii) in the process whitewash their own history of being Khmer Rouge themselves. AND with UN stamp of approval. For all history books to be written here in Cambodia and each country of the world. Brilliant!

- In its resounding success is its resounding failure. For the victims who died and who survived to remember and grieve. For domestic justice. For international justice.

- It is a complete failure for the victims who died in that this political farce (that is called incorrectly a tribunal) desecrated their lives even further this second time (the first time was the physical destruction by the Khmer Rouge) in parading them as political props in this most unbecoming circus, at best a Kabuki drama with an unsavory cast of characters -- Cambodians, international or otherwise. I can feel my mom and my dad rolling over in their graves.

- It is a complete failure for the victims who survived because we are still awaiting justice. But the failure for us is compounded: not only did we not receive justice, we got crap, cow dung! And there are no other recourse as this "legal process" or "tribunal" was it!

- It is a complete failure for the domestic courts because rather than receiving good practices and exemplary judicial lessons, they got impunity times 1,000 -- worse than if there had not been a "tribunal". Not only do they not learned how to conduct a fair trial, they had their bad practices confirmed and affirmed! Times 1,000 because of international presence that did the same things, or at least approved the same things.

- It is a complete failure for international justice because it didn't accomplish any of the established or understood goals of: (i) reconciliation, (ii) symbolic justice, (iii) combating impunity, (iv) imparting lessons for the domestic courts, (v) providing justice for the Cambodians.

- The failure is complete and extremely harmful because the potential benefits that we (civil society) had tried to enlarge and multiple---dialogue, healing, trust, combating impunity---were completely subsumed by the deleterious magnitude of cynicism times 1,000; impunity times 1,000; distrust/mistrust times 1,000; and approval and presence of international community.

5. Very disproportionate allocation of time and resources toward Case 001 re Duch of Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek (a prison director of only one prison among 200 KR prisons), in comparison to Case 002, the heart of the matter, re the "senior KR leaders" of Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan (Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, who have since died during the trial) BECAUSE HUN SEN WANTS to make Duch/Tuol Sleng the face of the Khmer Rouge for the modern audience.

ECCC 1st-Recognized Civil Party and Representative of the Orphans Class, Theary Seng, Withdraws Her Civil Party Status and Denounces ECCC as “Irredeemable Political Farce” that is Negating Justice, Soiling Memory, Embedding Cynicism; Introduces Poetic Justice Products to Reverse the Negative Impact

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PRESS RELEASE

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Phnom Penh, 15 November 2011

On 25 September 2007, immediately after the arrest of Khmer Rouge Brother No. 2, Nuon Chea, for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Extraordinary Chambers (ECCC), Ms. Theary C. Seng, who was orphaned and imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge, wrote up her own application, went personally into the Office of Co-Investigating Judges, and filed the first civil party application.

She became the first civil party in international law.

Also unprecedented in international law, she confronted her mass murderers (Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith) in the ECCC courtroom and in her own voice as civil party argued for their continued pre-trial detention. She fought hard and won the right for a civil party to address the Chamber in person.

For a period of six years, Ms. Seng was the “poster child” for the genocide and a strong, articulate voice (spanning the national-international spectrum) as victim and opinion-maker in supporting the ECCC despite its serious flaws. She believed the ECCC to be necessary as a “court of law” in catalyzing benefits in the “court of public opinion” and viewed these benefits to outweigh the deep problems of political interference, UN apathy, corruption, incompetence, etc.

No longer. Within recent months, the scale has tipped for her. These compounded, viciously intractable, toxic shenanigans are threatening to transform the real but still fragile embryonic benefits into irreversible cynicism, the worst legacy imaginable for an already distrusting, mistrusting, long-suffering people.

Consequently, Ms. Seng no longer wishes to have any legal association with this ECCC which is mocking the dead, her and other victims and embedding impunity; she cannot do otherwise but to withdraw her status as civil party in Case 002 as well as the appeal of her civil party application in Cases 003 and 004.

Moreover, she denounces this ECCC as a political farce, an irreversible sham of extraordinary perversion in denying justice to victims, exploiting their suffering, soiling the memories of their loved ones and embedding cynicism in an already fragile population living in paranoia, mistrust and distrust.

Following her visit to the ECCC, she will hold a press conference to discuss her decisions, her new role vis-à-vis the ECCC as well as to introduce the Poetic Justice Products as one means of salvaging the benefits from the nefarious legacy of this vacuous grand pageantry that is the two-hundred-million-dollar ECCC.

Press Conference

Ms. Theary Seng’s Residence at 22B, Street 302

Tuesday, 15 November 2011 at 10 A.M.

Made 2 front-page articles in The New York Times in one day — at the cost of, what?, some physical assault?! Worth every ruffle to the salon-curled hair — my battle gear: stilettos and curls with a dash of lipstick. Henry and Thirith didn’t fare too well, however, in the violent scuffle.

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Beauty. Levitation. Balance to the above heaviness.

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Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Indonesia

Hyatt Regency Resort, Yogjakarta, 4-8 November 2018

Hosted by Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF)

Photo credit: ASEF

Pulling myself away from the 22-hectare verdant resort that is the Hyatt Regency in Yogjakarta, the Siem Reap of Indonesia where its famous temples are located (ex. Borobudur) with a population of 3 million and 70 universities; the main street is Malioboro once the ceremonial avenue for the Sultan to pass through on his way to and from the Keraton

The seminar organizer, Asia-Europe Foundation, has been thoughtful in allowing generous free time prior to the start of this 3-day seminar.

Photo credit: ASEF

The most fascinating dinner companion, the founder of the Schengen visa. Robert and I were on the same flight from Singapore to Jogja and rode in the same car to the Hyatt Regency for ASEM. He was the Luxembourg diplomat who chaired the conference, negotiated/founded the Schengen Treaty. Schengen is a village of 600 people in Luxembourg, bordering Belgium and the Netherlands (BeNeLux countries). There’s a road bearing his name in Schengen leading to the European Museum.

Look who I ran into at the Jogja airport?! The Cambodian soccer team! And how nice for Gus, the honorary Cambodian, to join us in this photo.

ANSA for East Asia and the Pacific

Board Meeting, Manila, 26 October 2018

The affable Mr. Ricky Gutierrez, my driver and fellow Christian brother, who effuses about his conversion at 18 at a Billy Graham crusade (he’s now 60), his weekly Bible study with other staff organized by his boss, the owner of our boutique hotel, the concert he and staff attended last night paid for by his boss, his excitement over next month’s visit of Billy Graham’s son (he thinks) where thousands are expected to attend in the massive public park that can hold thousands... | Lovely, lovely couple I’ve known before they had their two children. Mary, founder of Soapranos, an empire-in-the-making. Greenpeace is interested.

I’m in awe of these two friends and colleagues, change makers in their respective country: Dr. Angge, a political appointee of prior gov’t here in The Philippines, Dadang heading Transparency International in Indonesia (with a direct line to the president; he was instrumental in facilitating peace talks between Christians and Muslims when he was a legal aid lawyer, later bringing that experience to usher in peace to southern Thailand, now head of TI replacing his boss Teten currently chief adviser to President Joko and who was our colleague at ANSA).

More great people—Don, the tireless champion of social accountability and ANSA executive director; Emile formerly with ADB now with us at ANSA.

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