With Sophea Heng who was one of the first to be deported to Cambodia, a friend I haven't seen in several years (Studio Revolt reception at Java Cafe, 2 April 2012).
The Royal Rebel emcee-ing at the Studio Revolt reception (Phnom Penh, 2 April 2012)
Charlie, born in Thailand as a refugee, committed a crime at the age of 15 in the US, paid fully for it in prison, reformed and then deported to Cambodia. The draconian US immigration policy, a reaction to 9/11, penalizes Cambodian-Americans for their poverty and for the consequences of US bombings in Cambodia which created refugees in the first place. It is inconceivable that the Khmer Rouge became the killing machine it did without the US obliterating Cambodia's countryside!
The policy is egregious on all levels: morally because it breaks up family (most of the 350 deported to a country, Cambodia, they have never stepped foot in before left their babies and toddlers behind); socially devastating as they were the breadwinner in the family , leaving jobs they had held steadily after the prison term and some period of reform; legally because it is unjust in punishing (i) a child convict who has paid his/her dues to society in serving the prison term, (ii) the policy is retroactive, as many of these individuals did not know their crimes were deportable, (iii) these individuals are being sent back to a country not of their birth, not to mention a country of violence and torture (especially when the Agreement was signed in 2001. The US violates every fundamental principle it purports to hold, including being a country of second chances.
Here, it freeze-frames the convict and refuses to see him/her no longer as a person with rights; it stigmatizes the child and identifies him/her forever as a criminal and nothing else, not a father, not a brother, not a husband, not a son. S/he is forever branded with the scarlet letter C.
These Cambodian-Americans are swept by the broad stroke of an immigration policy of fear and hate of Islam, details of no consequence, nor morality, nor hypocrisy, because as I noted earlier, there would be no reason for us becoming refugees in the US if there hadn't been US bombings of neutral Cambodia.
The issue first exploded when I was living in Washington, D.C. and consequently pulled me into the matter as a newly-minted lawyer and a developing human rights activist regarding all things Cambodian. In addition to giving numerous expert testimonies against deportation, I was also working with an NGO based in Washington, DC engaged with issues affecting Southeast Asian-Americans. We lobbied Congress and the White House and conducted conferences on the matter. Unfortunately, to no avail as the deportation took place.
I am very much looking forward to attending this event.
On behalf of the Phnom Penh arts community and Khmer Exiled Americans we request the pleasure of your company at Champions of Change, too a V.I.P. dinner and award ceremony in honor of “My Asian Americana”by Studio Revolt 2012 Winner of the Public Vote For The White House “What’s Your Story” Video Challenge Contest
(Photo: HRH Soma Norodom, 2 April 2012)
**Award presented by H.R.H. Soma Norodom
Monday April 2, 2012
VIP: 6pm- 7:30pm
Public: 7:30pm-9pm
Java Café & Gallery
56 Sihanouk Blvd Phnom Penh, Cambodia
(Dress code: formal)
Event sponsored by Initiative on Asian American Deportations and U.S. Department of Homeland inSecurity
The Royal Rebel [Soma] presenting the award to the Global Agitator [Anida]. Photo: HRH Soma Norodom, 2 April 2012.
*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Anida Yoeu Ali
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
www.studio-revolt.com
tel: +855-089-751-896 (Phnom Penh,Cambodia) or
tel +011-312-650-9638 (Chicago, IL USA)
March 28, 2012
Award Ceremony in Phnom Penh Will Honor Video Win in White House Contest
White House officials have refused to acknowledge “My Asian Americana” as the official contest winners despite the video winning the highest public vote.
On Monday April 2, 2012 the Phnom Penh arts community in collaboration with Khmer Exiled Americans will host “Champions of Change, too” award ceremony at Java Café & Gallery. The event honors “My Asian Americana” a video created by Studio Revolt as the 2012 Winner of the Public Vote for the White House “What’s Your Story” Video Challenge Contest.
The event is a dinner and award ceremony with guests that include contest winners, local artists, dignitaries, and concerned citizens. H.R.H. Soma Norodom will preside over the ceremony, presenting awards to the recipients.
During the event, the filmmakers of Studio Revolt will disclose details regarding the White House’s mishandling of the contest and the administration’s attempt to silence the issue of deportations.
Detailed information will be provided to the press at the event. RSVP to
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
"The substantial evidence of government involvement in this attack means a serious state investigation will never take place unless the donors, who provide almost half the national budget, demand one. Donors who are pouring millions into the Khmer Rouge trials to end impunity should not be ignoring a more recent atrocity under the current prime minister."
The 4-5 grenades were aimed at democracy opposition leader Sam Rainsy; it was a failed assassination attempt by this CPP regime, but not without a high price. Besides wounding the democracy leader, the grenades killed his bodyguard who jumped on him at the cost of his own life, 15-20 other peaceful demonstrators as well as wounded over 150 others some of whom later died due to refusal of treatment at the hospitals.
The following column was first published in June 2007 in The Phnom Penh Post.
I was saved from being at the scene standing next to Sam Rainsy and Ron Abney (the American who was injured and consequently pulled in the FBI) because my alarm clock failed to ring; how convenient that it ran out of battery that morning! I was awakened by a call on my borrowed hand phone at 9 a.m. one hour after the massacre to inquire about my whereabouts. My family in the US heard immediately of the grenade attack on VOA and recognized my handwriting on the posters soaked in blood strewn across the grassy field of the open park immediately across from the old National Assembly (now the Supreme Court).
I spent the whole day assisting with information-gathering by visiting all the hospitals where the wounded were taken. Many of the doctors refused to treat the wounded as they lay in their own pool of blood on the dirty hospital floor because they feared that these wounded would not be able to pay the hospital bill; they also feared being politically involved. Moreover, it was Sunday morning when few hospital staff were present. At least one person died in front of me due to lack of medical attention. The Kantha Bopha Children Hospital across the street from the scene of the massacre closed its gate and refused the wounded on its ground.
The night before I had helped the garment workers whom I had gotten to know through the weekly demonstrations and visits to the garment factories make all the signs in English, as there were very few Cambodians who knew English in 1997. The English signs were for international consumption. I went to bed late and exhausted, undecided whether I would make the peaceful demonstration scheduled for 8 a.m. the next morning. I was ambivalent for several reasons: First, the novelty of demonstrating had rubbed off a long time ago, as I had participated in countless strikes and demonstrations with the workers of the embryonic garment industry. I remembered joining demonstrations almost as a bi-weekly occurrence. Second, the demonstration was against the Ministry of Justice, where I had been volunteering the previous year and I really liked my students. Third, it was Easter Sunday and I also wanted to attend the service. Nonetheless, I set my alarm for 7 a.m. and decided to leave the decision to attend or not attend the demonstration for the morning. The failure of my alarm saved me from the 50-50 decision and the massacre altogether.
Since its publication, the 30 March 1997 stupa has been preserved but the Choeung Ek Memorial continues to ridicule us with its ghastly indecency of commercialization, foreign privatization and unbridled greed.
As victims think through reparations of provincial learning (information) centers and memorials, here’s a “what not to do” in terms of lessons for the future.
Not only that, we should demand that the government redress the Choeung Ek ghastliness.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed--if all records told the same tale--then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
"Doublethink": To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy...
The basic question which Orwell raises is whether there is any such thing as "truth." "Reality," so the ruling party holds, "is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else . . . whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth" . . . An American writer, Alan Harrington...has coined an excellent expression for the contemporary concept of truth: " mobile truth" . . . It is one of the most characteristic and destructive developments of our own society that man, becoming more and more of an instrument, transforms reality more and more into something relative to his interests and functions.
- Erich Fromm, Afterword to Orwell's 1984 (Signet Classic, 1961)
Think Big Brother in the Kingdom of Extraordinary Wonder (or, Kew-Kew! Kew-Kew!)
Think KRT and this Commie regime's efforts and resources to re-write history to whitewash its own bloody KR history, to embed Vietnam-influenced policy of liberation, the erasure of the crimes of occupation, the war crimes of K-5, and the continuing crimes of Vietnamization; to distort history via Tuol Sleng, Choeung Ek, the scapegoating of Duch and their skewered 1979-propaganda language and their disproportionate importance of KR atrocities in relation to the roles of senior KR Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Meas Muth, Sou Meth, Im Chaem, Ta Tith, Ta An, and the dead Pol Pot, Ta Mok, Son Sen, etc. as well as the 200 other prisons and the countless other killing fields which took 1,700,000 lives... and this current Commie regime's.
Now with UN insignia legitimizing the propaganda for truth, under the banner of "justice for victims and reconciliation".
This chilling classic is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand totalitarian societies in general and in particular, the Khmer Rouge and the neo-Khmer Rouge of the current Kingdom of Extraordinary Wonder (or "Kew", pronounced "coo", and as is often the case when in excited extraordinary wonder, one exclaims in rapid succession "Kew-Kew! Kew-Kew!").
Do you want to know where this Kew-Kew! Kew-Kew! Commie regime comes up with the Day of Hate? Read Orwell's 1984 where Big Brother's Oceania has Hate Week and the daily Two Minutes Hate exercise.
And you thought this Commie regime has the creativity and smarts to come up with the slogans "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery" and "Ignorance is Strength"? It borrowed from its Big Brother master. You thought the past and continuing violence against its own people was an original concept of this obtuse Commie regime? Or, that its deliberate policy of keeping Cambodians illiterate, uneducated, ignorant was conceived by them? Think again.
To this Commie regime, war against its own people is peace, freedom is slavery, and the ignorance of the people is its strength.
The International Reserve Co-Investigating Judge, Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, disputes all of the confused allegations contained in the press release dated 26 March 2012 by the National Co-Investigating Judge, You Bunleng. . .
The obstruction that he has encouraged and openly admitted to in the conduct of investigations in cases 003 and 004 amounts to professional misconduct and is a breach of the Internal Rules, the Law and the Agreement. An equally serious matter is Judge You Bunleng publicly naming one of the investigators in charge of several ongoing investigations. . .
. . .
The straight path to TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE in Cambodia?
Nate Thayer, a journalist and author with deep knowledge of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, also has a deep disdain for the tribunal, which he told me Tuesday was“an insidious, dangerous mockery of the rule of law that sets an unacceptable new model for legitimizing a 21st-century version of a Stalinist show trial.’’
Mr. Thayer might well have invented the modern journalistic practice of embedding: He traveled with the guerrilla resistance after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, living rough, fording streams, camping in jungles. In 1997 he scored a major scoop: an interview at a remote Khmer Rouge camp with the fugitive Pol Pot.
His interview for the Far Eastern Economic Review was the first with the former “Brother No. 1” in nearly 20 years. At the time, Pol Pot had already been denounced by his followers. He was in failing health, and died the following April.
The Honorable Kasper-Ansermet, you are truly a rare saving grace of the whole of the "international community" in Cambodia and bear correctly the title "honorable".
- Theary (Michigan, 20 March 2012)
MY HERO. The very cool, the rare saving grace of the UN -- International Reserve Co-Investigating Judge Laurent Kasper-Ansermet (Photo: EPA)
I am greatly entertained by the on-goings, if they weren't so destructive!!! In the short, medium and long-term where WE, the Cambodian people (not govt, not UN, not any foreigners) have to pick up the pieces and live with the serious consequences!
The most obvious culprits are easy to identify, but we haven't been upset sufficiently with the "good guys" sustaining this FARCE, feeding, embedding, cementing all the dark mentalities of this SHAM, and with greater FEROCITY because it is the UN, it is the international community whom the Cambodian people trust(ed), but is failing us again and again.
I guess the blame at the end of the day lies with us, the Cambodian people, for our NAIVETE and this FOOLISH TRUST of the foreigners who time and again have contributed to the dark mentalities, leaving destruction in their wake after their transitional stay and bearing no responsibility.
- Theary (Michigan, 20 March 2012)
. . .
A proud aunt modeling earrings made by her 11-year-old nephew, Jared Seng.
Helen and Wally Boelkins--here at Wally's 80th Hawaiian-themed birthday party at Hidden Ridge, Michigan (Photo: Theary Seng, 18 March 2012). Wally never ceases to amaze me and those around him with his life and generosity. At the birthday reception of 50-plus family and friends, a daughter mentioned how Wally and Marge (my godmother who succumbed to Alzheimer's a few years ago) during their humble beginning when traveling for business would pick up hitch-hikers and share with them God's love for them as well as give them one of the many Bibles Wally had bought and stashed in the back seat of their car. Among the 66 books in the Bible, Wally's favorite ones are Proverbs and James.I look forward to seeing the growing Boelkins family again as well as joining with the Japanese and African friends for your 90th and 100th back here in Michigan, Wal! In the meantime, I look forward to welcoming you and Helen again to Phnom Penh! Lots of love to both of you kids!
With godfather Wally and brother Sina and his family--wife Nancy, sons Gabriel, Jared and daughters Isabel Grace, Lily.
Wally's children
Like brother, like sister -- here enjoying some sibling bonding time at the Grand River Cigars (Michigan, 17 March 2012)
. . .
The spineless UN succumbing !
Work at KRT To Continue Until 2018:
Budget Envisions Possibility of 100 Investigative Field Missions in Cases 003, 004
The Cambodia Daily, 13 March 2012
. . .
I was privileged to have seen the film before its public release -- a MUST-SEE! Now screening at HRW Film Festival in London this 25-26 March 2012.
- Theary Seng
UK PREMIERE:
BROTHER NUMBER ONE + Q&A 25-26 March | Curzon Soho and Ritzy Cinema
Through New Zealander Rob Hamill's story of his brother's death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One explores how the regime and its followers killed nearly 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. In 1978, Kerry Hamill and his friends Stuart Glass and John Dewhirst disappeared without a trace while sailing from Australia to Southeast Asia. Find out more
Im Chaem, former head of a Khmer Rouge security center in Battambang's Preah Netpreah district, where an estimated 40,000 people died, is accused of participating in a plan to to execute perceived enemies of the regime, Voice of America said Tuesday.
. . .
New Report Outlines Credibility Failures at Tribunal
Theary Seng going through Preah Netr Preah (crime scene of Case 004) after the Battambang COURAGE curriculum training to conduct training in Siem Reap, 5 March 2012.
Preah Netr Preah, site of the crime scene in Case 004 against Madam IM Chaem (Banteay Meanchey Province, 5 March 2012)
I am amused that this Eccc (pronounced "icky") the Clown continues to consider me a civil party when I at every turn since November 2011 have publicly, loudly, categorically denounced it as "FARCE!" "SHAM!" "JOKE!"
when I withdrew all legal associations from Eccc the Clown
. . .
Rifts at KRT Over Case 003, 004
The Cambodia Daily, 1 March 2012
(Excerpts)
They also said the investigating judges had erred by refusing Ms. Seng and other civil party applicants access to the case file, and ordered that she be allowed to re-submit her application.
"The efforts of the CIJ Kasper-Ansermet and of the UN judges in the Pre-Trial Chamber in pushing for cases 003 and 004 vis-a-vis my and Rob Hamill's applications are honorable, but they are not enough to redeem the integrity and legitimacy of the ECCC,"Ms. Seng said in an email yesterday.
Royal Rebel (aka RR or Soma): Do you know you're the most controversial woman?
Controversial Woman (akaCW or Theary):Really? [laughs] I did not know that.
RR:Really. It's a compliment. There were people who feared to have you be on our program.
CW:I am only articulating publicly what everyone is thinking privately.
RR: But you don't care what people think of you...
CW: But I do... I am not perfect. No one is perfect. I learn from the criticisms, if they are constructive. Ones which are malicious, I ignore them. I have thick skin. [laughs]
RR: Have you been in love?
CW: Yes, twice.
RR: Have you been married?
CW: No. I do want to be married and have children. I can't cook for the life of me, so I need a man who can cook. I am taking recommendations. [laughs]
CW: There's a presumption against women. We are worse than second class citizens.
CW: Our generation, the older generation, we owe the young generation an apology. We have limited their future. Rather than being a generation of sacrifice, we--the older generation--have squandered the future of our children. For that, we owe this young generation an apology. I think of my grandmother, my mom's mom, an illiterate woman to her dying day, who sacrificed her life so that her children, not only her children but her grandchildren (me!), and now her great-grandchildren (all 70-plus of us) could have a better life... From one life, limitless opportunities have been created for the children, grand children and great-grandchildren.
There are dissenting voices. Theary Seng, who leads the Association of Khmer Rouge Victims, saw the life sentence as an attempt to make Duch the sole scapegoat for all the atrocities committed by Pol Pot's government.
Prominent court critic and Khmer Rouge survivor Theary Seng said, "We are experiencing the rolling momentum of the weight of these crises to the tipping point of sham."
She said the tribunal's legitimacy was now "beyond restoring".
. . .
Reversal:
Cambodia genocide court to pursue more Khmer Rouge
Kasper-Ansermet's bid to reopen the investigation was the "fresh breath of U.N. air we have been demanding," Theary Seng, a Khmer Rouge survivor and an advocate for victims, wrote to msnbc.com. She noted his "unexpected assertiveness regarding his pursuit of the political(ly) controversial cases 003/4," which she alleged were "expressly blocked by the government."
"The U.N. and the Cambodian government are heading for a showdown because of the unexpected flexing of muscles by the U.N. vis-a-vis the Cambodian government," she added.
One Cambodian human rights activist, Theary Seng, told Al Jazeera that she thought the life sentence for Duch was part of a government ruse to protect the remaining members of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy: “They want him to be the scapegoat,’’ she said, “for the whole Khmer Rouge regime.’’
"The devil is in the detail," said human rights activist Theary Seng of the judicial split.
"It feeds into my fear that this was really a political decision to make Duch the scapegoat for the whole regime," said the campaigner, who lost her parents under the regime.
"We're only starting to chip away at the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge era. Duch should not be made the face of the Khmer Rouge regime," she said.
... Theary Seng, who survived the Khmer Rouge regime and is an advocates for victims, said though she agreed with Duch's life sentence since it matched the gravity of his crimes, she was disturbed by the chamber's decision to overturn the lower court's acknowledgment of his confession, cooperation and illegal pre-trial detention.
"The legal implication carries dangerous consequences for the Cambodian national court system in the embedding of fair trial rights and due process, especially on the violation of pre-trial detention rights which is an abhorrent and pervasive problem in the national court system that we want (to) change in our society," she wrote in an email to msnbc.com.
She also noted that the life term, while appeasing the emotional sentiments of victims in handing out the most extreme sentence, had aligned with the Cambodian government's efforts to make Duch, "a small fish" in the regime, the "sole scapegoat."
"I am extremely disturbed because today's final closure on one case involves a man who was not a senior KR leader; Duch was the director (of) one prison, among 200 KR prisons. Where I was detained as a child (at age) seven, DCCam (the Documentation Center of Cambodia) estimated 30,000 were believed to have been killed there, including my mom," she said. "But this and similar other prisons will never get a hearing."
. . . . .
Exploitation and Disempowerment of Victims at the KRT
“Truth is a pre-condition of justice. Justice is necessary for shalom (which is peace that is more than the absence of conflict but entails the presence of justice. The KRT is full of deceit. Deceit can never turn into justice, no matter how sophisticated the spinning; but to the contrary, it can turn even more dangerous when with UN insignia.”
Should the Royal Government of Cambodia change the structure or organization of the Extraordinary Chambers or otherwise cause them to function in a manner that does not conform with the terms of the present Agreement, the United Nations reserves the right to cease to provide assistance, financial or otherwise, pursuant to the present Agreement.
The New York Times / The International Herald Tribune
Seth Mydans,12 Jan. 2012
"Among others who have returned and stayed are Ou Virak and Theary Seng, prominent advocates of a U.S. brand of human rights and civil society, which at this point fits a little awkwardly with Cambodia’s strong-arm form of government."
* dartboard with image of war criminal Pol Pot already mounted
* 5 additional war criminal images
** Each Dart Game set sells for US$7.00.
Please contact Ms. Sivnin at 017.993.118.
. . .
Theary Seng being interviewed by Mr. Cor Speksnijder of de Volkskrant, Dutch newspaper (Phnom Penh, 26 Nov. 2011)
de Volkskrant:You feel personally offended, don't you?
Theary:How can I not?! The honor of my father and mother is at stake. My dignity is at stake. I can speak as a lawyer on a professional level, but this is a deeply personal issue for me. I am both within and without... I am highly offended when the UN is effectively telling me, telling the other victims that all we, the poor Cambodians, deserve are the crumbs of justice... The UN is embedding all the dark mentalities we want to change in this society - the mentality of low expectations, the mentality of fear, the mentality of inferiority, the mentality of impunity, the mentality of cynicism... And yes, I agree with the opening statement of Nuon Chea's lawyer--the indictment of this ECCC--minus all the references to Nuon Chea, the one that was never made but sent out as a press release... I believe that guilt is not zero-sum; that is to say, Kissinger is guilty and his guilt does not absolve the guilt of Nuon Chea; he's still directly, personally responsible...
. . . . .
Poetic Justice
and Civil Party Withdrawal
in the News
Nov. 2011
Ex-leader: Khmer Rouge atrocities are 'fairy tale'
AP Newswire, 23 Nov. 2011
"I'm not surprised that Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary continue to deny their crimes as the charges against them of genocide, war crimes are very serious," said Theary Seng, a Cambodian lawyer and human rights activist who lost family members under their regime.
"Even if I am not surprised, I am however disgusted by their lack of remorse for the suffering they caused. They are delusional in their denial in light of the weight of evidence against them - the mounds of skulls and bones, the horrific testimonies from every survivor of cruelty, the magnitude and scope of evil unleashed by them across the whole of Cambodia."
Deputy President of Victims Association, a Civil Party of the Orphans Class, Mr. CHEY Theara, Withdraws Civil Party Status, Denounces ECCC as Political Farce
“The release of Ieng Thirith is only one reflection of how incredibly late these trials are coming into place,” said Theary Seng, founder of the Cambodian Center for Justice and Reconciliation and herself, too, a victim of the Khmer Rouge regime, having lost her parents and spent five months in prison. She has withdrawn from the tribunal process, and instead put her energy into organizing public games of darts featuring the faces of the Khmer Rouge leaders along Phnom Penh’s riverfront – a “way of release” following victims’ frustrations with the trial process, mixed with “dark humor,” she said.
But the trial - a joint enterprise between the UN and Cambodia - has been heavily criticised. Theary Seng, whose parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge, said putting three people on trial for the deaths of 1.7 million simply wasn't enough. (BBC News, 21 Nov. 2011)
Filming for German DW-Global with Bastian and Sarin, 18 Nov. 2011. More photos...
Filming by BBC with Guy DeLauney, 17 Nov. 2011. More photos...
Khmer Rouge survivor Theary Seng told AFP she was "frustrated beyond words" that only Khieu Samphan looked likely to shed light on what happened. "The people want to know who is behind the Khmer Rouge, we want to see and understand the larger picture and we're not going to get that," she said.
Others have gone further, arguing that the time might be ripe for the UN to pull the plug on the controversy-plagued court altogether. Last week, Theary Seng, a Cambodian-American survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime and a prominent advocate for victims' rights, withdrew her status as a civil party to the court, describing the proceedings as a "complete sham".
She said the UN should threaten to withdraw after setting some clear conditions for its continued participation. By pressing ahead, Seng said, the world body runs the risk of rubber-stamping a flawed process and further embedding cynicism in the Cambodian population.
"I understand the unwieldiness of any large bureaucracy, but at the end of the day it comes down to personalities, and there have been extremely weak personalities," she said. "In this regard, the UN is complicit."
In the End, Loss of Faith in Tribunal: Former Complainant
