Being "the other"

     I have limited travel experience. My only trips outside of the U.S. have been to Canada and South Africa. I'm not sure if it's because South Africa has a significant population of blonde white people, or what but I don't remember feeling discrimination there. Maybe it's because of the way the program was set up, or the fact that we stayed with so many different families and got to learn a bit of the language. I don't know.

    But here, in Cambodia, for really the first time in my life I have experienced what it's like to be treated differently just because of the way I look. I'm sure this has happened at other times to me over smaller matters, or without me realizing it. But here, it is so blatant and obvious, and difficult.

     Walking down the streets you get hounded with people calling after you wanting to know if you want a ride. "Tuk tuk, tuk tuk lady?" Over and over again. If you go by a shop, they start yelling at you "Hey lady, you want to buy something? You want a scarf? It's very nice. I give you a good price. Special discount just for you. Lady! Lady, just come inside. Have a look. Looking is free." Responses of "No thank you" are basically lost and you have to repeat yourself at least 10 times as they follow you down the street repeating the same thing over and over and over again.

      I have heard stories of young children (maybe around 8 or so) holding babies in their arms and coming up to you asking for milk, grabbing onto you and not letting go, saying please I just need milk for the baby. It's impossible to know if they are being honest or not. The fact that so many people tell the same stories makes me lean toward thinking that it's a hoax. But the money they get really does go to supporting their families. The problem is that a lot of parents know that they can use their cute kids as sources of income like that. So the kids won't be sent to school but instead will be sent to work begging for money all day long, because they know that tourists feel bad for kids who say they need money for school and food (even though school here is free).

      The worst part is when you actually do want to buy something. There are no prices on anything anywhere, which means that everything is negotiable. Unfortunately, this also means that I have no idea how much things are actually worth. However, after 6 weeks here it's safe to say that pretty much 99% of the time, the first price they tell me is about 3x the amount that I should actually be paying. I am a foreigner, which to everyone here means I have a ton of money to spend on random things.

      If they see that you have just bought a pair of sunglasses, they think that means you want 50 more pairs of sunglasses. Little kids who sell stuff at night come up to you with their pouty eyes and say, "you buy from them but you no buy from me? Not fair." To them, it seems perfectly reasonable for me to buy two copies of the exact same book because aparantly I have endless amounts of money and Americans love stuff.

      We try to explain to people that we are students, here on loaned money from the government, working for free, but that concept is lost. In Cambodia, if you have enough money to attend college, and law school, then you are very rich. We are seen as really well off. And I guess I can't argue with them. The fact that we had the flexability to travel to another country is huge, and I get it. But never in my life have I been looked at as a rich person, and treated differently because of it. We are given more leaway with people on things, a certain amount of respect. But it's crazy and it feels ridiculous. I eat noodles and rice for basically every meal because you can buy them on the street for less than a dollar. I am sharing a 10x15 room because it saves me about 2 dollars a day.

       In some ways I understand the mentality behind it all. If foreigners don't know the difference between what things cost, and they are willing to pay 3x as much for something, why not charge them that way? They won't know the difference and the extra money really can mean everything to some of these people.  But once you do know the difference, it's almost heartbreaking. To hear that the lady I go and get my breakfast from every morning is charging me twice as much, to be quoted 3 times as much everytime I go to the market. It hurts. I just want to be like everyone else. Yes, I am not from here, yes I can't speak the language. But no, I don't have an endless supply of money. no I can't afford to buy everything I want and do whatever I want. When things are expensive I have to say no to them. If I pay you 3 times as much for a t-shirt it means I sacrifice something else.

      It's incredibly frustrating to be seen as so different than everyone else. To know that people are schemeing against you to take as much as they can from you (regardless of whatever genuine need they may have for the money). It's exhausting. I'm so sick of being seen as a dollar sign, as a target, as different from everyone else.

Weekend Trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.....

            When we came to Cambodia we were only able to get  1 month visas. So when they were about to expire we decided to take a trip to Vietnam, that way we could just pay for new visas when we came back to the Cambodian border.

            6 of us took a night bus from Phnom Penh. It was supposed to leave at 12:30. We didn’t even get picked up to go until close to 1am. We thought we were the last ones to get on the bus and all found seats and feel asleep thinking we would leave soon. More and more people just kept showing up though. By the time we left Phnom Penh around 3am, the bus was so packed that people were sitting on the floor because they ran out of seats.

            We drove through the night on a rather bumpy and wild ride and made it to the border by about 6 or 7am. There we had to wait for an hour because the border wasn’t open so we couldn’t cross.

            We had to get off the bus like 3 times in the border crossing process. Once to check visas, once just to stand there, and once to walk through with all of our stuff. The last time they made us take all of our bags off the bus and go into a building with them. We then had to walk them through a metal detector before we were cross. I was trying to explain to them that because of my pacemaker I can’t walk through metal detectors and the guy just kept telling me to walk through anyway. I thought he didn’t understand me and I was getting frustrated and kept trying to explain. Finally  he called to another guy who was outside and spoke better English. The guy came and told me that it didn’t matter because the metal detector wasn’t even on. I decided to trust him and walked through anyway. Sure enough, nothing happened. We walked through with all of our luggage and it didn’t go off. They hadn’t turned the machine on. They made us unload the bus and walk through a machine that wasn’t even on. I was so frustrated and confused. Just another example of how people are willing to pretend to go through the motions here but don’t really understand the point of why they have to do things. It’s just very strange. So many western conceptions that have taken root here but seem completely pointless.

            It’s actually really interesting to watch Cambodians agree to do something a different way than they want to and then not follow to it because they thing it’s pointless. I think it’s a lot of the reason that oganizations have such a hard time getting systemic change implemented in Cambodia, because they try to do it the way they would in their country, and just get Cambodian’s to say yes, but when the Cambodians don’t understand the rationale behind doing it a certain way, they never will. You can tell that so often they think westerners are so funny. Yesterday I was at the market trying to buy a fake northface bag because I already have more stuff than I can get home. I was looking at the bag and the zippers all said adidas. I was trying to show the lady that I wanted one that looked more real and she was like, but this is a good zipper, way better than the fake north face ones. You don’t want that. This is better good quality. She looked at me like I was crazy when I told her I wanted it to match. If it works, why does it matter what it looks like? I think it’s an important thing we forget all too often.

            We made it to Vietnam by around 11am, found a guesthouse and went and got food. Afterwards we walked around a bit. 2 in our group headed further north but the rest of us stayed in Saigon.

            I got to visit the Independence/Reunification Palace. For anyone who has seen pictures from the Vietnam war of the last American solider being taken off the roof of the building by a helicopter, that’s the building where I went. 

            It was amazing to learn about the war from the Vietnamese perspective. Where Americans were painted as the evil aggressor, and Vietnam was triumphant in uniting their country despite the horrific things done to their people by this outside force. It was really hard to see pictures of American soldiers marching small children to concentration camps and read some of the stories of what Americans had done there. There have been so many times on this trip where it has been so hard to be an American, to own up to the past mistakes committed, to see the damage that has been done. American has a history of getting involved in other countries early on, making a huge mess of things, and then showing up later to try and implement all these policies on how the countries should rebuild from the destruction that we caused. It’s terrifying to see it’s after effects sometimes. I constantly find myself struggling to differentiate between what things I need to accept about being here as different, but good and unique, and what things are different but not ok and need to be changed. Coming here and focusing on the legal aspect, and being in an office that deals with children’s issues gets really really difficult at times. It’s hard to know when to accept cultural differences and when to try and implement change. I think one big difficulty the UN has had here is it doesn’t always find itself on the right side of that line. 

            That night we got to meet up with other USF students who are working in Vietnam this summer. Some are living in Saigon but a couple other had flown down from Hanoi for the weekend. It was fun to see them and hear about their experiences. They are all working in big international corporate law firms, basically on the exact opposite side of all issues as the rest of us. A lot of them defending individuals accused of trafficking, rather than trying to combat it. It was great to share experiences and stories and talk about different cultural things we had experienced.

            The next morning we pretty much got up and were able to walk around and shop a bit but then had to head on a bus back so we could work on Monday. It was amazing how much more developed Saigon was than Phnom Penh. I found myself not knowing how to walk in a normal city. In Phnom Penh you just have to go whenever you can. No one will ever stop to let you through so you have to be aggressive and trust that you won’t get hit. In Saigon people stop and wait for traffic lights and let pedestrians cross, it was amazing. There were also a ton of western restaurants in Saigon. We saw subway, pizza hut, KFC, and baskin robbins. Amazing how no matter where Americans go you can always find pieces of home.

            Vietnam was similar to Cambodia in the abundance of delicious street foods. Everywhere people set up makeshift restaurants out of carts and have plastic chairs they set up around them so you can sit and eat. The food was amazing and I would have just stayed there and continued eating for days. For everyone who thought I would come back to the U.S. skinner, you thought wrong. You can get a hearty meal of carbs and meat here for about $1... which means I pig out. 

Driving in Cambodia

            I have never witnessed such organized chaos in my life as I have trying to move about Phnom Penh. On the roads are everything from young, half-clothed children, to bikes, to carts, to motos, to tuk tuks, to Hummers and Range Rovers.

There appear to be absolutely no qualifications (other than affording it) to be able to drive here. No one looks to their sides before going or even turning, if you hesitate you get in an accident, you have to just go.

There are a few traffic lights scattered around town but they are not really followed. They are just now starting to implement a few traffic laws. One is that in certain areas of the city the driver of a moto has to wear a helmet. They can have a newborn in their lap without one on, but the driver has to wear one. I guess they are also trying to regulate that motos have to have side mirrors, not that it matters since no one uses them anyway.

I don’t know how to explain the way people here drive. They literally just squeeze into every possible available space. Leave 3 inches between you and whatever is in front of you and sure enough, another person will squeeze in there and cut you off. Cars are constantly turning into your lane and multiple times you will be forced into such a tight area that you have to push yourself off of the car that just ran into you. The other day I was crossing a busy road near work. I went halfway through the road and was waiting to go the other half (as is custom) and a girl came from the other way and ran into the front of my motto. She just kept going. She drove completely the opposite way and just swiped me as I was stationary. Because most people don’t have money and the police and courts are pretty much worthless, when accidents happen no one stops.

Did I mention that while there are lanes painted on many roads, even those don’t matter. There is no real one way to drive. It is a common occurrence to see people driving into oncoming traffic. They just honk their horn and flash their lights and hope the other person gets out of the way, which they usually do. We even saw this when driving down to the beach on a 2 lane road in the country. People would pull out into oncoming traffic to pass and cause traffic jams by making oncoming traffic slam on their brakes to avoid a head on collision.

So naturally, after about 10 days of witnessing this madness, I had to join it. I rented a moto so that I could drive myself around town. While it is incredibly terrifying and may completely destroy my ability to ever drive in a place with actual traffic laws again, it has been a great experience and saved me a ton of money. The freedom to go explore the city on a bike has been great, and getting the moto up to 30 or 40mph along the road by the Mekong river is about the only way to ever feel a bit of cool relief outside in this hot humid climate. And don't worry mom, I pretty much (almost) always wear a helmet..

Conspiracies on Vietnam

One of the students in my group came home the other week and told us that she got into an interesting conversation with lawyers at her work in which they proceeded to tell her all their own theories on those responsible for the Khmer Rouge, not Pol Pot or the Cambodians on trial, but the country of Vietnam. I couldn't believe her story. These were lawyers, highly educated men in Cambodia, working at the largest legal aid organization in the Country, who truly truly believed what they were saying. I totally dismissed her story as a couple crazy guys she works with but the next day at my job when we were out to lunch, I couldn't help but take the opportunity to ask a man in my office how he felt about Vietnam, and I got the exact same story....

He went on and on about how tricky and crafty the Vietnamese are. He said that Pol Pot loved the country and was trying to do what was best for Cambodia but Vietnamese spies infiltrated the Khmer Rouge and started killing people. I couldn't believe his theories and the conviction he felt for them. I tried to ask him questions to point out how ridiculous he sounded, like "what about the fact that Vietnam was the one that liberated Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge, why would they do that if they were running it?" He said that is the oldest trick in the book. It's like starting a fire and then calling to report the fire, no one will suspect you because you were the one that tried to fix the problem, but really it was you all along.

He just kept saying, if you think about it, none of what happened makes any sense at all. Cambodians are mostly Buddhist, they don't believe in killing anything, it's just not in their nature. Plus, why would Cambodians kill other Cambodians? It just doesn't make sense.

The amazing thing was that I had heard this story all before, not through another student in my group but during our first week in the country. We went to an art gallery that was run by Germans and they had a private movie showing for us. They presented us this Vietnamese propaganda movie that was shown around the time of the Khmer Rouge. This art gallery used to show the movie all the time but the Cambodian government got involved and told them they had to stop showing it. Our dean knew the owner of the gallery and was able to get him to make an exception and play the film for us.

In the movie, you see Ing Thirith, the wife of one of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge and one of those who was supposed to be on trial in the ECCC. She is sitting there talking to the camera about the horrible things that Vietnam is doing to Cambodia and how they are trying to help. She says that they are farming more than ever and they are curing the problem with starvation in the country. She is then combating all of the "rumors" about the Khmer Rouge. She says why would we kill the educated people, then I would have to kill myself and my family we were educated outside of Cambodia. She says why would we kill people with glasses, I wear glasses, then I would have to kill myself.

Everything she is talking about is exactly what I keep going over in my head the more and more I learn. Basically that it just doesn't make sense. Why would they systematically target people who were exactly like them? And then I think about the Nazis. How Hitler wanted his Aryan society but he had dark hair. How his parents were Jewish. And I wonder, are all of these things just cases of people who's own self hatred got so out of control that they started killing everyone like them? Can one's own self-loathing really drive them to such extremes? And I try to make sense of it all, to understand, to rationalize. And then I feel crazy because the second you can rationalize genocide and mass killings, there is something seriously wrong with your feelings toward humanity. And I think back to the image of Ing Thirith in her interviews. She is so adamant about this conspiracy and doing nothing wrong and Cambodia being fine. She is chubby. In a country where people are dying left and right of starvation. Where there were bodies everywhere because those who were still alive didn't have enough strength to bury the dead because they were also so close to death, she is plump. And you ask yourself, how can a leader, who loves their people so much and is doing "what's best for them”, eat to the point of excess in an environment where everyone is starving. And you realize that she is not so innocent after all.

Maybe it's easier for Cambodians to believe that their own people didn't do this to them. Maybe that's just how they are able to deal with what happened.

Maybe Vietnam really is responsible.

I think one of the hardest things about all of this is that no one is ever going to really know the extent of what happened in Cambodia and who is responsible. The world feels like we need to know, I think that's what the ECCC is all about, finding out the truth and who is responsible. But even the court isn't getting at the truth and frustration of a lack of truth is driving people to lose hope in ever knowing.

At the end of the movie there was a question and answer session. There was a younger Khmer journalist there who immediately starting ripping into the group of Americans that was there to watch the film. He asked why America didn't take any responsibility, why don't Americans know what happened, why aren't we more educated on Cambodia? For a group of students who was there to learn more, he struck a nerve with all of us and there was bad blood for a while. Part of me felt ashamed, like why did it take me coming to Cambodia to learn all of this? Why wasn't I taught about it in school? But then frustration came back because how is the outside world supposed to know about everything that happened and who was responsible and what was done when Cambodia isn't even in agreement over it all? When you have smart, well-educated Cambodians, saying that Pol Pot wasn't responsible.

I asked the man at my work what he thought of the ECCC. He said it was a big waste of money. Nothing was going to change. Those responsible weren't really on trial and those that were on trial would never actually have anything happen to them. He said why not just give the money to Cambodia.

It’s hard to understand that mentality, of not caring what happens to those responsible. Maybe not so much not caring, but accepting that nothing will happen. It's not that he doesn't care or wasn't affected. Everyone in Cambodia was affected. Everyone lost family members, friends, parts of themselves. Everyone was affected. But still people here move on. They don't like to talk about what happened. Many will never visit S21 or the killing fields. Maybe because it's too hard for them, or maybe because they feel like they can't change the past. I can't decide if I feel bad for this mentality or if I admire it. I respect the resilience and the strength to move forward, but I worry it's because there is a complete lack of faith in their ability to ever receive justice.

Cambodian Police...

We have heard stories of the corruption in Cambodia from day one, but my second week here I got to experience it first hand. I had rented a moto and was driving in line with 2 other students from my group and another girl in our group who speaks Khmer was riding with me. We came to a red light with a no u-turn sign. Since no one obeys the traffic laws in this country, the first guy in our group waited until the light turned green and then made an illegal u-turn. I proceeded to turn correctly and go around the corner where I could turn around. I came back to the same intersection, the light was green, and I made a right turn. Shortly after a policeman walked into the middle of the road cutting of my path and got me to pull over. I saw the other student ahead of me had been pulled over as well.

Right away I was confused. I was asking the police officer what I did wrong and he tried to say I made the same u-turn. It was ridiculous; I had come from the other direction. I said no way and he then tried to say that I went through a red light. I once again told him I didn't. I don't know if they just think no one here pays attention or what but this is literally how the conversation was going. I told him the light was green. From where he was standing in the road he honestly couldn't even see it. He then had the other police officer come over and talk to me instead because I was arguing with them so much. The other police officer (who had pulled over my friend and been talking to him when I drove up so he didn't even see me) without talking to the police officer that pulled me offer when through the same list of things I supposedly did wrong. First saying I made the illegal U-turn and then claiming the light was red. Finally he said that the light was green but I just couldn't go through it at that time. How ridiculous. It was a right turn on green and the stoplights here are all arrows and it showed that you could go straight or right.

I had been warned that this is what the police do. They pull you over because they see that you are white. Apparently Khmer drivers don't even stop for them, they just keep going because they know how ridiculous the police officers are. We were warned in our security briefing though that sometimes this makes the police angry and they will then radio ahead to other officers on a different corner who will just grab people off their motos then while the moto is still going. So the option to just outrun them definitely has a downside.

I tried telling the police that I worked for the UN and I didn't do anything wrong and they couldn't pull me over for nothing. The guy asked me for money. He said if I paid him it could all go away. I said isn't that illegal and he just laughed. The corruption here is so blatant. The police don't even try to hide that's all they want from you. Sometimes they try to get $100 from people who did nothing at all. The worst part is that even if you pay one police officer, there is nothing to stop you from getting pulled over two blocks down. I have heard stories of people getting pulled over up to 5 times in one day. It's just ridiculous. Apparently people have been pulled over with no money on them and the police have walked them to ATM's and made them withdraw cash.

I was pissed about the fact that he asked me for a bribe and the fact that I had even been pulled over in the first place. I made the extra effort to not run the light and go about it the right way to try and follow the law and it didn't even matter. I finally agreed to give him $2 to let me go but told them I would be back to talk to them. I was livid. I get that in the grand scheme of things $2 for me shouldn't be a big deal. But the principle behind it all drives me nuts. This is a country where I could eat 3 meals for that amount of money. Where many families spend less than that in a single day. So while $2 for some American student or other foreigner shouldn't be a big deal, the principle of pulling people over and making them fork over cash, even $2, is a huge problem. I understand that a country needs to have traffic laws and those that don't obey them need to have some sort of penalty instilled, but I was pulled over for doing nothing wrong! And this happens to people everyday. The police just pull over whoever they can trap into stopping and make up violations until the people get so frustrated they agree to pay them.

I parted with my friends who had been on their way to the grocery store and I went home to get the contact cards that I had for the head of UN security and the Chief of Staff of the Cambodian National police (who I had met the day before).

I pulled up to the cops and was pissed. I got out the cards and handed them to the guys (the cards are in both English and Khmer) I then stuck out my hand and told them to give me back my $2. They both just looked at the cards for the longest times and then kept looking back at me. The one with better English got pissed, pulled the money out of his pocket, handed it to me and said here. Now you stay. They said if I didn't want to pay then I had to wait there. I threatened to call the numbers on the cards and he told me to go ahead, they wouldn't understand me because I didn't speak Khmer. I told him I met the police yesterday and he speaks perfect English. He told me go ahead and call. I might have even called, problem was I had a cell phone but I had just ran out of minutes and didn't have a way. I tried explaining them that I couldn't. He was pissed and wouldn't let me go. He called me out on it. They kept trying to grab my moto and push me up on the sidewalk but I wouldn't budge. I was warned that once they get you up on the sidewalk you are screwed, they will keep you all day. I kept trying to talk to them and explain but he said, you don't pay then you wait. They wouldn't talk to me. All of a sudden a guy who spoke great English said he didn't know English and couldn't understand me. It was ridiculous. I kept telling them to tell me what I did wrong or let me go. He just said you wait. I would try and start my bike to drive away and they would grab me and try to take my keys. I kept guarding them, knowing that if they took them I would never get out of there. I got so frustrated and mad at myself. I should have just let it go but was so angry about the injustice, the fact that I did nothing wrong, angry with myself for agreeing to bribe him in the first place. I didn't know what to do. After about 20 minutes I offered to just give back the money if they would let me go. He said no way. I didn't know what to do. I was not he side of the road on a busy street, stranded. I told them to just arrest me and held out my hands. He just looked the other way. I kept asking them how long I had to stay, all he would do was yell wait at me and try to push me to the sidewalk.

I finally just started yelling to random people on the street asking if anyone spoke English and could help me. People just looked at me. They all knew the situation that I was in and that there was nothing that could be done. Finally an American man on a bicycle stopped to ask me what the trouble was. Thankfully he spoke Khmer. It took him about 15 minutes of negotiation but he was able to get me out of there if I gave the guy the money back. He said the same thing had happened to him his first week in Cambodia and he got upset too but after awhile he just gave in and thought of it as paying taxes in Cambodia. I don't know what I would have done without him.

I haven't been pulled over since but still don't know how to handle it if I was. I get that the way it is done here is just to pay them and move on. I also get that I'm in another country and I shouldn't just come in with this expectation that things should be the same and decide that if they are different they are wrong. I get that I need to adapt. But morally I still have a line that needs to be drawn. Maybe I picked the wrong time to enter the battle, but at that point I just thought even if I only give them $2 this one time, I'm still doing something I don't ever want to do. So ya it was just $2 one time, but what did it say about me. How would succumbing to something that I found so detestable ever help. How does committing a wrong help you stand up and fight against it?

Thankfully I haven't been put in this situation again. I'm still not sure how I will react or how I should react. Part of me really feels like the best thing I can do is just let them keep me on the side of the road until they get annoyed and let me go. I have tried to ask so many people here what the actual appropriate system is for traffic violations. In the U.S. if you get a ticket you don't agree with you are able to challenge it somewhere. But here there is no system in place to disagree. You pay the money they want from you or you sit and wait. There are no tickets, no procedures. Just bribes. Apparently it is legal for them to "fine" you on the spot but not in excess of 5,000 riels ($1.25 U.S.). The problem is that no one here knows the laws, not even the police. So even if you tried to call them on it they wouldn't believe you. And you can't explain anything to anyone because when Khmer people don't feel like talking to you they just pretend to not understand what you are saying. We actually had a tuk tuk driver the other night try to tell us he was Indian because a girl in our group started negotiating with him in Khmer and he didn't want to negotiate.

I get that I'm only here for a couple of weeks and my mother is going to kill me if I end up in jail over here because of something so small. But I'm still really bothered by this whole situation and struggling with how to cope over this one.

The legal aspect...

            So obviously grave atrocities were committed during the Khmer Rouge regime. Right after the Khmer Rouge fell a trial of sorts was had and some people were convicted. Pol Pot had to spend the rest of his life under house arrest, where he died but basically not much was really done to those in charge. In an interview Pol Pot did in the late nineties he apparently still would not admit his guilt. He said (something like) to the reporter, “do I look like a malicious person? I have a clear conscience.” 

Eventually people started realizing how bad the situation was in Cambodia and a lot of other countries wanted to give donations, but wouldn’t fork over any money until something was done.  Cambodia agreed to hold a trial but they knew they couldn’t afford the whole thing on their own so they agreed to let the UN come in and help them but they wanted it to still be Cambodia-run. So they set up a really unique special court called the  Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). It’s a joint court that has representatives from the UN as well as Cambodia. They are applying Cambodia law, which is also international law since Cambodia’s laws also hold true to all international laws.

We went in and visited the court and got to sit and listen to them questioning a witness. The whole ordeal is pretty crazy. The court is set up at an army base about a 45-minute drive outside of Phnom Penh. There is a house on the base where all the defendants have been held and there is a huge building of UN offices. Outside the courtroom is an area with TV screens and tables and plastic chairs for the days when the court is too crowded for everyone to sit inside. The actual inside of the building is like a normal courtroom but about 50x bigger. The front of the room (where the judges and the lawyers and witnesses are) is like a little bubble because it’s shielded from the gallery area (where everyone else sits) by a bunch of glass.

The court itself is conducted in 3 languages simultaneously: English, French, and Khmer. There are translators for each of the languages and all of the people in the audience are given headsets so they can tune into the proper channel. So while we were watching the prosecutor was questing the witness who was answering in Khmer and then you had judges interrupting in English. It was wild. I’m really curious about the implications of such a procedure. I feel like there are a lot of arguments that could be made as to how it’s impossible to have a fair trial with such a system. Translators are never 100% correct and the meaning of words varies when they are interpreted. So people in different languages have to be getting slightly different stories. I think the words we choose are incredibly important, especially with such a serious topic. So many witnesses are telling horrific stories of what happened to them and I think having it translated changes their story. I get that its not feasible any other way, but I’m still curious as to the fairness aspect of it all.

           

            The court separated the whole thing into 4 different trials.

            The first trial was against Duch, who was in charge of Tuol Sleng Prison, or S21. 

S21 is an old school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison. It held around 17,000 prisoners throughout the Khmer Rouge.  People were brought to S21 when they were suspected of being enemies of the Khmer Rouge. They were tortured extensively and forced to give false confessions of their treason and to blurt out names of other supposed criminals. When the Vietnamese liberate Phnom Penh in 1979, they discovered the prison and there were still bodies left inside.

We visited the prison and saw the graves of the victims that were left there. You could still see blood stains on the floors of the rooms. There were pictures of the positions that bodies had been found in, beaten to death, electrocuted, bloody, and chained to metal beds. 

Prisoners pictures were taken when they arrived. You see pictures of young children and mothers holding infants. When one person in a family was accused of being a traitor, the entire family was targeted. The Khmer Rouge believed that it was better to kill off entire families so that no one would be left to seek revenge against them. 

What happened at S21 was horrific. It’s strange to think that a school, a place where children went to gain an education, to grow and to learn, turned into a place where they targeted individuals who had an education. A place where growth was encouraged turned into a place of death and torture. It’s also crazy that this prison and torture facility was literally in the middle of the city. It wasn’t hidden off in the distance somewhere so that people didn’t know about it. Apparently you could hear screams of people being tortured from the streets of the city.

Many people who were tortured at S21 were not actually killed there but were sent to the Killing Fields to die. Duch is considered to be responsible for the deaths of at least 14,000 people either through direct killing or his personal orders.

Duch was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his crimes, 16 of which have been served already since the start of the tribunal. Therefore Duch was to serve only another 19 years in jail. There was a public outcry after the trial, and some felt it to be a grave insult. His crimes were horrendous and the penalty seemed so minor, he would eventually be let free. The case was appealed and Duch was later sentenced to life in jail.

While many people considered the appeal a victory, the initial decision was actually a huge success for Due Process rights in Cambodia. It was one of the first times that sentencing was issued according to due process laws in Cambodia.

Duch is also the only of the accused to ever actually admit guilt. During the trial Duch was taken to the Killing fields. The killing fields are an area outside of Phnom Penh where people were taken to be slaughtered. People discovered the area while looking for food after it was abandoned by the Khmer Rouge, instead of food they found mass graves with thousands of bodies. One man was looking around a tree for fruit or bugs and he noticed blood and brains embedded in the bark. Next to the tree he found a mass grave of women and babies. Khmer Rouge soldiers would grab babies by their feet and swing them against the trees, breaking their skulls. They would then throw them into the pit and kill their mothers and do the same. When Duch was taken to the killing fields during the trial and brought to this tree he fell to his knees and started weeping. He said he knew that he was responsible for their deaths and begged for forgiveness. 

There are mixed feelings as to whether Duch is actually sorry. While it has to be nice for someone to finally admit guilt (since no one else has), there are mixed reactions. At the end of the trial Duch requested that he be acquitted and found not guilty claiming he was just an agent of a bigger regime. People were upset with this and believe that his earlier confessions of guilt were just an attempt to get a lesser sentence.

            http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/indicted-person/kaing-guek-eav

            http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/opinion/28wed3.html?ref=hunsen

            Case 2 is a bigger, more complicated, and possibly doomed event that is currently taking place. 2 of the students in my group are working on the defense team for one of the accused.

            Case 2 is against 4 of the senior leaders considered to be most responsible. One of them has already been declared unfit to stand trial because she suffers from dementia. The other are all considerably old. It’s interesting to see video of the trial so far and their pictures. You just see these tiny old people and you wonder how they were capable of doing the things they did. When we went to the court we saw an introductory video with each of them speaking at the end of the trial. One of the men refused to talk at all. Another said that he had been waiting years for this moment, that he was proud of what he did because he was doing it for his country and he couldn’t wait to tell his story.

            Apparently it’s going to be a miracle if Case 2 even finishes. As with all Cambodian courts there are huge problems with governmental interference and corruption. A couple judges have already resigned because they weren’t able to do their jobs properly. It has to be so frustrating. Apparently a week or so ago they were questioning a witness and the witness started talking about Hun Sen’s involvement and seeing him at really high up meetings and the judge just cut him off and ended court for the day. There are so many high ranking current government officials that played a huge role in the Khmer Rouge and arguably should also be on trial but will never get there.

            This trial and the situation in Cambodia raises the interesting question of how you go about picking up the pieces of such a mess. Who do you blame when so many people were responsible? if you tried to lock up everyone that played a part or did something wrong it would be a considerable percentage of the population. They were at war, people were dying left and right, everyone went in to survival mode. How do you draw the line between what was permissible and what wasn’t? It’s incredibly difficult. The court itself has specifically been set up with a very very limited jurisdiction for that exact purpose. It is only allowed to prosecute “the senior leaders and those most responsible” for the atrocities during a certain time period. Some say this is to protect foreign governments such as the U.S. and Vietnam who would have never supported the court if it didn’t have such a focus. Others believe it’s to protect Hun Sen and Cambodia. Hun Sen has publicly admonished the trial and done everything to stall it’s success. He has refused to let the court investigate further cases and told them that if they wanted to make any more indictments they may as well just pack up and leave because it wasn’t going to happen. Supposedly for Case 3 they were looking into some high ranking government officials and now it appears that it will be a miracle if they even finish case 2.

            http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/case/topic/2

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/world/asia/06cambo.html?ref=hunsen

            http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/world/asia/judge-quits-cambodia-tribunal.html?_r=1&ref=hunsen

            http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/opinion/29iht-edmaguire.html?ref=hunsen

A quick history lesson...

            I knew pretty much two things about Cambodia before I decided that I wanted to come here (1) it is a country (2) it is somewhere in Asia. I didn’t learn a whole lot more information before actually getting on a plane other than looking it up on a map and reading some things on Wikipedia. Based on my own complete lack of knowledge about Cambodia I figured it might be helpful for those interested to share a little of what I’ve learned. So here’s a basic summary of what’s been going on here over the last 50 years or so. (I’m sure my dad will look it all up though and let me know everything that I got wrong.)

            Cambodia has a history of great kingdoms hundreds of years ago but the real issues in Cambodia began in the 1970s. That’s when genocide was committed and almost half of the population was killed. That’s the reason that Cambodia to this day is filled with organizations such as UNICEF, where I will be working this summer.

During the Vietnam War, upheaval was caused in the entire region, not just Vietnam. The Cambodian government was allowing North Vietnam to enter Cambodia and hide from U.S. troops and kind of regroup before going back into Vietnam and fighting. The U.S. got involved in Cambodian politics because they didn’t like the fact that Cambodia was aiding Vietnam forces. So the U.S. started funding rebel groups in Cambodia to overthrow the Cambodian government. The U.S. then funded a military backed party of Lon Nol’s army. While the U.S. supported this new government Cambodians did not.  The U.S. then started a blind bombing campaign in which they would basically fly over Northern Cambodia and drop bombs (pretty much without any strategy whatsoever) as a result the U.S. ended up bombing tons of villages and killing around 500,000 Cambodian civilians that had nothing to do with the conflict or with Vietnam. According to documents released during the Clinton administration, the U.S. dropped more bombs on Cambodia than the allies dropped during WWII. Lon Nol ended up being a terrible dictator, and his rule coupled with the bombing from the U.S. was almost too much for Cambodians to handle.

Rebel groups started forming in the jungles. One of these was the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was a communist group led by Pol Pot. Pol Pot and other leaders had been educated in Paris where they gained their appreciation for communism. Pol Pot took advantage of the terrible state Cambodia was in and recruited soldiers from the countryside, many of them were children.

In 1975 when the Khmer Rouge marched on Phnom Penh and took over the city, Lon Nol had already evacuated. The majority of Cambodians had no idea who the Khmer Rouge were but they cheered as soldiers dressed in black entered Phnom Penh to liberate them from Lon Nol’s dictatorship. The Khmer Rouge was a very secretive organization and did not reveal who was in charge of the regime until well into their occupation. 

On April 17th, 1975 the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh, the capital city. They told people they needed to leave because the American were going to bomb the city and the only way they would be safe was to leave for a few days, they brought nothing with them and many didn’t even put on shoes. Those that did not leave immediately were shot. They evacuated the hospitals; even the incredibly sick had t leave. The Khmer Rouge divided everyone in the city into four groups based on their current location in the city and had them march into the jungle. Those that were in the northwest corner went northwest; those in the southeast corner went southeast, etc. While the people thought they would return to Phnom Penh in a few days, it would be 3 years before the city was occupied again, and many would never return. 

The goal of the Khmer Rouge was to return Cambodia to year 0. They wanted to bring back the simplicity of Cambodian life. They believed that anyone in the city was capitalistic and needed to be taught the real Cambodian way, which could only be learned in the jungles. As the people marched out of the city the Khmer Rouge began picking out people who had been members of the former government and killing them.

By May 20, 1975 (now known as the Day of Anger) commune structures were implemented in the countryside for people to live in. The Khmer rouge began systematically killing off people who they thought of as threats. It started as anyone with an education. They would hold dinners and ask people as they arrived what their profession was. If the people were professionals or intellectuals they were told to sit at a table and served nicer food, while those who did labor jobs or more blue collar work were told to sit on a mat and eat. After the meal they would tell all the people at the table to remain seating for dessert but would tell the people on the mat they had to leave because they didn’t get dessert. After those on the mat left they killed everyone at the table. It got to the point where they were killing people who wore eyeglasses because they were thought to be bourgeois intellectuals. And their paranoia only grew.

They were cutting Cambodia off from the outside world. They killed anyone who wasn’t a native born Cambodian. They killed everyone living along the border of Vietnam because they were thought to be influenced by Vietnamese ideals. They planted landmines all along the borders of the country so that no one could get in or out. Many of the landmines are still there today and people are still killed as a result. I think the UN has put landmine deaths at over 100,000.

Those that weren’t killed were made to work. Everyone who could would work 15-hour days of hard manual labor, planting rice, building dams, harvesting. Food production was at an all time high but people were dying of starvation. All of the food that was produced had to be handed over to the Khmer Rouge who then sold it to China in exchange for weapons. 

The exact numbers of those that died during the Khmer Rouge regime are still uncertain. However, even the most modest figures place the death toll at over 2 million people. In about a 3-year period ¼ of the population was wiped out. One in four Cambodians were dead. 

Apparently it took years before people even realized what was happening in Cambodia. There are stories of people looking over the hills from Thailand and seeing clouds of smoke coming up from land all over Cambodia, they were destroying villages. But after the Vietnam War, no one wanted to get involved. The U.S. and other countries turned a blind eye.

The Khmer Rouge got so paranoid that they started killing of their own soldiers, anyone who was thought to not completely respect Angkar (“the organization”). Many Khmer Rouge defected and fled the country into Vietnam.

In 1978 Vietnamese troops and former Khmer Rouge invaded Cambodia and took over. Fighting in Cambodia over power continued for another decade. In 1991 a comprehensive peace settlement was created with the help of the UN. They set up the United Nations Transnational Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).  In 1993 they restored Prince Sihanook to power and sponsored Cambodia’s first ever democratic elections.

For a while Cambodia had co-prime ministers but in 1997 Hun Sen ousted the non-communist parties in government. Hun Sen continues to reign in a very controversial and corrupt system. The NY Times actually wrote an interesting article on Hun Sen right before I came to Cambodia that gives a better background than I could. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/opinion/10000-days-of-hun-sen.html?_r=1