Khmer Rouge tribunal hits a new
snag By Marwaan Macan-Markar
The long-delayed special tribunal charged
with prosecuting the surviving leaders of
Cambodia's former genocidal Khmer Rouge regime has
hit a political snag, exposing politically
powerful elements in the country that strongly
oppose the United Nations-sponsored legal
proceedings.
The latest influential figure
to stand against the trial is Ky Tech, president
of the Cambodian Bar Association (CBA). Earlier
this month he demanded that UN-appointed foreign
lawyers, who
represent 13 of the 30 judges
sitting on the Extraordinary Chambers in the
Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), be barred from
participating in the hearings. His nationalistic
call to remove foreign judges from the body
intensified last week.
"We are being
violated by foreigners," Ky Tech was quoted as
having told the English-language Cambodian Daily.
Cambodia's legal system is plagued by
poorly trained judges, a tragic legacy of the
Khmer Rouge's ill-conceived drive to kill off the
educated classes as part of its "Year Zero" policy
to turn Cambodia into an agrarian paradise.
Nowadays, Cambodia's judges lack extensive
knowledge of international law, particularly in
relation to cases involving crimes against
humanity.
On Friday, the International Bar
Association (IBA) abruptly stopped a training
program planned for this week to familiarize
Cambodian lawyers with issues pertinent to crimes
against humanity cases - a charge that many
surviving Khmer Rouge leaders will potentially
face during the tribunal.
The CBA issued
instructions forbidding lawyers from attending a
training program planned by the IBA and the ECCC.
Ky Tech has publicly threatened that "measures"
will be taken against any attendee, and against
the IBA's international participants.
"The
bar's actions represent a disturbing development
in the functioning of international justice,
placing obstacles in the path of bringing those
accused of international crimes to trial," said
Mark Ellis, executive director of the London-based
IBA. "The IBA's program was intended to improve
the quality of legal services and the
administration of justice in Cambodia, and help
educate and inform the Cambodian public about
international justice."
The IBA has been
involved in bolstering underdeveloped legal
systems in countries across the world that have
suddenly faced the daunting task of handling war
crimes tribunals. The independent body has trained
lawyers, prosecutors and judges involved in
special tribunals dealing with crimes against
humanity cases in the former Yugoslavia and more
recently helped to train the judges of the Iraqi
High Tribunal.
Given that international
record, Ky Tech's objection to the IBA's
involvement in the Cambodian tribunal has caused
speculation among Phnom Penh-based observers that
he and the CBA may be acting on orders from higher
political powers. Cambodia's justice system has in
the past failed to uphold internationally
recognized human rights and has frequently been
accused by international legal observers of being
politically pliant.
"The CBA president has
become vocal to a degree that it is hard to
believe that he is saying these things without
political backing," Theary Seng, executive
director of the Center for Social Development
(CSD), a non-governmental organization, said in a
telephone interview from Phnom Penh. "It seems to
be aimed to either slow the process, or even stall
it. This is worrying."
Cambodian
human-rights groups are likewise alarmed. "There
can be some political influence behind this
statement," Ny Chakrya, a ranking member of the
Cambodian Human Rights and Development
Association, a Phnom Penh-based non-governmental
organization. "Some CBA lawyers work closely with
the CPP [Cambodian People's Party]. Ky Tech is
pro-CPP."
Serial opponent It is
not the first time that Prime Minister Hun Sen has
been accused of trying to scupper a legal process
for which many Cambodian civilians have long
yearned. The authoritarian government leader has
been a serial opponent of the special tribunal
ever since the United Nations began talks with
Phnom Penh about creating the ECCC in 1997.
Hun Sen - himself a former junior-level
Khmer Rouge cadre - has repeatedly warned that the
proceedings could cause panic among Khmer Rouge
supporters and reignite the civil war that ravaged
the country throughout the 1980s and into the
1990s. Although Hun Sen has frequently criticized
former Khmer Rouge leaders for their alleged role
in past atrocities, at the same time he has
provided sanctuary in his government for some of
the Maoist group's most senior members.
Hun Sen has repeatedly backtracked on
earlier commitments related to the tribunal, and
recently reneged on providing Cambodia's US$13.3
million share of the $56.3 million total budget
for the trial. Western donors, including the
United States, who contribute around half of his
government's annual budget and have applied
pressure in support of the tribunal, have recently
agreed to pony up $9.6 million for Phnom Penh's
share.
In May, Hun Sen lashed out at
human-rights groups which called into question his
government's choice of judges to sit on the
tribunal, which unlike the ones for Rwanda and
former Yugoslavia, includes a combination of local
and international jurists. That mixed composition
was the result of years of negotiations between
Hun Sen and the United Nations.
Human
rights groups were particularly peeved by the
choice of Ney Thol, an army general and president
of Cambodia's military court, for the ECCC. They
say he has a record of denying the right of
lawyers for the accused to call their own
witnesses and to cross-examine the prosecution's
witnesses.
More significantly, perhaps, is
the question of whether Hun Sen will be dragged
into the tribunal's proceedings, which formally
got underway this year after years of delay. He
was a member of the Khmer Rouge until he defected
to join forces with the Vietnamese troops that
drove Pol Pot, the leader of that brutal regime,
from power in 1979.
During the Khmer
Rouge's 1975-79 reign of terror, it was
responsible for the deaths of close to 1.7 million
people, nearly a quarter of the poor Southeast
Asian country's total population at that time.
Victims were either executed or died as a result
of forced labor or famine.
Pol Pot died in
1998, but other leaders of the regime are either
languishing in detention or sitting in government.
Kaing Khek Eav, also known as Duch, presided over
the notorious Toul Sleng interrogation center in
Phnom Penh where an estimated 14,000 people were
killed. He is currently in prison. Senior Khmer
Rouge cadres Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan,
meanwhile, hold official posts in Hun Sen's
administration. Both former leaders have claimed
innocence, but would likely be targeted during the
tribunal, assuming it goes ahead.
(Inter
Press Service with additional reporting by Asia
Times Online)
